Inside Hezbollah | Party of God

[johnconroy]

edited- see my note later in the thread.

-Griselda

[Ashock]

edited

[Griselda]

edited- see my note later in the thread.

-Griselda

Hello and welcome to the Lounge. I am sorry for deleting your post, but I do have concerns about how you have chosen to come here.

First of all, you're not providing links to *articles*. Instead, you're providing links to *files* that we must download from a web site, without any way for us to verify that there is no malicious content. The site usappears to be one that allows people to post the sorts of things that they might normally send by email attachment, then link them for others to use. Well, I wouldn't open an email attachment from somebody I'd just met a few minutes before, and I don't see why I would open the equivalent of an email attachment from somebody who registered here just a few minutes before posting.

It's also generally considered bad form to post a link to something (even an article) without provding any personal input whatsoever. If you would like to discuss something here, that's fine (although you've certainly picked a hotbutton topic), but if you're not participating in the discussion yourself, then it sure looks like trolling to me.

If you are truly interested in becoming a member of this forum, then I ask that you keep my concerns in mind. Don't post links to mysterious files that you would like members to download. If there's an interesting video that you'd like to share, it would need to be hosted from a more reputable source.

If becoming a part of the community here is not what you're interested in, then I would prefer that you take the time to find somewhere that's a better fit for you in the online world.

Thanks,
Griselda

[LochnarITB]

Shouldn't the links be edited out of Ashock's post as well?:huh:

[DeeBye]

Shouldn't the links be edited out of Ashock's post as well?:huh:

Psshh, lazy damned mods :angry:

[Griselda]

Psshh, lazy damned mods :angry:

I sent Ash a PM mentioning this when I edited the original post.

Distrustful regs. :P

[DeeBye]

Distrustful regs. :P

You act all sanctimonious wrapped in your silk and diamond-encrusted "ADMIN STATUS", but I'm onto you. I'm sure you have it pretty sweet in your corner of Bolty's downtown office building. I bet that you have a corner office, right? Don't even try to deny it. What was your Christmas bonus last year - $10k, $20k? You don't even login to the forums for less than $150/hour right?

I BET YOU SLEPT REALLY WELL ON YOUR PILE OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS LAST NIGHT!

Time and time again, you pass off the problems with this website onto the little guy. Sheesh, do you really expect Ashock to do your job for you, while you get paid your gazillion bucks while Ashock gets nothing?!? And then you have the nerve to say that it's all his fault? I'm absolutely floored.

As for the term "regs", I don't like it. I can just imagine you, Bolty, Occhi, Tal, and the rest of the hierarchy sitting around a smoke-filled room in some exclusive club's backroom laughing about the term "regs". You guys all think it means "suckers". Don't even try to deny it. I bet Mavfin owns the place too, from the shadows.

I fully expect this post to be moderated with extreme prujudice. In fact, I bet that seconds after I hit the "add reply" button Bolty will send his hit squad after me. I may not make it through the night.

We need to rise up against this oppressive moderating staff. I've fired the first shot and it will likely get me killed in my sleep. I've accepted my fate. I just hope that my message is visible to at least a few people before I am silenced.

If you quote this message, you are doomed.

edit; Oh crap, someone is knocking at my door

[Munkay]

You act all sanctimonious wrapped in your silk and diamond-encrusted "ADMIN STATUS", but I'm onto you. I'm sure you have it pretty sweet in your corner of Bolty's downtown office building. I bet that you have a corner office, right? Don't even try to deny it. What was your Christmas bonus last year - $10k, $20k? You don't even login to the forums for less than $150/hour right?

I BET YOU SLEPT REALLY WELL ON YOUR PILE OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS LAST NIGHT!

Time and time again, you pass off the problems with this website onto the little guy. Sheesh, do you really expect Ashock to do your job for you, while you get paid your gazillion bucks while Ashock gets nothing?!? And then you have the nerve to say that it's all his fault? I'm absolutely floored.

As for the term "regs", I don't like it. I can just imagine you, Bolty, Occhi, Tal, and the rest of the hierarchy sitting around a smoke-filled room in some exclusive club's backroom laughing about the term "regs". You guys all think it means "suckers". Don't even try to deny it. I bet Mavfin owns the place too, from the shadows.

I fully expect this post to be moderated with extreme prujudice. In fact, I bet that seconds after I hit the "add reply" button Bolty will send his hit squad after me. I may not make it through the night.

We need to rise up against this oppressive moderating staff. I've fired the first shot and it will likely get me killed in my sleep. I've accepted my fate. I just hope that my message is visible to at least a few people before I am silenced.

