#failed strategy

by Daniel Greenfield

Everyone from retired general David Petraeus to current Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown offers the familiar criticisms that Israel is not following the COIN (counterinsurgency) model.

“Not only do you have to actually go in and clear out whatever adversary you are up against, you have to go in, hold the territory and then you’ve got to stabilize it,” Chief Brown argued.

The problem with this model is that it failed and left a lot of widows and orphans along the way.

The United States spent over 50 years losing wars, prestige and young men by trying to follow the familiar strategy for defeating guerrilla armies through conventional warfare followed by efforts to hold and stabilize the territories. And what exactly do we have to show for it?

The Israel Defense Forces discarded this conventional wisdom for another approach.

Rather than trying to hold territory filled with an enemy population among whom the terrorists move, it has used its manpower to attack concentrations of enemy forces, moving quickly and at times unpredictably, while refusing to get bogged down by trying to “hold” any particular area.

This strategy has frustrated the entire Hamas war plan which, like that of jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan, depended on using terror attacks to pin military units in place, forcing them to defend and patrol a territory, and then exploiting their weaknesses to launch ambushes.

Israel learned a hard lesson from Oct. 7. It’s not interested in playing defense anymore. Instead, the goal of the initial stages of the war has been to keep the terrorists forces on the defensive. Complaints that Israel has to “re clear” areas that it’s already taken miss the point. The enemy population supports the terrorists and so the area can’t be “cleared” or “stabilized.” But once Israel has taken control of terrorist infrastructure, it’s better able to understand their operations.

When Israel “re-cleared” Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, it took by surprise and captured much of the leadership of Islamic Jihad and some Hamas leaders as well. Rather than a weakness, re-clearing is a strength because when terrorists return to territory that Israel is now familiar with, it can turn the tables and launch surprise attacks on those old positions.

Israel is not fighting to take land, but to grind down enemy forces wherever they operate.

Jeb Bush Admits Illegal Alien Crime ‘Legitimate’ Concern as Donald Trump Surges Past Him in 2016 Polls

By:  Matthew Boyle

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has clearly decidedly softened his anti-Donald Trump tone after attacks on the billionaire real estate magnate—his biggest 2016 intra-GOP competition at this point—have backfired.

When Yahoo News’ Jon Ward asked Bush in an interview if he’s preparing to battle Trump in the debates—as Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reported earlieron Thursday—he flatly…