2023 Israeli-Gazan War

[Albany Rifles]

Let me be the one with a unpopular opinion. The IDF is a great Defensive Army. 3d rate when it comes to offensive ops. Lebanon 1982 and 2006 show that

And cross Suez in 1973 was against a beaten Egyptian 3rd(?) Army and was done on a shoestring. Hell, it wasn't properly equipped for combined arms warfare until well in the 1980s because they ignored their artillery.

And Monash, I think you are spot on. They have converted in a mindset of being an internal security force. I am sure Camp David had a bit to do with it.

[Albany Rifles]

Once upon a time (When MEUs were 5 ship affairs) ships had these floatie things attached. Building a causeway/floating pier was an organic asset in the gator Navy

Notice she is carrying 4 sections. LPD could carry 2 IIRC

That was my recollection as well...I guess the Gators divested? I have seen the Army Boat People play with them in the Chesapeake off Fort Story in the past.

[Monash]

Let me be the one with a unpopular opinion. The IDF is a great Defensive Army. 3d rate when it comes to offensive ops. Lebanon 1982 and 2006 show that

I'd argue its hamstrung by a lack of experience and training in conventional combined arms warfare. The last 30 plus years? It's focus has almost entirely been fighting anti terrorist/asymmetric warfare rather than conventional combined arms. Egypt? No appetite for a war. Syria? No capacity to win one if it started. Iran? Love to but it's an air campaign and again they wouldn't win.

[Gun Grape]

The thing thaqt gets me is that the Israelis are taking their own sweet time in taking Gaza. The entire OP should last no more than two weeks. We took Iraq in less time.

Let me be the one with a unpopular opinion. The IDF is a great Defensive Army. 3d rate when it comes to offensive ops. Lebanon 1982 and 2006 show that

[Gun Grape]

Was not aware Israel was going to be playing along. Makes sense.

I am glad we did this because is shone a bright light we need to put more resources into our expeditionary forces. Too many logistics issues getting here. The logistics failures crossing the Sava River in 1995-96 warned the Army to get its logistics shit together before OIF...which was still a near run thing.

Once upon a time (When MEUs were 5 ship affairs) ships had these floatie things attached. Building a causeway/floating pier was an organic asset in the gator Navy

Notice she is carrying 4 sections. LPD could carry 2 IIRC

On the Iran Helicopter Crash, was it ordered by Khamenei?:

[Officer of Engineers]

It took Australia to state the Rome Statures were worth shit. ASAS committed some crimes and they were going to be judged by Australian QR&O, not by the ICC. In fact, Australia stated that the ASAS were NOT going to see an ICC courtroom. Australian QR&O were going to do the justice. Makes me wonder what the hell did we sign the Rome Statures for.

I love it when the military stick a big F-YOU to the foreign service fucks!

[Bigfella]

ICC application for arrest warrants submitted this morning.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/middl...ntl/index.html



Such an action by the ICC I think would make Netanyahu persona non grata in most of Europe. They won't arrest him but that means to not having to arrest him and being exposed as hypocrites (a bunch of African states right now are salivating at the notion of European states being forced by law to arrest a foreign leader and choose not to), they just won't let him fly or travel there. The U.S. won't do anything to Netanyahu, but that's quite the long plane trip from Tel Aviv to New York and Netanyahu and his ministers would be even more effectively isolated internationally.

If Netanyahu flies to the U.S. and he is under ICC criminal charges and we choose to do nothing, then the U.S. can never say anything "ICC" again in any circumstance and have it be worth ten cents.

No one really cares. The ICC has an abysmal record when it comes to prosecuting senior figures anywhere. If you are a middle level African who has done some bad shit you might be in trouble, but pretty much everyone else is OK.

I note that 'African states' seem pretty uninterested in 500,000 dead Ethiopians from the 2020-22 civil war. They even stopped the UN from releasing a report on the mass murder that took place there. No referrals to the ICC for Abiy, Isaias or the TPLF. Not much moral high ground to claim there.

[Albany Rifles]

Well we are not signatories to the ICC treaty I don't know that we'd care.

[rj1]

ICC application for arrest warrants submitted this morning.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/middl...ntl/index.html

The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Monday.

Khan said the ICC is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders — Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades and better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.

The warrants against the Israeli politicians mark the first time the ICC has targeted the top leader of a close ally of the United States. The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.

Such an action by the ICC I think would make Netanyahu persona non grata in most of Europe. They won't arrest him but that means to not having to arrest him and being exposed as hypocrites (a bunch of African states right now are salivating at the notion of European states being forced by law to arrest a foreign leader and choose not to), they just won't let him fly or travel there. The U.S. won't do anything to Netanyahu, but that's quite the long plane trip from Tel Aviv to New York and Netanyahu and his ministers would be even more effectively isolated internationally.

If Netanyahu flies to the U.S. and he is under ICC criminal charges and we choose to do nothing, then the U.S. can never say anything "ICC" again in any circumstance and have it be worth ten cents.

[Albany Rifles]

Was not aware Israel was going to be playing along. Makes sense.

