Addressing a criticism

I'm running into this one with World War 1990 and saw it with my Israel Strikes books. Some Amazon reviewers say the Israelis are invincible. Other's say the Soviets weren't as bad military as I make them out to be.

On the Israelis first. Israel has one of the top five militaries in the world. They have to. They aren't  invincible, but they are capable, tough and adaptable. Their adaptability makes the Israelis most deadly. When they encounter problems in their war-fighting, as they did in 2006 against Hezbollah, they fix those problems. Consider, also, Israel's enemies. I have studies and published widely on the Arab-Israeli wars and I say without hesitation that Arabs can't fight.

Now a moment on the Soviets. I can't find the clip, but once, about 1990 I saw Tom Clancy on Charlie Rose. Talking about the Soviets, and this is a direct quote he said, 'The more I learn about  the Soviets the less and less I fear them.' That's right. The Soviet army was a top-heavy, blunt force object built to bull its way to victory. Its equipment was second class to that of western armies as were its rank and file. Therein lied a tremendous weakness. The Soviets had no non-com officer corps like western armies, just conscripts who were promoted forward for any number of reasons. To put it another way, the Red Army had no grizzled, veteran sergeants barking orders to the fresh recruits. This is a tremendous defect. I talked about it a bit in World War: 1990.

Lets look at another example that fuses the above two. The Gulf War. Saddam fielded a well trained and veteran army armed with the latest equipment, most of it Soviet. The U.S. Army cut the Iraqi Army to pieces. The Battle of  73 Easting was a massacre. Here two Republican Guard Divisions went up against the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Soviet armed and trained, the Iraqis new one direction: forward. The Americans destroyed two divisions in 12 hours.

The West also enjoyed a tremendous technological advantage. Night vision, GPS, smart bombs, Sabot shells. The Soviets had no equivalent to these except numbers.

I had thought I explained my reasons for thinking the West militarily superior to the Soviets. Perhaps I was not clear enough. If the readership didn't see what I was getting at, that's my fault not theirs and I will address this in the intro to World War 1990: Operation Eastern Storm.

That said, a reviewer noted that when reading Israel Strikes War of the Red Sea, they felt the Israelis were invincible:

While reading it, I felt that Israel was incapable of failure, that there was never any doubt that they would win with comparative ease. Not much suspense, just moving from victory to victory.

I think that's about right, don't you?