War Related Thoughts

Hearing Israel is doing a ground offensive into Gaza, I can't help be struck by the thought: why? What are Israel's goals? They say they do not want to occupy Gaza - which is probably smart. So what do they hope to achieve? Punishment? Isn't that achieved through the air strikes? Are they trying to cripple Hamas and allow for the PA to come in and negotiate a two state solution? Highly unlikely.

If I were Israel, I would continue the decapitation strategy they used against Hamas in the 2nd Infitada. Basically, going after the entire leadership personally. Eventually, this will either persuade Hamas to negotiate a truce (a temporary two state solution) or leave them sufficiently leaderless and unorganized to grow. It will make them a losing investment for Iran and won't cause a huge amount of casualties on either side. But maybe Israel isn't able to do this.

Israel is dealing with a difficult situation. The majority of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, supports and end to the Israeli state. Hamas is the democratically elected government. Bitterness towards Israel is embedded deeply into the culture and unlike Iraq or Afghanistan where you are fighting to protect the majority against a dedicated minority, effectively, the majority of the people are your enemy. The best you can hope for is a government more moderate than the people who can through a mix of force, persuasion, and incentives, steer them in a better direction.

In Iraq, a much different approach worked for the US military. The shift from force protection to population protection completely altered the course of the war and now provides an effective model about how to fight an insurgency when a vicious minority group is trying to terrorize the majority group into submission.

In the Civil War, the Union generals were initially concerned with two things: land seizure and force protection. They would use manoeuvres to capture territory without engaging the Confederate Army. Later, the Confederates would counterattack and re-take the territory. It drove Lincoln crazy. To end the Civil War, he knew we needed to crush the Army of the Confederates. Grant and Sherman understood this and when they went on the battlefield, they tracked their enemy and engaged them, using their overwhelming numbers to beat superior tacticians into submission.