Lifestyle > Train of Thought

Islamists have finally come up with a tactic that makes them hard to defeat

(1/3) > >>

Real American:
One thing everyone knows is that Islamic fascists like the Taliban, Al-Quada, Hezballah, etc simply don't have the technological and military power that countries like the US, Israel Britiain, etc have. That is why they are easily defeated in traditional warfare like we saw in Afghanistan. But what we are seeing now in Lebanon is probably a breakthrough in the tactics they use. Hezballah has grasped the fact that the more they endanger their own people and get them killed, the better it is for them politically. They can base their operations and launch attacks from civilain areas, and when those same areas get hit in a response it is Israel and the US that get blamed. Very little criticism gets leveled at Hezballah for putting innocent people in harm's way. Since the media is such a huge part of warfare these days, the Islamic fascists gained support and sympathy from the rest of the world and it helps them politically.

Sad but true.

Don Rizzle:
or maybe they simply view the conflict different with israel being the aggressor and hezbullah giving them a hard time against the mightiest power in the region

and taliban are still active in afganistan our forces are over stretched

Now_Im_Not_Banned:
Hezbollah is pathetic...

J @ M @ L:
Israeli Soldiers Find a Tenacious Foe in Hezbollah

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 8, 2006; Page A01

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel, Aug. 7 -- Late last week while guarding a house in southern Lebanon that Israeli forces were using as a command post, Cpl. Matan Tyler received an unusual order from his commander: Watch out for guys wearing Israeli uniforms.

A day earlier, a nearby regiment had been approached by fighters wearing familiar olive shirts and vests with Hebrew writing, Tyler said he was told. The fighters -- Hezbollah militiamen disguised as Israelis -- opened fire on a house full of Israeli soldiers.

"You really can't underestimate the Hezbollah," said Tyler, 20, a member of the army's Nahal Brigade. "They are the masters of the field. They know the area better than us. They know where to hide and when to move. They always know where we are."

The incident is just one among dozens of examples of an enemy that has proven more resilient and better-equipped than Israeli military forces anticipated. After nearly four weeks of air attacks and ground combat, Israeli military officials say that they have killed only a small fraction of Hezbollah's fighters and that the group still has hundreds of launchers and thousands of rockets at its disposal.

"What we face is an infantry division with state-of-the-art weaponry -- night-vision gear, advanced rifles, well-equipped -- deployed along our border," said Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, who until last month was director of analysis for Israeli military intelligence. "They have some of the most advanced antitank missiles in the world."

In more than two dozen interviews at army bases, hotels, artillery batteries and staging points for their entry into Lebanon since the heaviest ground fighting began last week, Israeli soldiers expressed confidence in their superiority over Hezbollah, but frustration that they are fighting an elusive enemy as difficult to find as it is to defeat.

"Most of the time we only see them when they want to draw attention to themselves, then they kick us from behind," said Tyler, who was resting with his battalion at a lakefront hotel near Tiberias after a week in southern Lebanon. "It's horrible, yes. You feel -- not weak, but how do you say it, threatened? There is always, always uncertainty."

Several soldiers said they were surprised by how long the operation has taken. When Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982, they reached to within 10 miles of Beirut in two days. In the current conflict, after more than three weeks of fighting, the heaviest ground combat is still in a string of towns along the border.

"It's so slow and you're just going crazy. You're not really getting very far in there and it's brutally hot just sitting in those houses," said Cpl. David Gross, 22, of Livingston, N.J., who moved to Israel two years ago to join the army.

"Look, we're all smart enough to know it's probably best that they do it this way. Fewer people get killed," he added. "But it's also hard because I don't know if we will ever be able to stop the rocket attacks. You just feel like we'll keep pushing them back and they'll just shoot the rockets farther. Is that frustrating? Yes."

The soldiers described a battlefield littered with booby traps and fortified by fighters who have been preparing to repel a ground invasion since Israeli withdrew from southern Lebanon six years ago, after an 18-year occupation.

Master Sgt. Yusaf, a scout for the army's Baram Brigade who spent 16 years fighting in southern Lebanon during the 1980s and 1990s and who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used, said comparing Hezbollah's capabilities then and now "is like talking about the difference between men who have guns and an army."

... "They are experts at deception. Everyone will think they won no matter what. That's how you win when there's a few thousand of you and 50,000 of us," he said. "The more of them we kill, the more of them who are generated. Unfortunately, this is a lost war."

J Bananas:
*does the running man to mista fab's ghost ride it*!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page