Religion,Yes,those Aztecs,celebrating their diversity,killing for their Go,a bit passe,but hey!

This is equivalent to the cold war. This is about an ideology (theology) that supports and demands all of those individual items. We need to attack the root cause which is the religion of the Islamofascists which THEY CLAIM is the “true” Islam.

By all means we must criticize all of those items but we have to do it in the context in which it exists, namely the religion. Then and only then, maybe (I ain’t real sanguine here) the MMM will step up and say AND DO something about the “extremists”.

Look at the polls in Britain and elsewhere to see how much support these violent scum have from the community of ISLAM. There is a damn large minority if not majority that support this as acceptable RELIGIOUS warfare against the infidel. Their internecine clashes are not relevant to us except if we can exploit them.

Read Memri and see what the most prestigious leaders from the main government supported mosques in Egypt and SA have to say and then show me why we don’t have to confront the religion.

I know you defend Israel. That’s not the problem. I see you talking about a massive offensive in the South instead of what they’ve been doing.

Well, as I said, the Israelis had to take out the infrastructure as much as they could. And that meant bombing the runways, the relay towers, some oil storage areas, the Hezbollah conclaves in Beirut and its suburbs. Command and Control centers wherever they’ve identified them. The roads, the bridges, whatever else.

I mean why just go for the worker bees in the south? That’s pussy. Sorry.

Besides, as Wretchard conjectured, the IAF bombings showed Nasrallah that the Israelis were not just going for the immediate targets, they were after HIM and his entire organization.

Carpet bombing is passe. We can do better than that in 2006.

We can criticize intolerance. Slavery. Islam’s treatment of women. Violence. We can try to remove the hate from their textbooks–and widen their view of history. We can even bump off their most extremist clerics.

But demonizing the whole religion is stupid. Our enemies aren’t billions of people. We need most of those people to completely reject their own extremists. And they will. As the people who just wish to lead normal lives discover that it’s their own extremists who slaughter them to prevent that, they will cry out ‘enough’! Unfortunately it will take much pain, suffering, and death by the extremists hands before that occurs.

Any war on Islam from the West would be totally counterproductive. A culture that has a tendency to blame the other and not look to itself would only become defensive and united. And that would doom all of them.

PeterUK – see this .

chuck, AlanC

If you flatten everything, you don’t just stop. You then blow away anything that moves. That’s where those drones are so handy. Those guys aren’t going to sit in the bunkers forever. But again, just tossing out the idea.

As to Israel and the PR war… I agree that they can’t win it. Good grief, they had suicide bombers blowing up every few days and the Europeans continued to support the Palestinians and attack Israel.

However, they also cannot ignore it. There are different levels of the PR war, and these can be important.

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If Israel really plans to take out Hezbollah, they cannot do that without occupying Lebanon (and probably Syria) for a long time – and they sure aren’t going to do that. Alternatively, they can get someone else to do it, and perhaps that is what they are counting on (although don’t expect the Lebanese to do it – or even to be able to).

Meanwhile, I have the question: what do they achieve by attacking facilities in Beirut? Presumably it was to take out “infrastructure” – but what infrastructure?

In the old days, taking out command and communication nodes was very effective. Today it may not be. With modern communications, command can be distributed all over the place. Communication systems (assuming that the internet has been taken down in the area) are easy to back up (and I’ve done a work in that area). Furthermore, the small unit actions probably don’t require high level continuous coordination by Hezbollah.

Modern technology has surprises. Civilian systems (COTS) are very sophisticated and it may be hard for military planners to anticipate their use. In the Iraq war, a battalion (?) of Apache helicopters was mission-killed when the Iraqi scouts reported their position, from hearing them fly by, via cell phone.

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Many commentators have asserted that weak responses by the US to terrorist activities, starting with Iran’s embassy capture in 1979, the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, and the numerous attacks in the 90’s greatly aided the Islamofascist terrorist movement. Put another way – the perception of our response led to a belief that we were weak and could be attacked with mild consequences. The same applies to Israel.

