Editorial: Dirty Tricks, Politics and Military Tactics
Israel is supplementing their military tactics and logistics operations with “intelligence operations,” assassination, and sabotage. Dirty tricks at the right time can win a battle, and sometimes just winning the right battle can win the whole war. But they do not win wars of themselves. They need to only be employed when they make a critical change to the battle outcome that has a lasting effects. But Israel isn’t doing that. What they are doing is only making their tactical situation worse and burning through very limited options.
The first case I want to make is the pager attack. It was a brilliantly executed plan. Had Israel been in a major assault on Hezbollah, triggering that as they responded, or if Hezbollah had been in the process of making a major assault themselves and it was triggered, the chaos those explosions would have created would have disrupted operation and made a massive difference in the casualty figures of the two forces. What Israel did was a political terror attack that killed and maimed a few people and royally pissed off the rest. Not only was there no significant tactical gain, there was the loss of that ability to create chaos behind enemy lines, and the strengthening of Hezbollah all along that front. A lot of money and time wasted for negative results.
The drone launch from inside Iran was the next one. Taking out those air defenses in that way was also a brilliant, well-executed move. But that move will only be that effective the first time you use it. You should never use such a onetime option for anything short of going after vital strategic objective that immediately damages your enemy’s ability to respond, as part of a larger operation. These targets were politics, and have minimal effect of their ability to launch wave after wave of drones or their ability to fight in any other fashion and will be repaired shortly. When they vitally need to take those defenses down, they will no longer have that quick, effective means of doing so and will have to forgo hitting targets that they need to hit. What this did mostly was to piss off a lot of people for very little tactical gain and the loss of the ability to make such a surprise attack.
These moves were not good military tactics. They were throwing away work others had done for gain on the political chessboard. The right political move can make a government much stronger, and the wrong one destroys it. This one cost lives on both sides and loses them a lot of tactician advantages. Will the political gains from it be worth that? What do you think?
