Okay, I just HAVE to talk about this (Israel vs Lebanon)

[Czar]

Israel is fighting this war like they have to, the best way to deal with guerillas who hide amongst the population is to get rid of the population (actually, the best way to fight guerillas is to get the population on your side, but that's not happening in this case).
Let me rant a bit: This is the face of modern war, I'll try to explain my point here. Although, I'm totally ignoring the political, religious and other issues here, this is plain tactics and strategy of modern war and this situation in particular as I percieve it. Language and concepts aren't exactly PG.

By getting rid of the population, I do not mean killing them. I do not mean genocide. I do not mean driving them off, I mean removing any support for the guerillas.
It's not a good way to fight, but there are no realistic alternatives at this
stage. Guerillas are dependant on the population for support. Without the support of the population, their days are numbered, they can fight for a while without the support of the population, but not forever.

And the Israelis aren't likely to accept international help in peacekeeping. The UN is inneffective at the task (everyone admits that, talk nice all you will, the boys in white and blue will fight brave and die good but they can't when they need to and when they do they get yelled at or ignored)
And it also ties Israels hands, it makes a bad precedent for them, it makes them seem weak, their enemies are sure to exploit that in the future - the same reason you do not negotiate with terrorists or hostage takers. Do it once and you open pandoras box - everyone will expect you to cave in in the future.

Israel has an image. They have proven time and time again that they do not take any crap. And when they've said enough is enough, they go in and kill anyone that ever gave them crap. Eventually the message might go through, but it probably won't, and that means you keep up the hard line or you open the gates of hell and commit suicide.

As for the other side, they're terrorists.
Terrorism is just another word for effective guerilla warfare, it is an expansion of guerilla warfare, it is a way to provoke the enemy into actions that will make the actual guerilla warfare more effective.
It is provocation.
You provoke the enemy by attacking them and running away, hiding where the enemy can not get at you. You bleed out their supply lines, you hit the morale of the enemy troops, you make them stressed, desperate.
You use the civilian population for support, you hide amongst them, you recruit new members from their numbers.
When the enemy is so provoked that he has had enough, he comes after you.
And that means you can pick him off easily on your own ground.
Eventually, the enemy will smoke you out of your own territory, then you hide amongst civilians.
And that means, that when the enemy comes after you, civilians die.
When the enemy accidentally starts killing civillians, it's regrettable for all involved, but it is also a victory for the guerillas. The popular opinion turns against the killers. And nowadays popular opinion wins wars. It can force a lawful combatant to stop an effective (if bloody) war.
It also means the enemy of the guerillas does not have the support of the population - They're just as bad as the guerillas (or, hopefully for the guerillas: worse). When the population thinks higher of the guerillas than their enemies, the guerillas have won.

You win the support of the population, you win the war. You don't even need the support of most the population, just those who matter, those who hold grudges and are willing to act on them, willing to join your cause.

Best way to fight this kind of war against guerillas, counter insurgency, is to weed out the guerillas from the bottom up, eliminate their support base quietly and cleanly and take out the guerillas without harming the civilian population they work out of. It is also the hardest, grittiest and most time consuming method possible.
Top down works also, taking out the leaders first, but a successful guerilla organisation is like a hydra, take out one head and two new pop into existance, and if they can still replace their losses by recruiting from the population, odds are you will just bloat their organisation if you try fighting top down. Taking out leaders does make for good headlines, though, as long as you don't bomb civilian shelters, hospitals or weddings.

Only way to successfully weed out the guerillas bottom up is to have a base of informants amongst the population who can rat them out, tell you who they are, where they hide, what they're up to. And if they're not giving you the information willingly, you can always beat the information out of them.
But the best way to get informants is to have the people at least partially on your side. Show them that you're good and decisive guys, you will help them if they ask nicely, but you won't take any shit.

Of course, this is what Israel has been doing, they've tried to play nice, but since their position isn't exactly all that strong, they have no choice but to show their strenght and decisiveness when the other side acts up: You don't fuck with Israel.
Time and time again, they've asked the other side to grow up and get its act together. And when the other side, palestinians and others, haven't succeeded in doing that, Israel as acted. Decisively.
Of course, that is what everone remembers, and it doesn't give them any friends in the region, nor most anywhere else. Nearly everyone hates Israel.
Mossad might be good, but there's limit to the ammount of information they can extract from an unwilling population without crossing a few lines. That does mean torture by the way. The nasty kind of torture you only see done by real professionals and psychos, none of that amateurish crap.

When you have no base of intel to work on, you have to do it the hard way.
When the enemy acts up, you warn the enemy to stop.
You tell the enemy of your enemy to take action.
You warn the enemy that if they do not stop, you will act.
You act, you try to minimize civilian causalties, but face facts, they will happen.
Civilians are warned to leave, but some will not, some do not want to, some can not.
You go in, and you assume that everyone who is still there is a potential hostile, because they are. Shit will happen either way, either to you, or to them, rather it happen to them than you. Israel is a small nation, they do everything in their power to prevent friendly causalties.