If you quote this message, you are doomed.

Long live the revolution!

:P

[Thecla]

I sent Ash a PM mentioning this when I edited the original post.

Actually, any post of Ashock's that includes the phrase "friendly warning" (nevermind "unfriendly warning") should probably just be deleted in its entirety. Should be easy to do automatically in fact:

grep "Ashock" "friendly warning" | rm *.*

There have certainly been a couple of doozies recently when it comes to introductory posts.

[Ashock]

Actually, any post of Ashock's that includes the phrase "friendly warning" (nevermind "unfriendly warning") should probably just be deleted in its entirety. Should be easy to do automatically in fact:

grep "Ashock" "friendly warning" | rm *.*

There have certainly been a couple of doozies recently when it comes to introductory posts.

LOL


-A


ps. Griz, I read your PM just today. It's all good.

[Rinnhart]

Awww, I was hoping there'd be a Lurker thread on the war, finally. Damn you, bot man, for dashing my hopes and dreams.

[Occhidiangela]

Awww, I was hoping there'd be a Lurker thread on the war, finally.

Feel free to start one, particularly if you think you have a PoV worth sharing on that topic. Given that it is inundating us all from the 24/7 media, I suspect you'll get some play.

Occhi

[Assur]

Awww, I was hoping there'd be a Lurker thread on the war, finally. Damn you, bot man, for dashing my hopes and dreams.

The war is over. You lost. The only interesting question is, can you salvage anything?

Unrealshadow.... is that you?

[Occhidiangela]

I think the below article alludes to what Mr Conroy was referring to. I post it here, risking ridicule, complaint of trolling or posting flame bait, and editing, to point out that the Hezbollah understand the message that escaped Conan until near the end of the film Conan the Barbarian (starring Ahnold and James Earl Jones.)

It is the Riddle of Steel. A related aphorism on war is Napoleon's "The moral is to the physical as three is to one."

I raise this due to the nature of Computer and Video Gaming, the province of our readership, with its plethora of War Games. This hobby of "faux war as a recreation" is one I've had since about age 7, when I first played Stratego. It holds an inherently myopic focus on attrition warfare combat models; items, machines, and tools as the means to the ends of war games; and has yet to overcome the sheer difficulty of harnessing the cybernetic, mental, and moral aspect of warfare. Curiously, the Army's combat training systems tended to suffer from the same sort of attrition tunnel vision, though a lot of work is has been, and is being, done at the JRTC and NTC (Big Army Live Training Ranges) to introduce far more of the human element into training, and measuring mission success.

The emphasis on combat, conflict, struggle, war, mission and goal achievement, competition, etcetera, unfortunately presents a false solution set to war. It focuses on the battlefield, which is but one of four key areas of competition. Military, Economic, Diplomatic, and Information (Propaganda and Symbolic) power are a standard set of tools used to consider how effectively one harnesses a nation's, or other political entiy's, capacity to pursue its aims, be they by war or other means. Games like Civ IV do a better job at modeling the nuances of people and wetware issues, but I don't see them as being industry leaders.

A pity.

It seems to me that the Israelis in the present Lebanon fracas -- to a different extent than the American political leadership in Iraq -- have fallen into the mental trap of an FPS, of WoW raid style thinking, of attrition and physical warfare as a solution to a problem. For reasons that puzzle me, Mr Ohlmert's team have been unable to see past the dust of the battlefield to pursue a short term, and possibley long term, path to resolving their border security problem. (No, it's not easy.) That path requires harnessing the other three elements of national power -- economy, diplomatic craft, and information/propaganda -- more successfully in their bid to supress the dangerous guerilla force in Southern Lebanon. This is a force, a political entity, that has outsmarted Israel by goading them into an escalation. The real loser is pretty much everyone else in Lebanon in the short term. No "winner" yet, and I don't think there will be a lot of laurels passed around when a cease fire is arranged.

As of today's writing, the political and propaganda successes are generally in Hezbollah's favor, economic power is not on the table yet, and the iron mongery is of undetermined success or failure in achieving various aims. Turning a body snatch and some rocket attacks into an assault on Lebanon as a whole was probably not envisioned by Hezbollah as a likely outcome, but I suspect it was a hoped for political outcome in Teheran. That it has been soundly endorsed in Washington suggests to me that FPS 'R Us is alive and well inside the Beltway.

