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Now
WHEN THE Israeli government decided,
in the space of a few hours, to start the Second Lebanon War,
it did not have any plan.
When the Chief-of-Staff urged
the cabinet to start the war, he did not submit any plan.
This was disclosed this week
by a military investigation committee.
That is shocking.
A plan is not an optional extra,
something nice you can do without. A war without a plan is like
a human body without a spinal column. Would anyone think of building
a house without a plan? To put up a bridge? To produce a car?
To hold a conference? After all, unlike a house, a bridge, a
car or a conference, a war is supposed to kill people. Its very
essence is killing and destroying.
Almost in every case, to initiate
a war is a crime. To start such a war without a plan and proper
preparation is totally irresponsible - heaping crime upon crime.
* *
*
WHEN A STATE starts a war,
the sequence is - in simplistic terms - as follows:
(1) The government adopts a
clear political aim.
(2) The government deliberates
whether this aim can be achieved by war - after it comes to the
conclusion that it cannot be achieved by other means.
From this point on, the emphasis
moves from the political to the military leadership. Its duty
is:
(3) To draw up a strategic
plan for attaining the aim decided upon by the government.
(4) To translate the strategic
plan into a tactical plan. Among others: to decide what forces
are needed, which forces will be employed, what is the target
of each force and within which time it must achieve it, as well
as to foresee possible moves by the other side.
(5) To prepare the forces for
their tasks, in accordance with their training and equipment.
A wise government will also
think about the situation it would like to have after the war,
and will instruct the military to take this into consideration
while planning their operations.
Now it appears that nothing
of this sort happened. There was no clearly defined war aim,
there was no political or military plan, there were no clear
objectives for the troops and they were not prepared for the
tasks they were given. Without a central plan, nothing of these
was even possible.
A war without a plan is no
war at all, but an adventure. A government that starts a war
without a plan is no government at all, but a bunch of politicians.
A General Staff that goes to war without a plan is no General
Staff at all, but a group of generals.
THE WAY events developed, according
to the inquiry committees, was like this: the government decided
on the war in a hurry, within a few hours, without defining any
aim.
In the following days, several
war aims were thrown around. They followed each other in quick
succession and contradicted each other in many ways. That by
itself is a recipe for disaster: every aim demands its own methods
and means, which may be quite different from those demanded by
another.
Among the aims that were announced:
the release of the two captured soldiers, the destruction of
Hizbullah, the elimination of the arsenal of missiles in South
Lebanon, the pushing of Hizbullah away from the border, and more.
Beyond that there was a general desire to have a Lebanese government
that was completely subservient to American and Israeli interests.
If competent army officers
had been instructed to draw up a plan for each of these aims,
they would soon have arrived at the conclusion that all of them
were unattainable by military means, certainly not under the
circumstances.
The idea that the two prisoners
could be liberated by war is manifestly ridiculous. Like going
after a mosquito with a sledgehammer. The proper means is diplomacy.
Perhaps somebody would have suggested capturing some Hizbullah
commanders in order to facilitate an exchange of prisoners. Anything
- except a war.
The destruction of Hizbullah
by a necessarily limited war was impossible, as should have been
clear from the beginning. This is a guerilla force that is part
of a political movement which is deeply rooted in Lebanese reality
(as can be seen these days on any television screen). No guerilla
movement can be destroyed by a regular army, and certainly not
in one single stroke and within days or weeks.
The elimination of the missile
arsenal? If the army command had sat down to elaborate a military
plan, they would have realized that aerial bombardment can achieve
this only in part. A complete destruction would have demanded
the occupation of all of South Lebanon, well beyond the Litani
River. During that time, a large part of Israel would have been
exposed to the missiles, without the population being prepared
for it. If that conclusion had been presented to the government,
would it have taken the decision it took?
The pushing of Hizbullah from
the border by a few kilometers north is not a proper war aim.
Starting a war for that purpose, leading to the killing of masses
of people and destroying whole neighborhoods and villages, would
have meant frivolity where serious deliberation was required
.
But the government did not
have to go into such deliberations. Since It did not define any
clear aim, it did not demand nor receive any military plan.
* *
*
IF THE recklessness of the
political leadership was scandalous, the recklessness of the
military leadership was doubly so.
The army command went to war
without any clearly defined aim and without any plan. There were
some plans that had been prepared and exercised beforehand, without
any specific political aim in mind, but they were ignored and
abandoned as the war started. After all, who needs a plan? Since
when do Israelis plan? Israelis improvise, and are proud of it.
So they improvised. The Chief-of-Staff,
an Air Force general, decided that it was sufficient to bomb:
if enough civilians were killed and enough houses, roads and
bridges destroyed, the Lebanese people would go down on its knees
and do whatever the Israeli government commanded.