[Tangent]They have armoured and armed bulldozers ferchrissakes. The Merkava (Israeli main battle tank) was built to survive, not to kill soviet tanks in the European theater (and later the middle east) (Leopard, Leclerc, Abrams and Challenger), nor to rush over the Russian steppes and into Europe. And it was built to survive everywhere, be it desert or city, ideal tank terrain or tankers nightmare. And it does it's job.[/Tangent]

Preventing friendly causualties like this without being cowardly means that you take a few calculated risks and don't hesitate to play dirty.
You still want to make the job as clean as possible, killing everyone might have worked back in the old days, but nowadays it's just a surefire way to get blacklisted by the international community (unless you are a rebel in an african state, apparantly, but I digress).
You can't bomb the enemy to bits (you need precision), you can't round them up and send them to concentration camps (that's an anthill the Israelis don't need poked in), you can't direct them away from your forces to fight amongst themselves (everytime you do, they come back to fight you eventually anyway, since you are the big bad guy everyone hates).
So you need to go in close, grab them by the nose and punch them in the balls to quote Patton.
That means going in, knocking a few houses over, taking a few prisoners out back (or down into the basement) for questioning, finding out who and when and where and acting on that knowledge.
You will kill the enemy, you will try not to harm the population, but if you don't act decisively, you show weakness.
Showing weakness is tantamont to suicide.
Hesitation is weakness.
Inaction in the face of agression is hesitation.
You act smart, you act ruthless, you act decisivly and you act fast, you might win, even though you've already lost.

Say what you will about the Israelis. For a doomed nation and a cursed people fighting a lost war against an enemy which believes in that death is victory when the world is against them, they fight pretty damned well.

Which is not to say that the whole thing is fucking sad. This entire thread is flamebait and needs to be either closed or seriously chilled off.

[McDuffies]

What do I think? I think I'm scared because what's going on is much more serious than usual meddling on middle east and because there seems to be a risk of spreading into a global scale conflict.
I mean, even we, comic artists will take time to talk about this, it is hard to be cheerful and careless and not think about such thing going on somewhere else.

For years, I've deliberately kept myself fairly uninformed about all the things about Israeli, did that simply to keep myself away from a situation in which everyone seems to have a strong ground and where several sides claim right on one piece of land for temselves and actually, they all have some kind of right to it. You can't fit two objects in same physical space, say the laws of nature.
Still I always found it hard to defend the side of Israeli. So they were a big landless nation scattered all over the world, and they wanted their land back. There are many landless nations all over the world, assimilated into bigger nations yet still keeping their national integrity. Israelis were simply crafty politicians who managed to get what they wanted. I don't think it's their fault, they did what was in their best interest. Frankly, I think it's western world's fault, for meddling into other people's business and taking the liberty to chop up the part of other country.
To me that is equal to, for instance, chopping a part of Spain and creating an independent Basquia. The only difference is, this is middle east, noone cares about it much. They always have wars anyway. They're "tribal".

Case in point, that act created more troubles than it was worth. Constant wars and terrorism, the overal feel of making one historical unjustice just to fix another historical unjustice that happened hundreds of years ago... Did anyone actually have any benefit from it?
While I cannot agree with the way moslems dealt with it, I can not but understand why they are angry. I can, up to a point, understand Israeli as well, it must be hard to live without a land. I cannot understand the need of some far away countries to mix into other people's business and create more damage under the guise of "saviours", bringers of "civilisation".

But as I said, I don't want to know much about that. But one subject I do know about, due to circumstances, is the matter of war crimes, humanitary crises and such matters.

Now, what's going on? There's an apparent (yet not officially declared) humanitarian crises happening, caused by Israeli action. Those who know a bit about war, know that that is a situation when rules of war are broken and cruelty and murder goes beyond what is neccesary for leading the war. That's a kind of situation where, when the war is over, people get convicted of war crimes. Therefore, saying:

I don't mean to sound insensitive, but this IS war, and war is hell. People die, especially the ones who aren't fighting it.

is not as much insensitive as it's uninformed. Simply said, when uniformed soilders die, that's a war. When civilians die, that's a war crime (regardless of whether they had military training or not, if they're not mobilized into the army at the moment, they are considered civilians). When hundreds or thousands of civilians die, that's a genocyde, a crime of such large scale that it simply can't be neglected.
Additional problem is involvement of western countries again. Being that they were protective of Israel all this time, they are reclutent of condemning them for war crimes, skirting things and, all in all, that's the reason why humanitary crises hasn't been admitted yet.

