High Price for Arrogance

I know this is the third post on current conflict in Lebanon, but I cannot resist it. There is so much to say and I probably would need to write a book on it. Today, I am going to talk about arrogance. Arrogance is an attitude that can be obtained from too much ego or too much confidence. Even though confidence is an outmost necessary tool in Military, too much of it could turn into arrogance. How bad is arrogance in military? Well, lets look at what happened in Israel today.

Israeli Generals and commander are only using 15% of Israeli Ground Forces. They thought they could handle Hezbollah that has been supported, funded, and armed with stock piles of ammunition, and trained for years to deal with Israel with only 15% of its ground operation? What ARE THEY THINKING? Today we lost 9 soldiers. 9 SOLDIERS! 9 MOTHERS ARE NOT GOING TO SEE THEIR SONS! Even though Israeli soldiers killed more than 40 Hezbollah guerrillas, but it is not comparable. Why? The answer is very simple! Arrogance of Israeli Commanders and Generals in using their ground troops. They simply need more men to secure that village which is Hezbollah's capital.

These are very dark days and no one knows how the future is going to play out. Hezbollah is very strong and Israeli commanders needs to know that. There is no room for mistakes, arrogance, or conservation. My advice to commanders, use a lot more than 15% and treat this war as if this was the war for independence! Other than that, expect a lot more mothers to grieve their sons never returning home.

Hizbollah's New Reality

Once upon a time, on the Lebanon's side of the border, there bunch of Hezbollah guys sitting probably drinking tea. For some interesting reason (that I will get into in future posts) they decided to cross the border and kill some Zionist soldiers and capture two more. Then Israel would respond with the usual fly over and bunch of artillery and maybe if they are too stupid, they would send in commando unit to capture a Hezbollah commander! GUESS WHAT!? THEY WERE WRONG! NOT JUST WRONG, DEAD WRONG!!

Hezbollah who emerged as a hero in 2000 due to Israeli mistakes and miscalculations, speculated that they can get away with almost anything because Israel is busy with Gaza strip, plus the Arab world would instantly come to their Aid including the worthless UN who is acting as human shield for such group in southern Lebanon.

What happened? Why were they so wrong?
I believe Hezbollah tried to seize opportunity to gain more popularity and show its solidarity with Palestinian cause, but they were dead wrong about Israeli response.

In early days of the campaign, the dreamers in UDF and Israeli politics thoughts they could take of the matter with IAF air strikes without getting their hands dirty by sending ground troops. Boy they were wrong! Results: bunch of poor civilian casualties and almost no results. At the same time, Hezbollah was just gaining more power. The news that were coming out of that region was just more disappointing for Israel. Then Israeli Generals quickly went to cabinet and asked for ground troops operations. Then things started to look more positive for Israel. Results: More than 130 Hezbollah Fighters dead including some high ranking and regional commanders, capture of two or three of their fights (which is suprising because I was under perception that they were in this fight to become martyr, what happened?! Heaven was too full or something?!).

This question pops up to my mind! WHY? Why does Israel has to wait until more than 25 of its people are dead to react to a threat or an enemy? When the right was screaming its long out and pulling its hair out when dumb fuck Barak was pulling out of Lebanon, why didn't anyone listen to them! When the left was celebrating and the right was crying its eyes out telling him, "stop! Go slower! don't just pull out at once" why was left so happy about being out of Lebanon!? Why didn't Israel react with ground forces from beginning instead of just relying on Elite Unites. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of faith in Israeli Commando Units however, I don't' believe they could win a whole war by themselves. You need battalions and armies and Tanks to win a war, not just Elite Units and Airforce. They are good for pin-point operations and short term goals.

Hopefully, Israel will continue these attacks and get rid of Hezbollah. At the same time, lets hope we could find an army who would take control of southern Lebanon after Israel pulls back.

As for Hezbollah, they are desperately attempting to use any excuse or minor event to declare victory; they claim they have destroyed ten armor personel carriers, killed more than 100 Israeli soldier. As I was watching this report from Iranian State Controle Channel, I thought to myself, "This is Hizbollah reality! All based on a miscalculation".

Start of a New beginning

Congratulation! Finally I was able to join the Weblog society!

I cannot wait to express my outmost happiness to be able to finally do this. Just to start with, I am going to write a very simple biography of my life for those who don't know me that well.

I was born in Tehran, Iran in 1982! Yes I am a child of the War (we'll get into more details of that later) I was 11 years old when my parents decided to leave Iran and immigrate to the USA and reside in Los Angeles CA (what a surprise! a Persian family moving to LA). I got my high school diploma at Beverly Hills High School and I started Santa Monica College. I transferred to University of California, Berkeley. I graduated in 2005 and my majors were political science, peace and conflict studies, and minor in Persian Studies.

This is a very simple biography of my life and in future posts I will get into more details about my life. However, next I am going to write about what to expect from my weblog. This weblog is going to represent my inner most thoughts and feelings! It will include mostly political issues specifically about Iran and Israel. The reason is because politics is my passion and I love to talk about it at all time, I guess this is another way of expressing myself. At the same time, I must point out that this is my thoughts and feelings, it doesn't mean I am right all the time or claim to know solution to every problem. However, I feel very strongly about what I know and support. At the same time, once in a while I will write about different subjects depending on my trend of thoughts that day.

Like I said, this is a start of a new beginning and stay tuned for more!

Sincerely

B. A. Kahen