Blackfive - The Future Strategy

BF has some good stuff. One of them being a video of a graduation speech by a LT Colonel.


The other one is a strategic intel analysis by Grim, who was a Marine intel officer.

Some highlights here.

But we won't do another Fallujah-style campaign in al Anbar. When it is time to move again against al Anbar province, Iraq's central government will do it themselves. They now have the capability to close the western frontier with the forts, and hold those forts against even serious infantry attacks. This will be a hammer-and-anvil movement, of the sort we regularly employed in Vietnam, but for keeps. Sunni tribes will be evicted and allowed to withdraw -- forever -- to Jordan or Syria, or destroyed, as the Central government prefers.

There will be no partition of Iraq. The Sunnis will comply, or leave, or be destroyed. We have given them the tools, and I see no reason to believe the government of Iraq would refrain from using those tools. I wouldn't, humane though I hope to be. It would save lives in the long run.

[...]
Prognosis:

I suspect that we will one day speak of the war in Iraq the way we speak of the Spanish Civil War -- that is, rarely by comparison to the greater war that followed it. Peace is not in the cards. Things are going to get worse. Our enemies are glad to employ terrorists, who will try to bring the war to our homes. The wise man will prepare his sword, and the arm that may wield it.

Here's a Strategy article about Hizbollah

But going to war with Israel, as any historian of Arab-Israeli relations can tell you, is a losing proposition. The Israelis are famously not stupid, and take any attack on them as a threat to their very existence. These are not the kind of people you want to fight a war with. But Hizbollah thought they had no other choice (there weren't even many options), and now has to stick it out and hope for the best. Hope won't do them much good. While the Hizbollah rocket arsenal is a new touch, it's not like the Israelis have not dealt with new terrorist tricks before. While journalists are keen to figure out what the Israelis are up to, many of the Israeli counter-terror innovations only work if they are kept under wraps for as long as possible. Pundits love this, because they can spout whatever they want, secure in the knowledge that few people will remember that they were way off the mark.

But if you pay close attention, you can figure out who is going to win, and how they are going to do it. The Israelis are hitting Hizbollah where they are vulnerable, but are not broadcasting the target list ahead of time, for obvious reasons. Just like a few years ago, months of seemingly ineffective efforts will suddenly produce results. That has happened before, terrorist victories have not.

I'm wondering whether those leaflets dropped on Lebanese civilian areas to warn them to get out, is not a warning to the terroists as to what is on the Israeli hit list.

Israel pulled out without victory once, because of fatigue and casualty losses. Hizbollah probably thinks it can repeat this feat while gaining power and Iranian backing. Victory is a murky thing. In war, often times you think you've won, and the enemy sends in his reserves.