God how I wish the IDF had embedded reporters! Of course, if you're in a real war you don't take the reporters along eh?
With what little information that we can gather, it seems to me that the Israeli strategy is inexcusably stupid. A good attack should flow like water, punching through, cutting off and encircling the enemy. The Israelis should be vertically enveloping the Hezbollah fighters, use armoured coulumns on "thunder runs" to get behind the main resistance than using artillery, attack choppers and jets to pound the remaining soldiers. It seems to me that they are just doing exactly what Hezbollah wants them to do and making frontal attacks from hilltop to hilltop and village to village. Also, the Israeli strategy of taking ground then giving it up is foolish. Like the Israeli soldier in one of those articles said, this is real war. And in real war you don't retreat from ground taken (unless you have to
) At least the Israelis could just flatten Bint Jbail with artillery. They aren't even doing that.
PS: This is probably the most evenly matched conflict that the world has seen for a while. For example, it is much more evenly matched than Gulf War I or II, the Taliban War in 2001, Israeli confrontations with the Palestinians, etc. The Western World, and in particular the Western media, has gotten used to short, relatively bloodless pitting a very modern 1st World military against a 3rd World country's crappy military. So media outlets are hyperventilating over the fact that Hezbollah is putting up a competent fight and killing Israeli soldiers. But it's blown out of proportion. you have to break a few eggs to make an omlette; people die in war. Casualties will not deter either side.
