August 05, 2006

BEWARE THE WAR PUNDITS

        Horsefeathers has noticed that stock market gurus always leave an escape hatch when predicting the future. They may, for example, urge that gold stocks be purchased to hedge against any number of possible disasters, but they don't say when those disasters will arrive. When gold prices go down for 15 years they simply push their predictions further ahead. Then when gold turns around, even though their followers have lost their shirts over 15 years, they announce that they were right all along.
        Could it be that all pundits and prognosticators are the same? They really have no clue about the future and mask that with bold pronouncements which they then quickly forget? The mainstream media and the blogosphere were filled with authoritative assessments of Israel's war blunders, less than a week into it. They argued the war was already lost. We were told President Bush was 'disappointed' by the supposed failures of the IDF. There was an interesting aspect of the criticism: it was most vehement from ex-infantry men who seemed to hold some kind of personal grudge against the air force and against the new technologies of war. They saw themselves as defenders of the grunts, the individual soldier, the heart and soul of the armed forces. They are romantics, nostalgic for the days when hundreds of thousands of ground troops took huge casualties to gain control of the Pacific islands. The Ralph Peters types have been carrying on intellectual warfare against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ever since he began modernizing and streamlining our military. Such critics are military Luddites, threatened by the advent of high technology warfare. They view this change as a direct threat to their sense of themselves, as well as their fiefdoms, and respond accordingly. By the intensity of their reaction you would think Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for gay marriage, not for a more agile military to fight the wars of the 21st century. Now here came the IDF and IAF utilizing air force assets for 3 weeks before launching full scale ground operations. The critics were in full cry, as if their calls for immediate massive ground invasion of Lebanon were self evidently correct. It seems now that the Hezbollah were preparing for just such a frontal invasion, digging in deeply to defensive positions from which they could inflict huge casualties. Instead, the IDF began a steadily escalating air assault designed to cut their command and control, cut resupply, and force the men in the tunnels to wonder when the next payload would turn those tunnels into tombs. Lo and behold, suddenly the maximum leader, Nasrallah is begging for a cease fire(see MEMRI). Meanwhile the critics are backtracking. Ralph Peters is saying that finally, at long last, the IDF has come around to using land forces. Nice try Ralph. And Debkafile now says: "...In the middle of the fourth week of the Lebanon War, the tide began to turn in Israel’s favor. DEBKAfile’s military sources report the battlefield finally responded to the effect of Israel’s air might, its tank columns, the pounding by mobile artillery and naval craft and its repeated armored infantry assaults..."
        One other criticism we heard over and over in the first days of the war: Israeli intelligence was disastrously wrong about the danger. But if intelligence was so poor, how come the IDF has been able to pull off a number of daring and successful commando raids deep into entrenched Hezbo positions, even into a single apartment in a 16 story building?
       Perhaps a little more modesty and self awareness by the gurus is in order. Remember the 'fog of war'? Israel now seems well on the way to delivering a devastating blow to Hezbollah, while sending a signal to Iran and Syria that they are easily within reach of the long and fatal arm of the IDF. Go get 'em, IDF!!