I am very sensitive about some subjects. It is easy to look at wars going on from safe distance, judging on who started first and how easy it would be to sort everything out only if those uncivilized hotheads would calm down.
Wars became as results of long-growing national or religious hatred, a whole mess of political, economical, national interests, so many elements that books after books wouldn't be enough to sort them all out.
To a person who is unlucky enough to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time, that means nothing. If someone's throwing bombs at you, do you really care that some idiot who happened to be a member of your nation (and whom you probably never supported anyway) threw a bomb first or something?
Nope, you don't care. All you care is, they're throwing bombs at YOU. They want to kill YOU. Therefore, they're your enemies. You don't say "Go ahead, throw the bombs, we deserved it anyway".

When 9-11 happened, did Americans stop to think "yeah, this event was caused by a long line of mestakes in world politics, led by nearsighted economical, oil-industry interests, and there is probably a good deal of wrong USA foreign policy actions that led to it"?
Nope, noone thought that, people simply thought "There are terrorists and they want to kill us". Dunno if that's the right way, but it's the only normal way really. Because you can talk whatever you like when you're sitting in front of tv, but you don't get the right perspective until you've found yourself in the middle of things.

[KittyKatBlack]

At this point, 'letting them sort it out' is not really a good idea. They may be tribal, but back when WE were 'tribal' the best thing we had was muskets and cannons that had a range of about 100 yards. Not fully automatic assault rifles, ICBMS and nuclear weapons. Hell, we left some assholes alone for the longest time and guess what? Some dumbass highjacked some planes and flew them into buildings in a country on the other side of the ocean. Because for some reason he thought we actually gave two shits about him and his revolution.

But that's another topic entirely. My point is that this is getting out of hand, and unless the people in that area decide to do something about it, there's going to be war. Neither side of this battle has a 'good' side, or a 'bad side'. There is no right and wrong in this situation. It's basicly two groups that hate each other, and have no goals other than the total destruction of the other side. You can't really mediate that. It's not like they're fighting for something that can be negotiated in the first place.

[RPin]

Israelis are fighting this war with an unreasonable amout of bloodlust.

[KittyKatBlack]

Israelis are fighting this war with an unreasonable amout of bloodlust.

I would agree, except that the goal of both sides is to completely obliterate the other. In that regard, you can't really consider any form of attack 'too much' since thier goal is to kill everyone they possibly can in the first place.

It's sad, but that's what it boils down to.

You have to sort of look at this from the perspective of the people fighting this thing to understand what's going on. To them, the people they are fighting are not humans. They are not on the same level. It's like when Mad Cow disease breaks out at a farm. Do they go and do a clinical check on all the cows in the area and pick only those who are diseased, or do they simply round them all up in an area and dispose of them because it's easier? You'd think doing that with people is horrible, but when it comes to livestock, 'Eh, They were going to die anyway. Besides, it's only cattle.' That's the mindset most of the people are working with here. They don't consider it a 'crime against humanity' when the 'things' they are fighting are less than human, in their minds. Like McDuffies said, it's easy for people outside to see what's going on and say, 'You people are insane. Do you even SEE what you're doing?!' but in that area, it's completely different. To them, the UN is like PETA.

[Tellurider]

Then came the car and the desire for oil.

....

Everyone's stuck. Especially America. When the oil runs out, then we'll get our solution but it won't be pretty. The Middle East will then cease to have any useful resources to trade.

First came oil, then came the combustible engine, then came cars. The original drive for oil was for light, because the whale blubber supply was running low.

Oil is not going to run out for a long time, despite what some people say on the TV. As technology advances we are able to get more production out of a well, and even now, old wells that were considered dry are being reopened and are producing again under new technology. The reason the middle east is such a big oil thing isn't because they have more (although they do), it's because it's really shallow and really good quality. It's easy and cheap to get out of the ground there. And considering how much first-world society is dependent on oil, those nations do have a big interest in the middle east and do need to at least try to have relations with them to protect themselves. Except for a few countries, like China (and I think also Canada) that, at least for now, can produce enough oil in their country for their own needs, without having to go to outside sources.

I say it's a religious war. Just like the Crusades, except with fewer horses and swords and English people.

[Laemkral]

Some of the war is religious. Hezbollah is not out for land, they're out for blood. The fighting in the Gaza Strip is not religious, it's a territorial dispute that is occasionally justified by religion. But this is definitely not a war for oil.

Yes, the killing of civilians is a war crime, McD. When this ends, the UN may hold Israeli soldiers and especially officers accountable for their actions and choices. I wonder if the same will be done for Hezbollah.

This looks like it's only going to get worse, and each side is just as vicious and bloodthirsty as their enemy.

