Hezbollah Defines The Latest Threat--Or Not

Two and a half years ago Hezbollah opened a can of Whupass on the IDF. The Israelis entered Lebanon in an ill-considered operation which may have been intended to serve as a re-heated version of the less-than-spectacularly-successful Operation Peace for Galilee a quarter century earlier.

The IDF was in for a big surprise, perhaps because the Government of Israel and the military high command had a very bad case of overconfidence. In any event, the much despised, so-called "terrorist" gang, Hezbollah, fought the Israelis to a stop, inflicting high casualties in the process.

Apologists for the GOI and IDF have argued that Hezbollah did not fight fair. That the Party of God trigger pullers and mortar humpers concealed themselves in the midst of civilian populations so the Israelis had to pull their punch. Many of the same commentators aver that the international media so wrongly portrayed the IDF that Hezbollah had a public relations victory even though the IDF had defeated the terrorists in the field.

There is no doubt that Hezbollah fought very well. For the first time since Jordan's Arab Legion back in the days of Glubb Pasha has an Arab force fought so well in conventional combat. The Party of God fighters inflicted more casualties for the losses sustained than any of the conventional Arab armies in any of the many wars they have waged against Israel.

In their use of terrain, use of supporting and indirect fires as well as their willingness to stand, fight, and hold territory Hezbollah troops showed themselves to be better than the Iraqis in either 1991 or 2003. Overall, except in a few areas such as maneuvering separate forces over distance, the much maligned terrorists of Allah performed at least as well as the conventional Arab armies over the past half century.

Comes now a pair of Deep Thinkers at the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute with a lengthy paper dissecting the 2006 IDF debacle with a particular focus on the skills, strengths, and weaknesses of Hezbollah. The study contains no surprises for anyone who followed the exercise two plus years ago with a close and critical eye.

The intention of the authors seems to be that of giving comfort to those in the American defense community who oppose proposals to reconfigure US ground combat forces for maximum effectiveness in asymmetrical conflicts, those of interventionary operations including counter insurgency and peace keeping. The writers of this analysis seem to be of the view that the Army and Marine Corps have taken the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan too much to heart and as a result they will not be able to fight opponents of greater conventional warfare abilities including non-state actors such as Hezbollah.

There is no argument concerning the initial poor performance of our ground combat forces following the misleadingly successful invasion of Iraq. The same might be said of Afghanistan except for the reality that failure following seeming victory was assured by the "mission leap" and insufficient manpower dictated by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his superiors in the neocon ninnie riddled administration.

The Army in particular, but the Marine Corps as well, had been drinking too long of the mythic waters of conventional war. Wide sweeping armored maneuvers and amphibious operations such as those undertaken or planned in the 1991 Gulf War were the standard not simply the Ideal. Even without the Crimson Tide pawing the ground eager to race through the Fulda Gap, the wet dreams of senior American commanders were those of conventional firepower, movement, and logistics heavy war.

The unspoken mantra of most in senior billets was, "No More Vietnams!"

This is the height of irony since the ground combat forces of the United States demonstrated very high competence in fighting the "mixed state" war which developed in South Vietnam between 1964 and 1967. While the American doctrine of "shoot, move, communicate" so as "to find, fix, and destroy the enemy" was not sufficient to assure victory in the overall conflict of political wills, it was necessary to defeat the enemy in the field.

Defeating the enemy in the field was precisely what the US forces did. Time after bloody time. If the North Vietnamese Army (PAVN) or Viet Cong main force units stood and fought in place, the Americans won. That this was irrelevant ultimately is not important in the present context.

What is relevant is that the PAVN and VC main force units were better in conventional and semi-conventional operations than Hezbollah during the 2006 operation. In all respects PAVN and VC main force formations were very, very good. However, the firepower, movement, and logistics heavy US forces were better--much, much better. At the conventional end of the mixed state spectrum in Vietnam, the US was the ass kicker of the century.

It was at the other end of the mixed state spectrum, the end where psyops, civil affairs, presence oriented patrolling, stability enhancement operations, and assorted not-very-nice special operations rule, that the US forces were not as good. It was at this end of the spectrum, the end where politics, psychology, and constrained lethality military operations come together that the most and the greatest deficiencies of American doctrine, tactics, and operational skill can be found.

The authors of this Strategic Studies Institute study, like senior American commanders over the past several years, chose to ignore the body of experience, successful experience racked up by the US Army and Marine Corps in order to make the case that Hezbollah's competence in semi-conventional war means the US should not bias itself to the low end of asymmetrical conflict. While it is interesting to see how good Hezbollah has become at conventional operations, there is nothing new or very instructive to be gained by the exercise.

No one has proposed that US interests will be best served by turning the Army and Marine Corps into a collection of barely armed social workers and door-to-door salesmen of democracy. Rather, the suggestion has been made that wars of the next decade or two will be either totally asymmetrical or of the mixed state variety combining conventional, semi-conventional, and unconventional aspects.

The US defense establishment is already very good at breaking things and killing people. If the enemy chooses to stand and fight, they will be killed. If the enemy concentrates, it will be obliterated.

What we and our forces have only recently begun to master are the arts of unconventional war. Only recently have we relearned the lessons relevant to what must be done when the opponent does not stand and fight or concentrate in order to fight. Only recently has our doctrine rediscovered lessons learned and re-learned during our less-than-war wars of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries--including Vietnam.

While our forces have been re-mastering the requirements of successful asymmetrical warfare, the American people and government have not yet learned the single most important lesson of all asymmetrical conflicts no matter by what name they are fought. It is the same lesson which was ignored or never learned by the people and government of Israel in 2006.

The lesson?

Simple to state and hard to get a lasting grip on. All asymmetrical wars, those of peace keeping, counter insurgency, counter terrorism, humanitarian intervention, are at their root contests of political will. The political will of the two peoples involved is tested and re-tested until one or the other cracks, breaks, and evaporates.

Killing and being killed is only the means by which political will is tested. In this area the US has come up short time and time again over the past fifty plus years. It was in this area as well that the Israeli public and government came up short in 2006.

Unless and until the American people and government take a firm grip on the nature of asymmetrical warfare, the capacity of our military to fight is of little relevance.