[LCM Articles] The Day After (Haaretz)

[Loai Naamani]

The Day After / How we suffered a knockout


By Reuven <mailto:rpedatzur at haaretz.co.il>  Pedatzur





 


The United States' defeat in the Vietnam war started becoming evident when
Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, started
using body counts as an alternative to military victories. When he could not
point to achievements on the battlefield, Westmoreland would send a daily
report to Washington of the number of Vietcong soldiers his forces had
killed. 

In the past few weeks, the Israel Defense Forces has also adopted the body
count approach. When the largest and strongest army in the Middle East
clashes for more than two weeks with 50 Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbail and
does not bring them to their knees, the commanders are left with no choice
but to point to the number of dead fighters the enemy has left behind. It
can be assumed that Bint Jbail will turn into a symbol of the second Lebanon
war. For the Hezbollah fighters it will be remembered as their Stalingrad,
and for us it will be a painful reminder of the IDF's defeat. 





Ze'ev Schiff wrote in Haaretz on August 11 that we had "gotten a slap." It
seems that "knockout" would be a more appropriate description. This is not a
mere military defeat. This is a strategic failure whose far-reaching
implications are still not clear. And like the boxer who took the blow, we
are still lying dazed on the ground, trying to understand what happened to
us. Just like the Six-Day War led to a strategic change in the Middle East
and established Israel's status as the regional power, the second Lebanon
war may bring about the opposite. The IDF's failure is eroding our national
security's most important asset - the belligerent image of this country, led
by a vast, strong and advanced army capable of dealing our enemies a
decisive blow if they even try to bother us. This war, it soon transpired,
was about "awareness" and "deterrence." We lost the fight for both. 

The concept failed again

It does not matter one bit what the IDF's true capability is. There is also
no importance to the assertions that the IDF used merely a small part of its
force and that its arsenal still contains advanced weapons that did not come
into play. What really matters is the image of the IDF - and in fact of
Israel - in the eyes of our adversaries in the region. 

And herein lies the most serious failure of this war. In Damascus, Gaza,
Tehran and Cairo, too, people are looking with amazement at the IDF that
could not bring a tiny guerrilla organization (1,500 fighters according to
the military intelligence chief, and a few thousand according to other
sources) to its knees for more than a month, the IDF that was defeated and
paid a heavy price in most of its battles in southern Lebanon. And most
serious of all: an IDF that has not neutralized Hezbollah's ability to fire
rockets and keep more than 1 million Israeli citizens sitting in shelters
for more than four weeks. What happened to this mighty army, which after a
month was not able to advance more than a few kilometers into Lebanon?
wonder many of those who are planning their next wars against Israel. 

Israel's deterrent power was based on the recognition by the enemy that it
would pay an extremely heavy price if it attacked Israel. For example, Syria
has not fired hundreds of missiles at the Israeli homefront - even during
times of war - because it fears a harsh Israeli attack on Damascus and other
important Syrian towns. But when more than 3,000 rockets are fired at the
Galilee, Haifa and Hadera without Israel demanding that someone pay,
Israel's deterrence is damaged. At the next opportunity, someone in Damascus
may decide to fire rockets at Tel Aviv to push forward a diplomatic process,
since Israel did not only fail to react severely to the rockets fired from
Lebanon but also was forced to agree to a UN arrangement that leaves the
rocket stockpile in Hezbollah's hands. 

The Agranat Commission gave a negative connotation to the term "concept" in
the context of military intelligence. The commission of inquiry that now
hopefully will be set up will quickly conclude that on the eve of the second
Lebanon war, the IDF - and consequently policy makers - were working with
two mistaken concepts. First, over the past six years, Israelis came to
believe a large-scale fight against Hezbollah would not be necessary: Any
military actions in southern Lebanon would be limited and short. Second, if
a war arose against Hezbollah, the IDF would dismantle the organization
within a few days, break its command backbone and end the fighting under
conditions favorable to Israel. 

And this is how we entered the war. The army led the prime minister and his
cabinet to believe that the air force would annihilate Hezbollah's fighting
capability within several days and that thereafter a new situation would
prevail in Lebanon. On the basis of these promises, Ehud Olmert set
ambitious objectives for the war, which of course were unattainable. 