[Czar]

HUGE POST WARNING: Basically, what I did here is go back and carefully read the thread through from the beginning, writing comments in notepad as I went. It builds huge posts and I'm editing it between writing this introductionary paragraph and posting it. It comments on everything up to my first post, in mostly chronological order as I read it.

Vans first post:
Beginnning of the Israeli Lebanese conflict? Even I don't know when this shit really began. Sometime back in the eighties, and even that was just the start of Hezbollah, and continuation of earlier conflicts in the region, conflicts I may add that predate western involvment (excluding the crusades) in the region a good deal.
Honestly, I haven't made an effort to learn the complete history of the region, my current interest is Chechnya, and I generally stick to trying to understand one hellhole at a time.

What is ridiculous in this war is the media coverage. The Israelis are fighting a counter insurgency war, and thats probably the only thing as dirty as an insurgency.
As for cut off supply lines - Any war, cutting off the enemy supply lines is a good, nay a great idea. Any armchair general will tell you the professionals study logistics, with good reason, and if you can sever the enemies supply train, it just makes your job easier.
Guerillas take their supplies through civilian routes. They live on the spoils of war, what they can take from the locals and what they are given from their supporters. Cutting off civilian supply lines is the only way to cut off the guerillas supply lines. Yes, it's inhuman, but the alternative means a longer, more drawn out conflict with more casualties on all sides.
Civilian transport necessities, part of the supply lines and also used by the guerillas to ferry troops and materiel. There are no military targets in a CI war - the guerillas know that if they present such targets for their enemies, those targets will be taken out.
The Israelis are taking action because Lebanon can not. The guerillas are islamist (the scary kind that thinks martyrdom is a good idea, these are the people who introduced suicide bombing to the middle east, more on this further down), and would rather go against their own government than follow their demands. Therefore the Israeli take action.

Hundreds of Lebanese dead, thousands injured. Compared to what? Hundreds of thousands in Sudan, Chechnya, Liberia, Congo, Venezuela? There's plenty of worse hell holes on Earth, now and before.
The Israelis are defending themselves (like they've done before).
Either they do something, or the guerilla kills more Israeli soldiers and civilians. Not on the same scale, but over time it would ammount to the same numbers. Same numbers of Israeli dead. The Israeli don't take that. They act now, stop the Guerillas from acting now and in the future (hopefully), they limit the number of dead, and the worst causalties does not happen to their own. Dirty, but efficient.
People starve elsewhere in the world too. Humanitarian workers are at risk elsewhere - There are places where they kill aid workers (well, actually foreigners, but in this case it's more or less the same thing) on sight.
The Hezbollah are doing their job as guerillas, striking and vanishing, letting civilian targets soak up the Israeli fire. It speaks for the skill of the israelis that there aren't more causalties (though, not highly - that would be no civilian casualties, but that requires inhuman skill).
If the israeli don't act, it's suicide. If the israeli do act, it's genocide. For the Israeli, this is them or us. For the Israeli, that is not a choice.
Also, this isn't quite genocide. Genocide implies planning, or at least operations on larger scale than this. It's very close, but genocide isn't quite the Israeli intent.

Nazi comparisons brings up Godwins law. So I'll just kill this now: Nazi Germany fought a "lawful" war against the western allies, a total-ideological war against the USSR and held a campaign of extinction against the jews (and several other groups of unwanted, such as communists, gays and the handicapped/mentally retarded). Any comparison to Nazi germany is unwarranted, the kind of organisation and inhuman treatment of prisoners assosiated with the Holocaust is nowhere to be seen here (though, similar events can and have been seen elsewhere in the world... Africa is a good place to start looking). It is closer to the War between the USSR and Nazi germany, where both sides rather not take prisoners. The USSR under Stalin was worse than the Nazis in many ways. Similarly, the Hezbollah are worse than the Israelis in many ways. Of course, it's not an accurate comparison - This is a new an unique situation, any war is (well, war more or less stays the same, but the specifics always vary).

I sympathise with the Palestinians, they've been screwed over, fucked up and left to die. They're the underdog.
I admire the Israelis. Say what you will about them, but they've fought hard for that land of theirs, and they've fought better than the Palestinians and their "allies" on more than one occassion in the past. Hezbollah aren't really friends with the Palestinians, as I understand things (I admit to having little extended knowledge about this, but basically, the Palestinians have no friends who don't have interests on their own). Hezbollah are shi'ite. Palestinians are not. Shi'ite are scary. They are the ones who taught the Palestinians that Suicide bombings are effective against Israelis. They are the ones who taught Palestinians how to fight effectively, by giving the Palestinians an example to learn from.

