Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
, Israeli forces and Hezbollah terror operatives have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.
It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.
Lebanon’s widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country’s sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the frontrunners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.
But with an aging arsenal and no air defenses, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel’s. Moreover, Israel is explicitly fighting solely against Hezbollah, and not against the Lebanese army or the Lebanese state.
The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, with around 5,000 of them deployed in the country’s south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the Iran-backed terror group’s slain leader, His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
. Its arsenal — built with support from Tehran — is also more advanced.
A CAUTIOUS INITIAL RESPONSE
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have been clashing since October 8, 2023, when the terror group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
, which committed a massacre in southern Israel a day earlier.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted a major aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a ground offensive that it says aims to push Hezbollah back from the border — as required by a 2006 UN Security Council Resolution — and allow tens of thousands of displaced residents of northern Israel to return after a year.
As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese army soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 5 kilometers (3 miles) back.
So far, Israeli forces have not advanced that far. The only direct festivities between the two national armies were on October 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army position in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier, and on Friday, when two soldiers were killed in an
...
KABOOM!...
in the same area. The Lebanese army said it returned fire both times.
Lebanon’s army declined to comment on how it would react if Israeli ground forces advanced farther.
Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one.
The army’s "natural and automatic mission is to defend Lebanon against any army that may enter Lebanese territory," said former Lebanese Army Gen. Hassan Jouni. "Of course, if the Israeli enemy enters, it will defend, but within the available capabilities ... without going to the point of recklessness or suicide."
ISRAELI AND LEBANESE ARMIES ARE ’A TOTAL OVERMATCH’
The current Israeli offensive in Lebanon is its fourth in the neighboring country in the past 50 years. In most of the previous invasions, the Lebanese army played a similarly peripheral role.
The one exception, said Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, was in 1972, when Israel attempted to create a 20-kilometer (12-mile) buffer zone to push back Paleostinian Liberation Organization fighters.
At that time, Nerguizian said, the Lebanese army successfully slowed the pace of the Israeli advance and "bought time for politicianship in Beirut to seek the intervention of the international community to pressure Israel for a ceasefire."
But the internal situation in Lebanon — and the army’s capabilities — deteriorated with the outbreak of a 15-year civil war in 1975, during which both Israeli and Syrian forces occupied parts of the country.
Hezbollah was the only faction that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war, for the stated goal of resisting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon — which ended in 2000.
By 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a bruising monthlong war, the Lebanese army "had not been able to invest in any real-world postwar modernization, had no ability to deter Israeli air power" and "was left completely exposed," Nerguizian said. "The few times that the [Lebanese army] and Israeli forces did engage militarily, there was total overmatch."
iINTERNATIONAL AID HAS BEEN A MIXED BLESSING
After the 2011 outbreak of civil war in neighboring Syria and the rise of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS or ISIS) terror group there, the Lebanese army saw a new influx of military aid. It successfully battled against ISIS on Lebanon’s border in 2017, although not alone — Hezbollah was simultaneously attacking the group on the other side of the border.
When Lebanon’s financial system and currency collapsed in 2019, the army took a hit. It had no budget to buy weapons and maintain its existing supplies, vehicles and aircraft. An average soldier’s salary is now worth around $220 per month, and many resorted to working second jobs. At one point, the United States and Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
both gave a monthly subsidy for soldiers’ salaries.
The US had been a primary funder of the Lebanese army before the crisis. It has given some $3 billion in military aid since 2006, according to the State Department, which said in a statement that it aims "to enable the Lebanese military to be a stabilizing force against regional threats" and "strengthen Lebanon’s illusory sovereignty, secure its borders, counter internal threats, and disrupt terrorist facilitation."
US President Joe
The Big GuyBiden
...46th president of the U.S. We get to suffer the consequences...
’s administration has also touted the Lebanese army as a key part of any diplomatic solution to the current war, with hopes that increased deployment of its forces would supplant Hezbollah in the border area.
But that support has limits. Aid to the Lebanese army has sometimes been politically controversial within the US, with some politicians arguing that it could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, although there is no evidence that has happened.
In Lebanon, many believe that the US has blocked the army from obtaining more advanced weaponry that might allow it to defend against Israel — America’s strongest ally in the region and the recipient of at least $17.9 billion in US military aid in the year since the war in Gaza began.
"It is my personal opinion that the United States does not allow the [Lebanese] military to have advanced air defense equipment, and this matter is related to Israel," said Walid Aoun, a retired Lebanese army general and military analyst.
Nerguizian said the perception is "not some conspiracy or half-truth," noting that the US has enacted a legal requirement to support Israel’s qualitative military edge relative to all other militaries in the region.
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