Just as before the Yom Kippur war, there was a destructive combination of
arrogance, boastfulness, euphoria and contempt for the enemy. The generals
were so certain of the air force's success that they did not prepare an
alternative. And when it became clear after about one week that Hezbollah
was not disintegrating and that its ability to fire rockets had not been
significantly thwarted, the IDF found itself in a state of acute distress
and embarrassment. This is the reason for the hesitancy in using force and
the lack of determination in the use of the ground forces. 

The commission of inquiry will have to examine how the army entered the war
without formulating alternative operations or plans to end the war. The
failure of the government lies in its adoption of the army's proposal
without examining its logic, chances of success or alternatives. The
decision-making process that led to the war once again revealed the most
serious defect in the formation of national security policy. Since the
establishment of the state, no government has had the good sense to set up
professional advisory bodies that could assist it in dealing with IDF
proposals, or at least to examine them seriously. As in all the other
conflicts, the army and not the government decided what Israel should do in
Lebanon. The National Security Council - whose job this is precisely - was
not asked to look over the IDF's plans and their implications, nor was it
asked to provide alternatives. 

The missing command

The arrogance and the overconfidence that characterized the top brass left
the home front unprotected. If it was clear that the air force would destroy
the rocket launch pads within a few days, why call on the residents of the
north to prepare the air raid shelters and stockpile food? We know the
outcome: More than one million people sat for more than one month in
stinking shelters, some of them without food or minimal conditions. 

In this context, the inquiry commission should look into the home front
command. Millions of shekels were invested in this command. A major general,
brigadiers general, colonels and many other officers and soldiers man this
command. And what was its contribution to the war? Warning notices broadcast
over the radio and televisions about alarms and sirens. That's it. For more
than a month, the entire command made do with drafting public notices about
seeking shelter and staying in interior rooms. Where was this command over
the past six years? Was it not its task to examine and check whether the
shelters were satisfactory? 

And of course, the intelligence. Once again there were surprises and
failures, some of which were based on the mistaken concept of Hezbollah's
capacities. The militia's success in surprising an IDF patrol and abducting
two soldiers - the catalyst for the war - stems from a military intelligence
failure. IDF intelligence did not assess correctly Hezbollah's fighting
capability, did not know about the tunnels next to the organization's
strongholds, and erred in its assessments of the deployment inside Bint
Jbail, and there were many more other intelligence failures. 

The navy's intelligence failed because it did not know about the Iranian
land-to-sea missiles in Hezbollah's hands, and its assessments about
Hezbollah's ability to fire rockets were mistaken. Hezbollah's successful
handling of anti-tank missiles also revealed an intelligence failure that
resembles to a large extent that of the 1973 war. The Patriot missile
batteries stationed near Haifa and Safed were announced by the IDF with much
fanfare. The wide media coverage given to these deployments was supposed to
quiet residents' fears. Since then we have not heard a single word about
that wonderful defense system. As far as is known, not even one attempt was
made to knock down missiles fired at Haifa and Hadera. The commission of
inquiry will also have to deal with the army's decisions about anti-missile
defense. Billions of dollars were invested in the defense systems to combat
missiles, but this was unapparent when it came to the test. In addition, the
army's decision to stop developing the Nautilus - a laser-based
anti-Katyusha defense system - must be examined. 

The state allocates some 11 billion dollars annually for the defense budget.
Almost 15 percent of the GNP is devoted to security. (The official figure is
10 percent, but this does not include all the investments in security
issues). But when the reservists are called up, they discover that they lack
basic equipment: flak jackets, helmets, vehicles and even stretchers. Entire
units were forced to fight more than 24 hours without food or water. Where
did the money go? This will have to be examined by the commission of
inquiry. The height of the chutzpah is the hints by senior officers that the
dearth of equipment is due to the defense budget cuts. This should be the
chance to break the myth about these budget cuts: Not only was the defense
budget not cut in the past decade, it actually grew during the years 2002
and 2005. Israel allocates to security more of its total resources than any
other democracy in the world (15 times more than Japan and three times more
than the U.S.). It should be checked whether there is justification for
this. 

The Yom Kippur war is remembered as a seminal event that damaged the
public's trust in the army. Quite a few years passed before this trust was
restored. It is still too early to assess whether the second Lebanon war
will be remembered as the turning point at which the public awakes from the
illusion about the unlimited might of the Israeli military force.

 

 

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