This entire thing, conflict, whatever, is a tribal thing. Logic does not enter this madhouse, or it will be killed by someone who does not care for logic. It's not so much about land anymore, as I see it. It's now about revenge. The Israelis have killed all around, and now the relatives of the dead want revenge. The israelis continue to defend themselves aggressively, making more kills, and more people who want to kill israelis. Tribal wars are dirty.
Not "clean" like western, lawful war (which brought us such lovely things such as carbet bombing and total war).
It is not "effective" like colonial war (British speciality: Supress the locals, make them fight for you/against each other, which brought us such lovely things such as concentration camps).
This is down and dirty - kill every man in the village, rape the women, steal the cattle and recruit the kids -tribal war.
Uncontrolled wild tribal war. And it's smart warfare to, anything else would be futile suicide against the Israelis (and say what you will about Hezbollah, the only kind of suicide they go for is the kind that lets you take a couple of dirty Israelis with you).

Guerilla warfare is where it is at. Traditional (Communist/Maoist) guerilla warfare won't cut it, they can't make the israeli people join them in the revolution to overthrow the israeli government and military, the israeli military is the people. They might force a change of government, but they have no reasonable chance of winning against Israel short of killing every single Israeli citizen, and with the current kill ratios, that ain't happening before there are no more Hezbollah. And that's how this war is going to end. It is going to go on until there are no more of one side or the other, and then the survivors are going to find someone else to fight, wether they like it or not.
This is Islamist Guerilla war - Terrorism.

Some say that the Israelis deserve what they get, and that their neighbours deserve the israelis. I think noone deserves that kind of shit.
They earn it. And they have. Both sides have worked hard to get where they are today. They've shown the kind of spirit that is great for forging nations, but it seems everyone has forgotten that forging a nation means making war and paying a price in blood.
The Israelis are willing to do both, they have done both, and they are right to say that they have earned their nations independence. They have also earned their enemies.
The Palestinians were also willing, but they didn't quite manage to do anything but loose the wars and pay the price in blood, mostly because the Israelis are better at warfare, have deeper pockets and better friends.

The Israelis show weakness, they give in to the demands of one faction just one time, they show that they can be made to submit to unlawful demands, to terrorism and hostage taking. They know well enough not to open pandoras box.
They know well enough to meet violence with more violence, provocation with aggression and threats with force.
It's the language of the tribal war. Tribal war goes on until one side can no longer make war, sometimes until one side no longer exist. You defend yourself, or you die (or best case scenario: you're enslaved and subjugated). And the best defence is a good offence.

Hezbollah are terrorists, guerillas and politicians. The politicians, noone listen to, so they go back to being terrorists. The Guerillas and the terrorists borrow each others notebooks. Because traditional terrorism is ineffective against the Israeli, as is guerilla warfare. The Hezbollah seeks to kill Israelis, to make the Israelis mad. And the wrath this brings on Lebanon, though well deserved, leads to further paint Israel as the bad guy, which is always a good thing for their enemies. Islamistic Guerilla war in a nutshell. Bleed the enemy dry while making him look bad, all your crimes are forgiven by Allah because the Jihad is just.

Israel will probably never accept a Palestinian state.
A Palestinian state would only be a partial victory for the enemies of Israel, though it would heighten morale for them, it would not end the war. There are radicals who want to destroy Israel, completely. And they are numerous. A free palestine would be a rallying point for these radicals, a starting point for the continued war against Israel. And Israel knows that. And they know that most of the prisoners they are holding would, if freed, join their enemies cause in one way or another.
Hezbollah will never give up their fight, because they do not believe in surrender. They believe in fighting to the last man. And they think such last stands are a form of victory, that such a loss is actually proof that they were infact right to fight. Even if you could convince the majority to disband and disarm, there are still radicals. And those are always heard the highest. And practically noone listens to the political party hezbollah.
The Palestinians, on their hand, will not give up against Israel for the same reason Israel does not give up against them, they know that the Israeli do not recognise Palestine. If they give up, they loose, and they are subjugated and absorbed, they do not die as in an organised genocide, but in a slow absorbtion/integration into Israel. In their book, that's worse than dieing under the tracks of Israeli tanks - it means the end of their people, their culture, their legacy.

But! Peace in the middle east is a possibility.
One day there won't be a single living soul in the middle east, and then there will (probably) be peace, heck there might be peace when there is just animals, or just one living human, or one living clan/tribe/people or nation/corporation/faction (whatever). But my best bet is that the peace won't come until the place is sterile like a surgeons scalpel. Not that I'm for sterlising the area - That would be inhumane (which is worse, kill everyone now and end the conflict or let it drag on for a couple of centuries more?)

On the Israeli citizen = Israeli Soldier thing: Other than maybe North Korea, Israel has one of the baddest conscripted armed forces in the world (and I'm not sure if NK does conscription/draft or a standing army, have to read up on that, but considering the size of NKs armed forces, I'm guessing they have conscripts). The only other nation I know where practically every adult male is in the army reserve (and even keeps gun and uniform at home) is Switzerland (specifically, cold war era, dunno the current organisation of the Swiss army reserve). In Israel, both men and women are drafted and kept in the reserve.