For Rinnhart, and for anyone else interested in a discussion of this latest real world manifestation of what we entertain ourselves with in video game models, consider the Zergs -- or are they the protoss, Excutor? Antaro Adun! -- who have harnessed the political will of some Lebanese Shia, who have been resourced by Iran, and who are fighting Fourth Generation Warfare, while the Israelis pursue Third Generation warfare per the Wermacht, as their means to an end.

That last is not a Godwin reference, it is based on the fact that the Israeli Army was, and apparently still is, modeled on the best combined arms, and command and control, example in the world at the time of its birth: the Wermacht. Of course, some improvements in method over the past six decades have been made, just as the US Army has improved its methods over time.
This Article
Boston Globe August 1, 2006 Pg. 1
Devotion And Discipline Fuel Hezbollah's Fight
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff

BINT JBAIL, Lebanon -- The Hezbollah fighter who called himself Hussein foraged yesterday in the wreckage of a hilltop home where just a week ago his unit had fought with an Israeli assault force in one of the deadliest clashes of the nearly three-week-old war.

Triumphantly, he hoisted a pair of Israeli night-vision goggles from the rubble.

``These are precious," Hussein said. ``We don't have much night-vision."

Hussein and another Hezbollah commander, Hamid, offered a rare glimpse yesterday into the Shi'ite militia's operations to a few reporters at the battleground of Bint Jbail, which has fast risen to the status of myth among Hezbollah's followers.

It was here, a week ago, that Hezbollah fighters stopped several Israeli tanks and turned back an Israeli ground advance that sought to rout them from this strategic Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon. Israeli soldiers have given vivid accounts of hand-to-hand combat, sneak ambushes, and fighters who sprang from a network of tunnels to surprise the Israelis.

The two Hezbollah fighters described a discipline modeled on the Viet Cong, in which fighters live off the land, scavenge vegetables and canned food, and do battle in autonomous groups with little need for command supervision.

Hussein and Hamid credited their devotion to Islam for their success against the Israelis, but they described a meticulous blueprint for guerrilla warfare built around a carefully selected force, whose members begin training at age 14.

Hezbollah means ``Party of God," and it is considered a terrorist group by the United States. During the conflict, it has fired several thousand rockets into Israel and engaged in ground combat with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

The two fighters saw each other for the first time in 20 days yesterday, kissing each other on the head and shoulders after a chance meeting outside a mosque in downtown Bint Jbail, a town of 30,000 located two miles north of the border with Israel.

The downtown itself was an apocalyptic landscape. In the winding streets of the old city -- recently a vibrant downtown market where villagers from the entire region came to shop -- not a single home or shop had escaped shelling or bombing. Entire blocks of dwellings had collapsed onto the street, exposing the traces of life still standing -- a bed frame, half a wall with a family portrait, the rear stockroom of a shoe shop.

A shell casing, labeled with Hebrew print, lay in the middle of the street.

The Hezbollah fighters took advantage of yesterday's partial cease-fire to rest, stockpile supplies, plan for battles, and gather intelligence from the Bint Jbail battlefield.

Hussein, 42, speaking in fluent English, described his role as ``battlefield support," which he said includes firing artillery and managing logistics for the fighters. Hamid, 30, declined to describe his combat role, but he said he was senior to Hussein. Their names were nicknames, the two said; they would give no personal details that could allow them to be identified.

Hamid said two of his brothers were killed in a night-long battle in one neighborhood a week ago.

According to the men's account, Israeli soldiers infiltrated and eventually took up positions in a large house on Tel Masoud, the high ground overlooking Bint Jbail from the west. The two-story house was surrounded by a tomato patch and a high wall.

``Immediately, we started to attack," Hussein said. The Hezbollah fighters had Kalashnikov machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and a few antitank missiles, he said, to confront the heavily armed Israelis and their armored vehicles.

But Hussein said their fervor made Hezbollah a fair match for the Israelis.

``This is the strategy of Hezbollah. It is the matter that we are not afraid of death," Hussein said. ``This is the center of the training of the fighter, to make him unafraid of death, so you prefer to die rather than live humiliated."

Fighters communicated by hand-held radio, ordering strikes from Hezbollah mortar crews, Hussein said. He estimates that about 35 Israeli soldiers and 30 Hezbollah militiamen took part in the battle for the hilltop. Hezbollah attacked, he said, before Israel had time to send in more soldiers.

According to the two men, six Israelis were killed in the fight on Tel Masoud hill. Israel has said at least eight soldiers died in fighting around Bint Jbail. The Hezbollah fighters said they knew of four Hezbollah deaths from the clash, but said they didn't know the total death toll from their side.