I am glad we did this because is shone a bright light we need to put more resources into our expeditionary forces. Too many logistics issues getting here. The logistics failures crossing the Sava River in 1995-96 warned the Army to get its logistics shit together before OIF...which was still a near run thing.

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-...-24/index.html

One ship expected to unload Friday at Gaza floating pier


From CNN's Kareem Khadder and Sarah El Sirgany in Jerusalem




Members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and the Israeli military put in place the Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver humanitarian aid, on the Gaza coast on May 16. U.S. Central Command/Reuters


One ship is expected to unload aid on the newly installed floating pier in Gaza on Friday, a UN official told CNN.

On the first day of the operation, there were elements of the process that were still unclear, including the content of the first shipment of aid, the official said describing the race to get the information as the ships were inching closer to Gaza.

The content of the ships is inspected in Cyprus, then the aid is moved on the pier by trucks already on the ships to a facility on shore. This is where the UN would oversee the process of loading the aid on local trucks and send the aid to north and south Gaza, the official explained.

Since the content was already searched in Cyprus, the UN doesn’t expect much delay at Israeli checkpoints except to inspect drivers’ paperwork. The World Food Programme will be the acting as the logistical arm of the UN to deliver the aid to other agencies or distribute it. The aid will go to the northern part of the strip on one day and to the south on the next.

[rj1]

The thing thaqt gets me is that the Israelis are taking their own sweet time in taking Gaza. The entire OP should last no more than two weeks. We took Iraq in less time.

My amateur geostrategist take is Netanyahu wants to keep the war going until the U.S. election. If Trump wins, he can probably get the new Trump administration to agree to make northern Gaza a buffer zone occupied by Israel a la Golan Heights with Syria. I think Netanyahu knows Biden is screwed either way as long as the conflict continues.

[Officer of Engineers]

The thing thaqt gets me is that the Israelis are taking their own sweet time in taking Gaza. The entire OP should last no more than two weeks. We took Iraq in less time.

[rj1]

I find this an interesting higher-level discussion on this war as far as Biden interaction than we normally get:

David Frum, The Atlantic

Biden making the same error w/r/t Israel that he previously made with Ukraine: trying to micro-manage from a distance somebody else's defensive war by limiting categories of weapons. This error doesn't limit war. This error prolongs war, by denying the ally the means of success.

Gregg Carlstrom, The Economist

A quick word on this. And I say this as someone who has been very critical of Biden for months. But this thread is sort of a funhouse-mirror reality in which Biden has been too restrictive of Israel rather than too indulgent of what has become an aimless war.

Biden hasn't "micro-managed" the war. He gave Israel carte blanche for months of ruinous fighting. Even when it came to Rafah, his position was that America would support an offensive if Israel came up with a plan to evacuate civilians. Which Israel, for months, did not do.

David Frum, The Atlantic

I often think the Biden foreign policy would produce more success if its architects were less clever. "Give the Ukrainians/Israelis enough that they don't lose, but not enough to win" is an idea to baffle all lesser minds.

The micro-management of Israel's war is one part of a much bigger scheme: an Arab force to police Gaza, reform of the Palestinian Authority, a Saudi-US defense agreement, etc. etc.

Less clever people would have arrived at a simpler plan: fight Hamas until it's beaten.

Gregg Carlstrom, The Economist

Where David Frum is correct is the idea that many of Biden's post-war plans for Gaza were too clever by half. Any observer of the region could have told you they were unlikely to ever come to fruition (many of us have been doing that since October).

But this isn't a binary choice between Biden's fanciful plans and "let Israel fight until victory". Look at the past few months. Israel finds itself going back, over and over, to fight Hamas in areas of northern Gaza it had already conquered (it's doing so again this week).

Why is that? Because Israel withdrew most of its troops without any plan for post-war stabilization and governance. It left a power vacuum Hamas is inevitably trying to fill. Military force without political strategy doesn't mean lasting victory. It means endless whack-a-mole.

Yes, Biden is pursuing unrealistic ideas for post-war Gaza. But Israel isn't pursuing anything at all. Ask almost anyone in the Israeli military, and they will tell you the war has been adrift for months now because Israeli politicians refuse to even talk about what comes next.

If Biden had wanted to "micro-manage" the war, he would have understood months ago—as many analysts did—that the war would not achieve either of its stated objectives so long as Netanyahu refused to contemplate the day after. The logical conclusion from that analysis would be to restrain Israel. But he didn't do that. He indulged months of aimless fighting and expended huge amounts of time and energy trying to ameliorate Israel's own lack of strategic vision. You can call that many things, but "micro-managing" isn't one of them.

For sake of completeness, Frum's final tweet:

Biden will seek re-election in November on a foreign policy record that includes the fiasco of the Afghanistan exit, inconclusive wars in Europe and Middle East, no new trade agreements. He needed one clear success. Israel's war could have been it. But no. Too simple.

[tbm3fan]

No they were saying drones were shot down. Not the drones shooting down the missiles.

Ah, gotcha.