Joseph Riggs wrote:
However, that was also probably based on the PM's belief that the Israeli
population in
general would be averse to casualties. If twice the casualties had been
suffered, but
Hezbollah had been for all intents and purposes removed from Southern Lebanon,
then I
think that the Israeli population would have considered the results a fair
trade.
Ah... how about 5x? How about 10x? See we are wrangling over
casualty numbers. 10x casualty (using Wikipedia numbers) would be
1000 dead, for a population of 7mil. Why is it that Israeli
population thinks 1 in 7000 (civ) or 1 in 168 (mil) is a weighty price
for destroying Hezbollah? By your numbers, 1 in 35000 (civ) or 1 in
840 (mil) just qualifies for a "fair trade".
Hezbollah did get soundly drubbed, despite Nasrallah's proclamations to the
contrary
once he came out of the hole he'd been cowering in. But it evidently wasn't
enough of a
win to satisfy the Israeli public. And Hezbollah wasn't beaten badly enough to
keep them
Nasrallah who?? ;-)
The "hole" is a excellent point! Having been "soundly drubbed", let's
put some (Wiki) numbers to it, having suffered 1 in 40 (250/10000) to
1 in 1 (600/600) casualty (mil) or (civ number is hard to figure, no
one admits that Hezbollah has a civilian base, but let's take 4mil x
14 / 128 = 0.44mil) making 1 in 440 (1000/440000) civ casualty.
So to people like Chris Campbell, Hamas behavior is a "mystery". But
try to apply my hypothesis: those forces living in a hole (from Viet
Cong to Mujahideen (vs. USSR) to Taliban to Saddam to Hezbollah)
aren't stopped by 50% (Tet Offensive) to 100% (Hezbollah) casualty
rate.
Yes yes 100% casualty rate seems crazy, but it's based on Israeli and
Western numbers? I am just the messenger, eh?
It's fun clicking around Wiki, turns out USSR quited Afghanistan after
only a 1 in 44 loss (14000 dead over 620000 total deployed), even
lower than the 1 in 30 for Israel v. Hezbollah, and 1 in 20 for US v.
Vietnam. And Moscow didn't even have any messy constraints from
democracy/popular opinion.
Anyway... I think I've argued my point enough.
Apply it to Gundam now: a nation (both "good" and "evil", a lot of you
still seem to think it matters) high tech enough to invent robotic
weapons and functional enough to train large professional armies don't
go fight straight-up Braveheart/A Bao Aqu style battles, not since
1945. So please, Mizushima give us something different? PLEASE?
--
Dr. Core
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