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Thursday, July 18, 2013

Preparing to Kill the Pooch

As I've long noted, Israel will not screw the pooch in Lebanon if there is another round of fighting against Hezbollah, as Israel did in 2006.

Israelis are training hard on the ground to crush Hezbollah:

The Israeli military experienced this kind of brutal house-to-house warfare during its inconclusive 2006 war with Hezbollah. As it trains in a mock village in its base in this northern Israeli town, it is recreating similar battle scenarios as it prepares for the next confrontation with the Lebanese militant group. Officials say such a conflict could erupt at any time.

In 2006, Israel's ground forces were unprepared to fight and Israeli leaders preferred to rely on air power. That war failed to crush Hezbollah. Hezbollah was hurt badly even with the ineptitude that the Israeli war effort demonstrated, which seems to have kept Hezbollah quiet. But Israel did fail in that war, in my opinion. Hezbollah is a bigger threat to Israeli civilians today with their far larger rocket arsenal.

Hezbollah has sent troops to Syria where they've already suffered 200 KIA plus more wounded.

And Israel is setting up a separate Golan front headquarters. I assume this is to separate any action in Lebanon from the Syrian front so Assad will have less reason to think a unified northern command is preparing a one-two blow that strikes Hezbollah first prior to driving on Damascus by crossing the ceasefire line on the Golan Heights.

It will be a different type of war than the horrible example we saw in 2006. I'd guess the Israelis move fast and deep to really tear up Hezbollah in Lebanon, if the order is given.