They're right up there with Finland when it comes to best quality of conscripted forces in history
Finland: Held off a massive Soviet offensive for half a year when they had the Soviets undivided attention. A year or so later they took the offensive against the soviet union along with the axis powers of Europe. They did so with a conscripted army, and outdated equipment. At the time they were a newborn, practically a third world, nation. Practically every adult Finn had known what famine means. Now that's balls!

Israel has a history of successful military campaigns almost as long as France's list of defeats (nothing bad against the french. They fight bravely, several of the better armies in the history of the world were french, but they tend to suffer memorable defeats against what is essentially inferior forces, and memorable wins only when allied with others, and yes, this is intended to be humorous).
Israeli Soldiers are good. Israeli military equipment is legendary (Desert Eagle, Uzi, Galil, Merkava... Sound familiar?). Israeli intel, planning and leadership is good. They've been better than they are now, but who and what hasn't?

Doomsday predictions of WWIII are a bit over the top in my opinion. I predicted the beginning of world war three shortly after 01-09-11 (who didn't?), and if you can call the "War on Terror" a war, then it is WW2.8, at most (with the cold war being WW2.5). (I also claimed WW3 was imminent or already started when the US went into Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, so far it seems I've been wrong).
This is just the latest episode of a soon to be sixty year old conflict.
WW3, in my book, is a global (or limited global) conventional conflict (land sea and air) between modern forces which end in a total or limited nuclear exchange, I hope not to be proven right or wrong in my lifetime.

Now, as has been said, War is Hell. It is a tired, almost cliche, phrase. But it is true.

War was hell when the Chariots of Ramses II ran down his enemies in ancient egypt.
War was hell when the Spartan three hundred made their last stand at Thermopylae against the Persians.
War was hell when the Romans sacked Carthage, and the roman general uttered "And one day, Rome".
War was hell when the Catholics killed everyone in Beziers... "Kill them all, God will know his own."
War was hell back in the seventeenth century when Carolus Rex marched against Denmark, Poland and Tsarist Russia all at the same time and kicked butt 'til he reached Poltava.
War was hell at Verdun, at Caen, at Stalingrad, at Iwo Jima, at Berlin, in Rwanda and Darfur, in Sarajevo, in Grozny, in Fallujah... The lists goes on.

The cities are the worst, because there will always be civilians in a city. Always.
And they're basically artificial mountains and forests, and mountain/forest fighting was always a ****ing mess.

Sun Tzu teaches, as early as 2500 AD, the following:
"The superior militarist strikes while schemes are being laid. The next best is to attack alliances. The next best is to attack the army.
The lowest is to attack a city. Siege of a city is only done as a last resort."
(Chapter three, articles 3 and 4).
Meaning that it is best to strike while the enemy is planning his strikes (or defences). After that comes striking against the enemy alliances, splitting them up, dividing them (divide, and conquer), weakening them. Then you target the enemy armies.
The last priority is attacking enemy cities (when the enemy has no plans, no allies and no armies, he can not hold his cities anyway). You should only lay siege to a city when you screwed up.

German Blitzkrieg doctrines taught to stay out of cities: Destroy the enemy armies in the field, and you control the cities. At Stalingrad, they went away from these principles, and paid heavily.
In Grozny, the Russians learned the hard way the lessons of urban warfare. Hundreds of BMPs and Tanks rolled into city along the streets in armoured convoys. A handful came out. The russians learned their lesson.
The next time they attacked Grozny, they levelled it with artillery and cleared the ruins with infantry.

And guerillas know that in a city, the advantage is to whoever knows the terrain. The local will run circles around the stranger. In defence, a local can use prepared strongpoints, local contacts, friends and hidden routes of retreat or repositioning and supply. On the attack, he knows all the ambushing spots, he has eyes in every window, snipers in every hole.
The stranger gets nervous - In Stalingrad (and Grozny to some extent), you could at least shoot at anything that moves - nowadays, you need to confirm that your target is a hostile and that you are allowed to fire on it under the ROE.
That means, you don't shoot until you know that your target isn't a nice civvie out to thank you for being there and protest your presence by shouting at you and throwing rocks, and not a nasty combatant with an AK, SVD, RPK or (worse) an RPG hidden on his person, ready to fire.

Yeah, eventually, you'll want to went some steam, say they just blew your buddys brains out firing from an apartment window or the local mosque, or they hit your hummer with an RPG fired from a backyard toolshed or garage (well, to be honest, I don't think the Israelis use that many hummers. They use converted Merkavas as APCs, for one thing. They care about the survival of their troops, as I said before. They use armoured(!) transports, not those pathetic little hummers).
You are angry. You are scared. You are fucking tired of being fucked with. Do you care if a fucking civilian gets snagged by your fire when you fire at the bastard that shot at you and your friends and then ran through a crowd into an alley?

