Bloody Gaza

 I had written before that urban warfare is terrible, and that the tunnels and dug in terrorists would be hard for Israel to defeat, and I compared it to the siege of Marawi.

Strategy Page discusses what the Israelis will face, and what the locals will face: They will be caught between fanatics who will use their deaths as propaganda and so won't protect them, and the Israelis, who will try to protect civilians but know if they don't root out Hamas that they will face more atrocities.

read it and weep.

 SP compares the urban warfare not to Marawi, but to the siege of Manila in 1945, a story few Yanks know about,

The battle of Manila lasted a month. At least 100,000 Filipino civilians were killed of whom 60,000 were massacred by the Japanese, and 40,000 during the fighting, mostly by American artillery.

 

American casualties were 1000 dead/missing and 5600 wounded. Another 250,000 civilians were wounded. Comparable casualties for an Israeli ground conquest of Gaza would be two months duration, 276,000 civilians dead (mostly massacred by Hamas), and 2300 Israeli dead/missing and 12,900 wounded, which would be similar to those of the Yom Kippur War.

and they go into the details.

Something to remember when discussing war: What is the alternative?

Making peace is always better: but the history of the twentieth century suggests that premature peace that does not completely eliminate an enemy who is fighting for an extremist ideology (Nazi, communism,  radical Islam) results in a resurgence of war later (e.g. WWI, Sadam Hussein, the many wars of Israel),

And allowing such a tyranny in place often results in  more of it's civilians being killed by that government than would have died if the war had been fought to the end (USSR, Mao's China, PolPot, VietNam. Saddam Hussein's wars and massacres etc.)

Sigh.