Much has been made of the surprising outcome of the recent Lebanon war, in which a guerrilla army survived a furious assault by Israel, a mini-superpower. Although much of the discussion has concerned tactics and weapons, there appears to be a deeper lesson in the outcome of this conflict. When a powerful state makes war on a weak adversary, the longer the conflict continues, the more it undermines the morale of the powerful state. This is because human nature is repelled by the abuse of the weak by the powerful. In short, a protracted guerrilla war causes the military morale of the aggressor power to decay.
Although a full analysis of the Israel-Hezbollah war has yet to be completed, there is telling anecdotal evidence of an undermining of Israeli military morale. Here are some items supporting the argument:
1. A high proportion of officer casualties suffered by Israel. When enlisted personnel, who make up the majority of military ranks are not represented proportionally in casualty statistics, there is grounds for suspicion of morale problems serious enough to cause troops to refuse combant.
2. An unwillingness to accept high casualties to secure battlefield objectives. Unlike the US forces who incurred very heavy casualties in WWII to defeat suicidal Japanese troops in the Pacific islands campaign, the Israeli forces were unwilling to accept high casualties to crush Hezbollah strongholds.
3. Public complaints by Israeli soldiers about inefficiency and poor leadership in their high command. I cannot recall an equivalent display of resentment by troops toward the Israeli military leadership since the Yom Kippur war, and then the discontent was largely directed at the intelligence failure in detecting the surprise Arab attack.
4. Repeated citation of counterinsurgency duty against Palestinians in the occupied territories as a factor weakening the Israeli ground forces. This factor is very important, because it confirms a general principle that several guerrilla war theorists have stated: Indecisive war of the strong against the weak weakens the strong and strengthens the weak.
In summary, the relatively poor performance of the highly-regarded Israeli military against Hezbollah appears to reflect a serious decay of morale attributable to Israel's long and debilitating struggle against feeble opposition in the Occupied Territories.
The US Army should take note, because it seems that a similar destructive mechanism is at work on our forces in Iraq. The recent spate of atrocity reports suggests decaying US Army morale and leadership effectiveness in Iraq. We have more to fear from asymmetric warfare than IEDs and ambushes; we are at risk of losing the functional cohesion of our army.