Lebanese defense minister: Army will fight ground invasion

[tocqueville]

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Lebanon's army, which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion, Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Al-Jazeera television Thursday.

"The Lebanese army - and I stress - the Lebanese army will resist and defend and will prove that it is an army that deserves respect," he said.

In most of the previous Israeli attacks, including in 1978 and the 1982 invasion in which Beirut was occupied, the Lebanese army largely stayed out of the fighting.

Some 20 Lebanese soldiers have been killed in strikes on their bases during the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741100.html

[necso]

1. "Lebanon's army,

which so far has sat on the sidelines of the violence raging in the country, will fight an Israeli ground invasion".

This strikes me as a rather hollow threat (if true), since the Israeli airforce should be able to slaughter these guys on their way to the (likely) combat-zone -- even if the roadways were still passable.

But this statement reinforces one's perception that the window of opportunity for an easy Israeli seizure of a buffer-zone (in terms of (much) international reaction: which would have been that of surprise, but which now would be that of exacerbation to already strong ill-feelings) is already past. If they were going to do so, they should have done so already, leaving the world to confront a fait accompli -- as they have done in the past.

More generally, I'm unimpressed with the military plan for this attack, but until its outcome and consequences are clear, any critique is necessarily incomplete.