The Israelis are better than anyone at not putting their men in that kind of situations, they don't let anyone fuck with them like that (try fucking with them, they send in the tanks and dozers, with CAS and artillery Time on Target). Therefore, most of their screw ups are more spectacular: They bomb the wrong building, or the right building just happens to be full of civvies. Shit happens. Intel screws up.

It's not FUBAR, it's SNAFU. FUBAR indicates the problem is new. It's not.

Bombing roads stops transports, that stops supplies, that softens up the defenders.
You don't invade without softening up your target (combat 101).
The Israelis care about their troops.
They soften up their targets before attacking when such is required.
The Israelis know surprise, they've done more than one daring operation in the past.
They know that when the enemy is expecting them, you soften him up before attacking.
Murderers? Cowards? They don't take hostages and they try as good as they can to verify the military viability of their targets before firing (and they screw up every now and then, such is military intelligence).
They also do not hide amongst civilians. If Hezbollah wanted to attack military targets only, they could. It wouldn't be as effective to their purposes. (Plus, military targets tend to be armoured, and fire back!)

Regarding Israel killing civilians on purpose: I bloody hope not. It would be the biggest military blunder since... Since Imperial Japan and the axis powers picked a fight with the USA! Not only would it turn the world opinion against them (even more than now), it would also give Hezbollah ample sources of new recruits.
They do not aim to kill civilians, though they might aim to punish Lebanon, but the primary purpose of their actions is to force Hezbollah to go to ground - Then they can't run - they can hide - but they can't reinforce and they can't fight effectively.
It saves Israeli lives, and that's what counts for the Israelis.

"They are cowards with the will to kill for their convictions, but not to die for them." - the Van
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country, you win by making the other poor bastard die for his." - The Patton.

Lemme tell you something I learned about the suicide bombings recently. Now this is insensitive and probably a bit racist, so I don't take this as absolute fact myself until I read up on it with an independent source, which I will do in the near future. Hell, I'd rather you look this up yourself, cuz this is essentially copied from memory from a rather blunt columnist.

Suicide bombers command respect, because the Shi'ite believe in the relatives of the Prophet Mohammad who lost, rather than (like the Sunni) the political moslems who won. One (Ali, Mohammeds son in law and cousin) was politically outmaneuvered as Calif after Mohammeds death. The other (Son of Ali) tried to grab power when the Calif died. En route to meet his army he ran into the army of the new Calif. He chose to attack the army with the thirty something men he had with him (admittably, he was supposedly surrounded...), predictably, they were slaughtered, all thirty of them. And the Shi'ites celebrate that as a VICTORY THAT SHOWS THAT THEY WERE RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Martyrdom is victory for them!
(Admittably, that's a pretty cool belief... "We lost therefore we are right." Sure beats the pacified Swedish lutheran protestantism they teach at the local church. I mean no disrespect, crazier things can be found in the bible, but as far as religion goes, that's right up there with old Norse beliefs (those who die in battle go to Valhall to fight every day and feast every night, those who die of old age in their bed goes to Hel where they toil to build a great longship out of their toenail clippings)).

Dying for ones beliefs is overrated anyway. I say it's admirable, in a sick way - much like war is logical, but unless your death actually means something, it's a wasted effort.

Israeli backed militia (this is before my time, mind, my knowledge of the conflict is spotty but growing with this discussion):
Sounds a lot like British colonial rule and war: Make the locals fight each other, that way none gain the strenght to fight your guys, when your guys get involved you make sure you are superior in every way.
Yes the Israeli have holdingcamps, and yes they have killed plenty of people in this war.
They fight it like it needs to be fought, as a colonial war on their own soil (rightfully conquered from the previous inhabitants, at least a couple of times over by now). When it comes to other nations soil, it is still a tribal war, but then again, Colonial war is just a tribal war where one faction is so far superior its not even funny.
And the comparison with nazi germany fails because, for all their wrongdoings, the Israeli at least treat their prisoners as human beings (criminals maybe, but thats it). And the people they kill were mostly combatants, or close enough to being combatants that you can't fault Israel as a whole.

Regarding the Palestinians being screwed by everyone: This is true. No luck for the Palestinians.
In the past, it's a pretty sad story for the Palestinians. And it just keeps getting worse for the future.

I said that there will be peace in the middle east when everyone is dead.
I continue to stand by my statement.

[Tangent]"America doesn't 'come up' with anything. We take something we see somewhere else, repackage it, mass produce it and then sell it back for 30% profit. It's the American way. Everyone knows that."