As they roamed over the hilltop of Tel Masoud, the two men pointed out the shell casings from a gunfight; hundreds of cartridges were scattered over the ground, narrower ones from Hezbollah's Kalashnikovs, and fatter casings from Israeli M-16s.

Hamid picked up a small unexploded Israeli mortar on the road leading up to the house. Inside the walls of the position, known locally as ``The Castle," Hussein picked three tomatoes off a vine and offered them around.

``This is how we eat," he said.

After a day of fighting, they said, the Israelis withdrew from the house, and then bombed it to destroy any equipment they left behind.

Constant chatter from a Hezbollah control room in the Bint Jbail sector came from the men's radios. At one point, the radio operator said an Israeli helicopter had been spotted heading toward Tel Masoud. The fighters decided it was time to leave.

``We will come back later to look for more," Hussein said, grinning as he examined the still-functional Israeli night-vision goggles.

``When we show these on television, all the people will be happy," Hamid said. ``This is our prize, the people's happiness."

Hezbollah's tactical goal in the broader war with Israel, Hussein said, is to inflict maximum casualties on Israelis, and to capture soldiers dead or alive to trade for Hezbollah prisoners held in Israeli jails.

``If we captured an Israeli soldier, we wouldn't announce it until we had him in Beirut in a safe place," Hussein said.

The battlefield fighters said they felt confident after repelling the Israeli ground advance.

``We buried the Israelis. They ran like rats," Hussein said. He pointed to a valley below Tel Masoud. ``We launch rockets from there," he said.

Added Hamid: ``At the moment we are winning. We have many cards we have not yet played. By the grace of God, we will eat them on the battlefield."

Only experienced fighters are allowed into front-line combat, Hussein said. Children are trained from a young age even if they aren't selected as Hezbollah fighters. ``How do you think our children are raised? To fight the Israelis. My son is 13 years old and knows how to fire a mortar."

Yesterday afternoon, downtown below Tel Masoud, Hussein was praying alone in a mosque whose rear wall had been blasted away by a shell, giving a view of the battleground above.

The fighter was by turns angry, mystical, and emotional. One day, he said, he gave his only food, a can of tuna, to a dog so hungry that its tongue was hanging contorted from its mouth.

``If I showed mercy on the dog, maybe God would show mercy on me," he said.

After scouring the battleground, Hussein returned with journalists to the hospital at the edge of Bint Jbail to visit friends. He put his head in his hands and started to weep.

``I'm not crying for the fighters. The fighters can handle it. I'm crying for the ordinary people," Hussein said.

I welcome your comments.

Note: For discussions on Third Generation Warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare, I recommend the writings of William Lind, to include his recent critique of the US Army's failure to fully adapt to Fourth Generarion Warfare. (Yet.) To get a glimpse of some aspects of Fourth Generation Warfare in action, I suggest Robert Kaplan's "Iimperial Grunts."

Occhi

[kandrathe]

...
It seems to me that the Israelis in the present Lebanon fracas -- to a different extent than the American political leadership in Iraq -- have fallen into the mental trap of an FPS, of WoW raid style thinking, of attrition and physical warfare as a solution to a problem. For reasons that puzzle me, Mr Ohlmert's team have been unable to see past the dust of the battlefield to pursue a short term, and possibley long term, path to resolving their border security problem. (No, it's not easy.)
...

I always view the Isreali response to conflict from the view point of "An eye for an eye". To me it always seems that the biggest Isreali weakness is that they will always respond in kind to any attack with at least an equal if not bigger response. If anyone gives them a punch in the nose, no matter what the consequences or how inappropriate the response might seem you can bank on them to retaliate quickly and in kind. So, the Sun Tzu in me respects their strength of conviction, but not their weakness of predictability.

Whereas, the USA seems to be somewhat shizophrenic and do the "bully thing" or the "ignore them and walk away" thing depending on the mood of the party in charge. Lately it's been more "Give me your lunch money or I'll beat you up after the Security Council meeting." Maybe that is the scary part about the USA, in that the only thing you can really count on is that for solving problems eventually we get around to using that one big hammer in our tool chest.

Back on topic; I don't quite understand the world press's position of watching unfazed for years as Hezzbollah attacked/attacks Isreal with rockets daily, but when Isreal responds and tries to bomb the rocket launch locations they start parading human tragedy of the displaced and dead "civilians" in front of cameras. I'm not buying that propaganda. Just who owns the media that they want to spin it that way anyway?

