This article by Amos Harel above, as well as the one in the Musaf of Yediot Hachronot by Alex Fishman that I hope Strong11 will be able scan and share here, were both excellent and go a long way to coherently explain most of the reasons why things went wrong in Lebanon2. I strongly recommend that you read them.
It seems that the various investigative committees have done a good job and I can now better understand in my mind what before had just been a “bad feeling in my stomach” since the first day we sat wasting time in a house in Maroon–a-Ras. I only pray that the implementation of the necessary corrections will actually take place.
I just have one small disagreement with something that was written in Amos Harel’s article:
בעקבות החטיפה, כשהצבא יצא למלחמה, הוא עדיין חשב במונחי השטחים (פעילות ביטחון שוטף מול אויב חלש) ופעל בהתאם. יכולתו של חיזבאללה הפתיעה את צה"ל ואפשרה לו לפגוע בנקודות תורפה, למשל באמצעות פגיעת טיל הנ"ט בטנקים ובכוחות החי"ר. הכוחות, בסדיר ובמיוחד מילואים, לא היו מאומנים כהלכה למשימתם, משום שהאינתיפאדה הביאה לקיצוץ בתקציב האימונים (וכשכאלה כבר נעשו, הם התמקדו בהכנות ללחימה בשטחים). האלוף לוין, בראיון לערוץ 10: "צה"ל נחלש בכוחו להילחם. הכיבוש הממושך בשטחים פגע בתרגילים, בתרגולות, בטכניקות הקרביות. היתה גם פגיעה מנטאלית".
I think that the reserve troops and officers were actually in a better mind-set for this war than the sadir. When we were drafted we were expecting to fight a regular war similar to Lebanon1 using massed forces and heavy firepower to advance and rapidly clear enemy locations to quickly remove the threat of enemy rockets from northern Israel. I was surprised that we were instead sent to hide out in empty houses to patiently hope that the enemy would sometime pop out and reveal himself so that he could be destroyed by stand-off weapons from a far.
The popular headlines about lack of training, food and short-barreled M16s, are all excuses. Even with what we had, we could have achieved much more had there been the decision to do so. With the lack of training in recent years, the reserve soldiers and officers had certainly not been “tainted” by the Intifada-style asymmetric tactics (we still had not even progressed from the 3-man to the contemporary 4-man fire team).
Reserve units still knew how to fight full-scale combat. Don’t misunderstand me – I believe that the lack of training over the last decade borders on criminal negligence, and undoubtedly we would have paid a dear “schar limud” due to being rusty, but the basic skills were still there. In addition, the sadir troops that I spoke to told me that after the initial three weeks of fighting, they had already "relearned the old lessons.
ראשי
צ'אט
26-09-2006, 09:36
מצב כלאיים