The Successful American Way of War: Build up a superior force, send it overseas, supply it well (better than the enemy can supply his own forces), support well it with both aircraft and artillery. Shoot at the enemy until the enemy caves in and retreats to regroup, advance while shooting, when the enemy looks like they're getting their act together again, stop advancing, dig in and shoot some more. When the enemy attacks, dig in, shoot and counterattack when they falter.

The more successful american generals are the shootier ones, and those who have the guts to move so much that the enemy is not given a chance to regroup once they start retreating, and the ones who manage to lure the enemy into a straight shooting war against superior american forces.

The way to beat americans is to give them little to nothing to shoot at, outmaneuver them and hit their supply lines.[/Tangent]

Joels post:
Actually, the Islamic Empire of the dark ages was one of the more enlightened civilisations of its time. I blame colonialism and christianity for defeating this civilisation, driving it into backwards fundamentalism and encouraging the tribal societies of old to come back into power to make the regions more manageable for the colonial powers, but it's easy to blame the past. More difficult to find solutions to present and future problems.

Leaving them be is indeed the best way... Well, maybe not. The Iran-Iraq war is a good example of what happens when you leave them be (...with toys lent from the big boys, but still).
A working method might be taking a note from SF and doing some form of cultural uplift - Forcibly update their culture to acceptable western standards, get the young boys out of Koran School where they learn little but to be fanatics, get them away from the bad influence that is the clan and tribe...
Of course, that is unacceptable by western standards.
The commies would've done it, but that isn't a good argument to build your case on.

Remus:
War does make sense! But it does so in a sick and deprave way...
I am utterly fascinated by it, like some are attracted by carwrecks, I guess.
Yes it's horrible, I know, I've read the books, seen the pictures and I fully intend to try to keep out of harms way and I do hope I never have to experience it first hand.
I'm still a war nerd.

And that's it for now. I'll go back in a while to comment on the things after my first post in the thread.
Hey, it's not every day there are threads were I can reference my area of special interest (military history).

[Boogiebop]

The Successful American Way of War: Build up a superior force, send it overseas, supply it well (better than the enemy can supply his own forces), support well it with both aircraft and artillery. Shoot at the enemy until the enemy caves in and retreats to regroup, advance while shooting, when the enemy looks like they're getting their act together again, stop advancing, dig in and shoot some more. When the enemy attacks, dig in, shoot and counterattack when they falter.

Failing that.

1:Turn up late.
2: Kill whoever is left standing.
3: Take all the credit.
4: Make movies staring Tom Hanks.

Never fails. Vietnam. Absolute fuck up. Why? No Tom Hanks. No wait... I suppose there was a retarded Tom Hanks. OK ammend number 4 to 'Make movies staring a fully functional non Forest Gump'd Tom Hanks. Bonus points if he is 'grizzled'.

[McDuffies]

Like McDuffies said, it's easy for people outside to see what's going on and say, 'You people are insane. Do you even SEE what you're doing?!' but in that area, it's completely different. To them, the UN is like PETA.

Well that's not exactly what I was saying, what I was saying is that most people don't care either war. Most people just want everybody to let them live. Sure, there is a heavy propaganda that can turn big part of the nation to one side or the other, but believe you me, it has short-term effect and eventually people turn to where they were.
Serbia? Number of people who were really concearned about national or political issues was small, and number of those who'd actually sacrifice normal life for defending of some political principles, statistically neglectable.
Of course, statistic fails because 100 people are quite enough to make entire nation get a status of war criminals (or in this discussion, terrorists).
I had thoughts that on middle east, mindset would be different due to different cultural and religious background, but after having met some Iraquis on chance, found out that it's not much different at least in one point: most of people really just want to be left alone.

Yes, the killing of civilians is a war crime, McD. When this ends, the UN may hold Israeli soldiers and especially officers accountable for their actions and choices. I wonder if the same will be done for Hezbollah.

You think it won't?
I have an impression that it already has.

[Escushion]

Who they can take to trial for war crimes is different than who they hold accountable. It took decades to hunt down many Nazi war criminals and I'm sure many still died of old age in hiding.

Anyway, this being ignorable condensed conflict isn't going to happen. WWI started through conflict between two small countries that escalated because of their allies. In this case, Israel has the US, and Hezzbolah has Iran, which wouldn't be a big deal if not for Russia.

[Yeahduff]

Iran ain't goin to bat for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an "independent" militia, and will go down as one for all Iran cares, so long as they fuck Israel up a bit. Israel will have to go after Iran themselves or Syria if it's gonna escalate further. Which is a possibility, but that's all it is right now. But I'm not buying Newt's bullshit just yet.

And there's no way Lebanon's gonna stand up to Hezbollah, by the way. Hezbollah will kick the shit out of the Lebanese army. For god's sake, look at what they're doing to Israel, probably the most powerful army in the region. These guys are tough.