What we still don't understand about Hizbollah
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1838199,00.html
This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI
the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He
concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism and
that the West must engage politically to halt the relentless slaughter
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer
Israel has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat
Hizbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won't
work either. The problem is not that the Israelis have insufficient
military might, but that they misunderstand the nature of the enemy.
In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable with, say, a
religious cult such as the Taliban than to the multi-dimensional
American civil rights movement of the 1960s. What made its rise so
rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat militarily, was not its
international support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientation
of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.
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