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What would be a real message to the Middle East is if the much-vaunted Israeli army actually moves into Gaza and destroys Hamas with ground troops. Not a chevauchee where they go into one part of Gaza, blow things up and leave whereupon Hamas returns, then do it again to another part of Gaza. But if they actually attack and keep attacking until they defeat Hamas, take all weapons caches, clear out the tunnels, defeat the fighting men, then they actually win.
All this precision-strike stuff is very pretty and impressive but it doesn't actually do anything by itself. You can blow up Hamas leader A and Hamas leader B will replace him. You can blow up Osama Bin Laden and there's basically no effect. Al Qaeda trundles on, they're still doing their thing. Blow up Trump and nothing would happen, they'd just replace him. A state or any statelike entity cannot be defeated from the top down, only from the bottom-up by destroying their soldiers and their revenue sources, their territorial control.
This is why Israel remains in 'small-dog' territory, they don't seem to have this capability or at least they aren't using it when it's the sole solution to their military-political problem. All the exo-atmospheric interceptions and fancy long-range strike in the world cannot substitute for ground combat power like Ukraine or Russia have, where they take and actually hold territory after capturing it. Precision strikes are only
Israel is in a very dangerous position, doubling down on fear tactics and intimidation while lacking the actual power/will to win. I sense a 'oh but they could go in and blow up hamas and keep attacking till they win but the real plan is to keep skirmishing until the Palestinian population is reduced by starvation, bombing or migration thus letting them annex Gaza' argument and that may be the strategy but it's not politically workable. They can't blow up all the humanitarian aid lest they lose overseas support. If they get sanctioned, then Israel is sure to lose and may even collapse entirely. Small, high-tech economies require overseas market access. Sanctionproofing is impossible for such a small country.
All the stalling tactics and assassinations in the world cannot bypass the basic logic of war, you have to destroy the enemy's ability to resist, not blow up the negotiators. And it's especially dumb against a population of notorious bravery. Arabs might often be poorly led, uncoordinated and generally inferior to European troops in combat power but the guys who popularized suicide bombing as a military tactic should not be considered cowardly!
This seems factually untrue. Over the GWOT the US dismantled Al Qaeda and related groups to the extent that they seemed unable to mount meaningful strikes against the US afterwards.
The US weakened Al Qaeda by going after the rank and file, hammering away at them and blocking terror attacks with security. Osama Bin Laden was not key to the organization and his death had no significant affect on their capabilities. Likewise with ISIS. Killing Al-Baghdadi didn't have much effect, it was defeating their troops in their field that matters.
My understanding is that it wasn’t just rank and file, it was mid level command structure.
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Does the normal calculus apply to Israel? Yes, it's a small country both geographically and population-wise, but it's behaving like one with a deep arsenal. Does Israeli leadership perceive the US as a backstop, allowing them to take military risks no country its size ought to be able to take? I am uncomfortable about the degree to which US politicians praise Israel (see https://instagram.com/reel/DKjnZmtPcGE/), and it seems like Israel has every reason to believe that when push came to shove, they can use the US military to win.
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