If Quebec seperatists made repeated raids south from Thunder Bay killing people, and the US told Canada to do something about it and they whined "Oh, those hosers are so uncontrollable... we can't stop them Frenchies." Would we be justified in going after them? Yer' darned tootin' we would.

It kind of reminds me of when I was very young and lived in the city, this dog used to walk down the road and take a dump on our lawn every day, until my mom got fed up with it one day and blasted it in the rump with bird shot (she being a very good shot). From that day on, that dog crossed to the other side of the road before passing our house.

Or, this bully that used to pick on me in high school. Every day for three months he would go out of his way to do something to tick me off, until that one day when I had enough and instead of turning the other cheek as I was taught, decided to break his ribs with a baseball bat. We avoided each other fine after that day. When I saw him at our 10 year class reunion he apologized for being such a jerk. I accepted and bought him a beer.

Hezzbollah wants/needs a middle east war in order to further their cause of evicting Isreal, so the correct response from Isreal should have been a massive extremely painful blow to Hezzbollah over about a week, followed by an immediate workable offer to deal with the legitimate Lebonese Government for peace. With a caveat that, if the uncontrollable Hezzbollah militia launches more rockets at Isreal, they will bomb any valuable infrastructure in south Lebanon until the rockets stop.

[Rinnhart]

The war is over. You lost. The only interesting question is, can you salvage anything?

What?

Unrealshadow.... is that you?

Oh, #$%& you. No.

[eppie]

For reasons that puzzle me, Mr Ohlmert's team have been unable to see past the dust of the battlefield to pursue a short term, and possibley long term, path to resolving their border security problem.
Occhi

As I said before about the 'war on terror' I think these political leaders have no interest in ending this conflict.

I don't think Ohlmert is stupid, I also don't think Bush (well at least the people that tell him what to do) is (are) stupid. I think they very well know the risks....I think therefor that they have meant it like this.

In the US/Iraq thing. You cannot tell me that the neocons are actualy interested in bringing democracy to the world. As long as they can use taxpayers money to keep their own businesses running it is fine with them.


@kandrathe. Those rockets that hezbollah apparantly are firing for a long time everyday on Israel. Are not Israels biggest problems. I also don't see how the actions Israel is unertaking now will help in any way to stop these attacks. I mean you don't make friends when you bomb peoples houses.

Same goes for Hezbollah...I mean they cannot seriously think that shooting rockets at Israel will make them leave the country, or will make Israel change their minds.

In my opinion teh mistake people always make in discussions about this subject is that the wrongly think that those governments actually care about their people.

[Drasca]

Same goes for Hezbollah...I mean they cannot seriously think that shooting rockets at Israel will make them leave the country, or will make Israel change their minds.

I'd agree that's not what they think. However, war is as much in the minds of its battlefield commanders and off-battle supporters as it is fought on the ground. Will it change the israeli minds? Probably not. That's not what I think hezbollah would be concerned with. Every minor victory becomes political propanda to further support from your people. This kind of combined military-social tactic is not new, but can be very effective.

Buildings can be rebuilt, equipment can be replaced, but winning the hearts and minds of around you, your enemies and surrounding your enemies is (arguably) the ultimate victory. Without that, war cannot be sustained.

That's one real purpose of doing 'random' attacks they can 'win'. At least, that's how I'd see it.

Edit: Link to Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts article Oct 2005 at The Atlantic Monthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200510/kapl...-special-forces

Can't help but think sun tzu, best kind of victory is winning without (actual direct) battle, when Kaplan says,

how to win without firing a shot

[Occhidiangela]

Edit: Link to Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts article Oct 2005 at The Atlantic Monthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200510/kapl...-special-forces

Can't help but think sun tzu, best kind of victory is winning without (actual direct) battle, when Kaplan says,

Not every situation lends itself to "the acme of Skill" and thus a win without going to war. METT-T applies in more endeavors than a battlefield.

The "win without shooting" takes years of setting the pre conditions by other means to achieve a success: other means typically being espionage, blackmail, economic measures, diplomacy, propaganda, etc. It also inlcudes having a mailed fist handy if the threat of one is needed to back up other measures.

Occhi

[kandrathe]

...
Buildings can be rebuilt, equipment can be replaced, but winning the hearts and minds of around you, your enemies and surrounding your enemies is (arguably) the ultimate victory. Without that, war cannot be sustained.
...

I think that might be the crux of it. Hezzbollah gains adherents and thereby political power by showing "success" which can be the form of a rocket killing Isreali's in Haifa, or the Isreali military response to rockets. Hezzbollah is striking their political blows against the legitimate government in Beirut, by attacking Isreal.