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Regardless of the technological superiority or man-for-man military superiority, numbers win. Israel is arguably the best military on earth, but swamped with human waves, they may fare no better than Saddam did against the Iranians.
The Sherman tank was called the ronson lighter because it lit up every time. The tactical paradigm against the Panther tank was that five Shermans were needed against one Panther. We had that many, and it worked. Now that our recklessness has inflamed virtually all of the Muslim world, we and our allies are due to reap the evil harvest.
By any measure, Israel got its nose bloodied in this knee-jerk mistake. The Hezbollah fighters lost many fighters, but they caused many casualties and didn't give much ground.
What should Israel have done in a situation like this? I can't really say that they overreacted; what does one do when one's citizens are captured?
The chilling reality of this is that the best military on earth couldn't dislodge an unofficial group of military irregulars. This emboldens a nobody like Bashar Assad to puff up and demand the return of the Golan Heights. (Truly, he is as much of a hereditary nobody as George W. Bush, who also thirsts to upstage his daddy.)
It didn't work. The assault was a failure. Even if the IDF was able to inflict casualties at a 10:1 or better ratio, it doesn't matter: numbers count. Israel's enemies outnumber them by much more than this.
Numbers win, and Israel is shockingly outnumbered. Now that this sloppy episode is over for the moment, the ample adversaries see an opening.
Backing back a bit and looking at the strategic situation, it's obvious: we're hanging out on a limb. Supplying our troops in Iraq can only come through a few avenues: Turkey (which has such a bee in its bonnet about the Kurds that it won't let us supply through there any more than it did when it wouldn't allow us transit in March '03), the Persian Gulf (which can EASILY be cut off if the Iranians get serious), through Jordan (which simply doesn't have the road infrastructure to fill the need) and Saudi Arabia (which is a powder keg that's also without infrastructure). At this point, virtually everything comes through the Persian Gulf. Not fun.
This was a huge mistake that will embolden many.
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