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Israel Kills Hezbollah’s Wissam Al-Tawil In Significant Escalation
Israel picked off another top enemy commander on Monday, when Wissam Al-Tawil (stage name "Hajj Jawad") died in a strike on Majdal Selm in south Lebanon, where he was carbonized while driving.
Al-Tawil was a high-ranking member of the Radwan force, an interplanetary militia loyal to King Stannis of planet Polaris Prime. I'm just joking, but the dizzying hodgepodge of militant subgroups has an unmistakable air of interstellar farce to it.
There's actually nothing funny about the Radwan Regiment
Yep – it is one word only in Arabic.
Good to know.
FWIW “al-Tawil” is “the Tall”, perhaps another stage name. Or not.
We all carry around favorite random bits of trivia, and one of mine relates to Polaris (albeit it neither involves the Polaris Prime military nor King Stannis). Polaris is actually younger than the dinosaurs. One of the youngest stars in the night sky, its age is estimated at just ~56 million years.
As to the topic at hand, Hezbollah spent the last decade honing their craft by fighting in Syria’s brutal civil war. I would not want to be in an army that found itself fighting a ground war against them–hardened veterans all–on their own home turf. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in any army under any circumstances, but that has to be close to some sort of worst-case scenario.
I don’t want to be into any army either but, err, my understanding was that battle hardening didn’t make veterans of everyone… Apparently, Talibans were still brittle troops when the Americans showed up despite the resistance to the Soviet and the conquest of Afghanistan against all other Afghan factions…
Furthermore, it doesn’t even matter if the other side is made up of Rambos. As long as they got mostly small arms and light equipment, the technological edge of the greenest western army would guarantee a lopsided victory.
Which is why these type of fighters wisely choose to fight asymmetric wars and refuse to engage in battle… Man to man, they don’t seem to match up and even if they did no exposed infantryman will withstand an F-35 cruise missile…
Israel and the US do not have an endless supply of missiles or even 155mm artillery shells. Hezbollah appears to have a hefty inventory of rockets and missiles.
Speaking of avoiding conventional warfare, an earlier use of guerrilla-like tactics was employed by the US rebels back in the 1770s. Ethan Allen and the Green Moutain boys and such.
Hezbollah already fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, and that was despite Israel taking full advantage of its massive air superiority. Furthermore, Israel wasn’t simultaneously fighting a ground war in the Gaza strip. And in the 18 years since, Hezbollah has only gotten stronger. But yes, the Taliban were brittle to a full-strength invasion by the full weight of fresh American troops backed by the weight of an Article-5 activated NATO and the truly righteous anger still burning fresh from the horrors of 9/11. Also, what as an “F-35 cruise missile?” I feel like you’re just throwing around guesswork and buzzwords.
I was specifically addressing the idea that Hezbollah is a formidable army. They aren’t (afaict/imho). They’re an effective insurgency/guerrilla force.
F-35 can carry cruise missiles, I thought and checking Wikipedia and Lockheed Martin website, they agree – “The external wing stations can carry large air-to-surface weapons that would not fit inside the weapons bays such as the AGM-158 Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) cruise missile.”
Just a matter of wording. An F-35 carrying cruise missiles.
But do you want to expose an incredibly expensive aircraft to ground defenses just to launch cruise missiles? On such nearby targets?
Cruise missiles wouldn’t need to be air-launched, distances are so short there. Ground launch or sea launch I’d think. Exception maybe for a high value target.
Netanyahu’s decision making is more suspect as his position gets worse. A Politico article posited that he’s now increasingly being told what to do by the most extreme right wing of his wobbling coalition, which seems reasonable to me. I don’t know if there is a mechanism for him to be removed before the Gaza war “ends”, but one hopes there is, because otherwise it is in his interests for it to drag on longer than necessary.
JL – in line with your thoughts, why did Netanyahu choose to kill Al-Tawil while Anthony Blinken was in flight to the region?
As per story written before the news:
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Israel on Monday to discuss de-escalation efforts, the (Washington) Post reported.
“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Blinken’s spokesman Matthew Miller said as he boarded the plane, according to the Post.”
derek, my fear is that either Netanyahu or his right wing controllers may increasingly think a longer or wider war is in their interests. Which seems mad but I learned a long time ago that people make decisions based on their own information, motivations, and incentives, which may bear little relationship to the greater good or even objective reality.