When this failed (as should
have been foreseen) and most Lebanese of all communities rallied
behind Hizbullah, The C-o-C realized that there was no avoiding
ground operations. Since there was no plan, he did without. Troops
were sent into Lebanon in a haphazard way, without clear objectives,
without time-tables. The same locations were occupied time and
again. The end result: the forces bit off small pieces of land
on the edges of Hizbullah territory, without any real achievement,
but with heavy losses.
It cannot be said that the
war aims were not attained. Simply, there was no war aim.
* *
*
THE WORST part was not the
lack of a plan. The worst part was that the generals did not
even notice its absence.
The investigators of the State
Comptroller disclosed last week a startling fact of utmost importance:
most members of the General Staff have never attended any of
the high command courses which are the Israeli equivalent of
a military academy.
This means that they never
learned military history and the principles of strategy. They
are military technicians, equivalent to engineering technicians
or bookkeepers. I assume that they are well versed in the technical
side of the profession: how to move forces, how to activate weapon
systems, and such. But they have not read books about military
theory and the art of war, have not studied how the leaders of
armies conducted their wars throughout the centuries, have not
become acquainted with the thoughts of the great military thinkers.
A military leader needs intuition.
Certainly. But intuition grows from by experience - his own experience,
the experience of his army and the accumulated experience of
centuries of warfare.
For example: if they had read
the books of Basil Liddell Hart, perhaps the most authoritative
military commentator of the last century, they would have learned
that the battle of David and Goliath was not a confrontation
between a boy with a primitive sling and a heavily armed and
protected giant, as it is usually presented, but quite on the
contrary, a battle between a sophisticated fighter with a modern
weapon that could kill from a distance and a cumbersome combatant
equipped with obsolescent arms.
In the Lebanon war, the role
of David was played by Hizbullah, a mobile and resourceful force,
while the Israeli army was Goliath, heavy, routine-bound, with
inappropriate weapons.
* *
*
ANYBODY WHO reads this column
regularly knows that we blew the whistle well before the war.
But our criticism then was suspect because of our opposition
to the war itself, which we considered immoral, superfluous and
senseless.
Now we have several military
inquiry committees, appointed by the chief-of-Staff himself (about
40 of them!), and they, one after another, confirm our criticism
almost word for word. Not only confirm, but add a wealth of details
that paint an even darker picture.
It is a picture of utter confusion:
improvised operations, an anarchic command structure, misunderstanding
of orders, orders that were issued, cancelled and issued again,
General Staff officers giving orders directly to subordinate
commanders bypassing the chain of command.
An army that was once one of
the best in the world, an object of study for officers in many
countries, has become an inefficient and incompetent body.
The committees do not answer
a basic question: how did this happen?
* *
*
EXCEPT FOR a few hints here
and there, the committees do not say how we got here. What has
happened to the Israeli army?
This, too, we have said many
times: the army is the victim of the occupation.
Next June, the occupation of
the Palestinian territories will "celebrate" its 40th
anniversary. There is no precedent for such a long military occupation
regime. A military occupation is by its very nature a short-term
instrument. In the course of a war, the army conquers enemy territory,
administers it until the end of the war, when its fate is decided
by a peace agreement.
No army is happy with the role
of an occupying force, knowing that this destroys it, corrupts
it from inside, damages it physically and mentally, diverts it
from its most important function and imposes on it methods that
have nothing to do with its real mission - to defend the state
in war.
With us, the occupation became,
almost from the beginning, a political instrument for the attainment
of objectives that are foreign to the function of "Defense
Forces". In theory, it is a military regime, but in practice
it is a colonial subjugation, in which the Israeli army mainly
fulfills the shameful task of an oppressive police force.
In today's army, there is no
officer on active service who remembers the Israel Defense Forces
from before the occupation, the army that grew up in the "small"
Israel within the Green Line, that defeated five Arab armies
in six days, commanded by the brilliant General Staff under Yitzhak
Rabin. All the commanders of the Second Lebanon War started their
career when it was already an occupation army. The last military
success of the Israeli army was achieved early in the occupation
period, a generation ago, in the Yom Kippur war,
An army whose job is to uphold
the occupation - "targeted killings" (approved this
week by the Supreme Court in a shameful decision), demolition
of homes, mistreating helpless civilians, hunting stone-throwing
children, humiliating people at innumerable roadblocks and the
hundred and one other daily doings of an occupation army - has
shown that it is not fitted for real war, even against a small
guerilla force.
* *
*
THE CORRUPTION of the Israeli
army and the rot that has set in, exposed in all their ugliness
by the investigations of the war, are a danger for the State
of Israel.
It is not enough to remove
the Chief-of-Staff (whose clinging to his post is another scandal
added to the scandals of the war), nor is it enough to change
the whole high command. There is a need for reform from the top
to the bottom, a change of the army in all sectors and all grades.
But as long as the occupation lasts, there is no point in even
starting.
We have always said: the occupation
corrupts. Now it has to be said with a clear voice: the occupation
is endangering the security of Israel.
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