That is one part of the PR war now. Israel needs to look strong to its enemies. If it doesn’t, they (and the US) look weak and are more likely to be attacked again.

The civilian deaths issues is another part of the PR war – just as I wrote the first part of this sentence, a Wall Street Journal editorialist on Fox News made the point that an accident that kills too many civilians could force a premature end to the fighting. Such accidents are inevitable if the conflict goes on too long.

Now the editorialist is saying that “Hezbollah has to be seen to be defeated, no matter what the casualty figures are. Exactly!

I feel like a transcriptionist – they are making the same arguments I am as I write.

I don’t think it would have worked very well. If Hizb’ullah is as dug in as reported it would probably not have had a great effect on their troops. And remember that Israel hasn’t anything near the firepower the US can bring to bear; for instance, they have no heavy bombers, no B-52’s, B-1’s, or B-2’s. In fact, the last heavy bomber in the IDF/AF seems to have been a B-17. In the first 10 days of this war the AF has been flying about 300 sorties/day and, while I don’t think they are at their limit, I don’t think they are holding back either.

But it seems too me as if we have numerous historical examples to draw from on how to fight asymmetrical warfare. Though at times, it seems as if neither the US nor the Israel’s have bothered to look at, much less study, such. Israel has done well in the war’s that were defined on nationalistic boundaries. Not so well on the others. Many reasons for the discrepancies.

Every such war is different, but perhaps the question should be how many attempts at such have been successful? And what were the methods used, in those that were successful, to achieve that success. IOW’s, how does this present conflict fit in.

Force, in and of itself, is not always a predictor of success. It has worked on occasion. But there are myriad examples of when it did not.

How did we succeed in the Philippines, where we used much force, and the French did not in Algeria, where they used even greater force. What are the dynamics?

And, don’t get me wrong here, my finger twitches over the red button.

One, John there is NO way for Israel to win the PR war. Just look at Jenin or look at the report from one honest though tardy CNN reporter who pointed out that all of the reporting is done with Hezzie minders allowing photos of the one or two buildings hit and then lining up ambulances for a show. Where are the investigative reports showing weapons being transferred in those ambulances? Where are all the brave reporters showing the incessant barrage of Israel from Lebanon, etc. etc. When the enemy controls all the avenues of communication you can’t win.

On tactics, given what we’ve heard about the multi-level bunkers built under the noses of the intrepid UNIF how exactly was Israel supposed to flatten the entire zone? As far as Beirut goes, that’s where Hezboallah has their command and control structures as well as major weapons stores, or do you think that those secondary explosions are caused by 4th of July sparklers?

Onecent has it absolutely correct. We have to get over this PC BS and criticize Islam from the roof tops. Let’s publish every sermon from every major mosque detailing all of the calls to kill the pigs and dogs. Let’s have open LOUD debates about the reality of sharia and jihad. Don’t let the CAIR types get away with squishy PC blather and playing the victim. Let the MMM (mythical moderate muslims) speak up and challange the violent fanatical death cultists that preach in their names; or we can know them as truly mythical.

We will never win the WOT unless we totally crush the enemy. Half-measures aren’t going to do it.

We should NOT wish to criticize Islam–that’s for the muslims to do

Like leaving Hitler space to find his inner child? Hello?

Hint: Islams’s lack of criticism is where we are today. It’s reflected in the body count.

BTW The Bombing raids on German cities did several very important things,they tied up manpower and materiel,the fighters of the Luftwaffe and thousands of flak guns were kept from the Russian front.The 88mm flak gun was also the most lethal anti-tank gun of WWII,anything which enabled the Red Army to more efficiently mince up the Wehrmacht was an important part of the war effort.It has to be realised that it was the Russians which bore the brunt of the land war in Europe until the D Day landings,Stalin had been demanding the opening of a second front because although the Russians were winning,losses were horrendous.