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I am amazed at how long and difficult today's wars seem to be compared to the epic battles of WW2. So Israel has staged a ground invasion of Gaza by armor, infantry and air power. Gaza is as tiny as a battle front can be but by all accounts it is already clear Israel is not making the headway they expected. Now, how long do you think Gaza would last if Hans Guderian had his armor and infantry unleashed on Gaza? I think the battle would be over in a day. I would even make this trade. I would let Hamas keep their 21st century weapons, complete with their rockets, RPGs and AKs and limit Germans to their Panzers, Mausers, MG-42 and Skodas.
Very difficult to compare a total war conflict to a limited conflict with limited goals.
In WW2 one side would simply carpet bomb the place and level it, and the enemy would either leave or surrender. But even in WW2 the Nazi's did not rely on the civilian population to hide amongst. The allies did not have to deal with insurgencies, as they were the liberator in most instances. The Nazi's were however faced with insurgencies and their measures for dealing with that were brutal in the extreme.
But this is a limited invasion with limited goals, and Israel would face global condemnation if there were simply to level Gaza, and I would think their own citizens would object to such indiscriminate slaughter. But the IDF has adapted to this type of warfare very well, even as Hamas hides amongst its citizens, and they have defined goals - close the tunnels, destroy the rocket factories and launching sites, and destroy as many armed Hamas fighters as possible. Don't worry about the IDF, they can take care of business.
Not every battle in WW2 was won by carpet bombing. Carpet bombing actually was a signature of the allies. Many great battles were waged by infantry and armor in running gun fights and hand to hand combat. How did Warsaw fall? Belgium, Netherlands, Norway. The battles that were ensued for weeks after D-Day landing. I still like to know how a blitzkrieg against Gaza would look like today? It does not have to involve a massacre. Problem is IDF does not have the manpower to do what it takes to roll over the city and subdue Hamas. Paratroopers would land on them if they had do. They took an entire island of Crete on foot. There is no reason for Hamas to be able to still fire missiles. It is not a big place.
Re: Don't worry about IDF , they can take care of business'
For sure. But in war it is not only the fight with metal but the one one can't see and that is the psychological aspect of battle and war. Israel has its missile shield which is a proper defense but it cannot defend against all missiles fired. I do not know the extent to which the country can deal with the missiles coming in but arguably it can have them paying a price if it continues for a while longer. In war populations do have a limit as to how much they 'can take' when under fire.
World War 2 was fought based on a strategy of total war. Civilians were seen as targets on the same level as soldiers. Read more about the fire bombing and atomic bomb attacks on Japanese cities or the bombing campaign against Dresden and other German cities.
The US fought it's last total war between 1941 and 1945. We have not won any major conflicts since then with our limited war strategy.
Not every battle in WW2 was won by carpet bombing. Carpet bombing actually was a signature of the allies. Many great battles were waged by infantry and armor in running gun fights and hand to hand combat. How did Warsaw fall? Belgium, Netherlands, Norway. The battles that were ensued for weeks after D-Day landing. I still like to know how a blitzkrieg against Gaza would look like today? It does not have to involve a massacre. Problem is IDF does not have the manpower to do what it takes to roll over the city and subdue Hamas. Paratroopers would land on them if they had do. They took an entire island of Crete on foot. There is no reason for Hamas to be able to still fire missiles. It is not a big place.
But the point is - this type of warfare, "asymitrical" if you want to call it that, cannot compare to the conventional warfare of WW2. Warsaw fell when Poland fell during the Nazi invasion in a conventional conflict of war. During the Warsaw uprising, which might be a little better comparison (only a little better, still not much of a comparison) Warsaw and it's rebellious population was subdued by brutally destroying the city of Warsaw and much of it's population.
As a civilized country, Israel has no desire to do what the German's did to Warsaw. So they are left the option to do the tougher task of rooting out these elements that Hamas uses to kill Israelis. Israeli generals have goals and objectives in mind - it's not to "roll over a city", that is impractical, but it's to take out these rocket manufacture sites (Hamas and Gaza citizens can construct a rocket for less then a $1,000 in materials and some welding skills), take out the tunnels (Hamas uses them to smuggle in Iranian rockets from Egypt, and sneak in suicide bombers into Israel), and otherwise kill any of the Hamas military branch that they can. This works, but it is only temporary - Hamas rebuilds tunnels and it's rocket factories over time. But they have a long term strategy as well - get rid of Hamas politically and diplomatically and by economic punitive measures, and compel the people of Gaza to elect a government that has some semblance of sanity, as Hamas's stated goals are to wipe out Israel from the face of the earth. So you can see, the complex geo political factors combined with limited armed tactics can in no way compare to WW2.
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If Israel fought Hamas like we fought Japan it would be over in an hour..
Completely destroy the entire city, send everything you have in there and kill anything that moves...
You might think I would I agree with you but it doesn't have to be like that. It is ironic that our own inexperienced boys faced a far tougher task in the second battle of Fallujah and came out winners. When it was all over, the Marines went through 50,000 homes, every one of them, and cleared the city. The record of Israel's military in the past two decades has been less than stellar. They enter fights but they don't finish it. Granted, the wars are not the same as the 6 day war but you can't keep going back and doing the same thing. Hezbollah got a beating in 2006 but they were allowed to build up again right under Israel's nose. The Hamas situation is even more disturbing. These rockets are not home made. It is nothing short of astonishing to be able to amass so much for a place that is locked on all fronts. And those tunnels. How do you dig miles and miles without Israel noticing. Where did all that dirt go? I suspect this campaign will end up the same way. Inconclusive.
Yes but Fallujah is already back in the hands of muslim extremest, yes? Such is the price of a limited war vs. a total war. Casualties are less in the short term, but what about the long term?
It's not an issue of Israel tactics being less then stellar, it's just the nature of modern conflict compared to the conventional 6 days war or Yom Kippur war. It may be argued that Isreal is only dealing with tactics, not strategy. If they came in to destroy Hamas for once and for all, with not hundreds, but tens of thousands of civilians casualties, would it save lives in the long term? One can only guess.
Without getting into they sensitive topic of politics - Israel calls what they are doing "mowing the grass", and it works...at least for a few years, attacks slow down, until Hamas strengthens it supplies and gathers enough rockets and once again acts out. This isn't the first time, there have been I think 3 other incursions into Gaza to "mow the grass". So it probably won't be the last either.
For your last few sentences, I am not sure what to make of it - it's well documented that Hamas both makes very rudimentary rockets and gets more advanced rockets from Syria and Iran, and also have an extensive system of tunnels used for smuggling and military operations that go both into Egypt and Isreal, Hamas brags about it. Those facts are not disputed at all. Since the Egyptian portion of Sinai is pretty much lawless right now, I would think the smuggling operations are even easier.
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