There has been much cyber ink spilled about the winners and losers of the recent dust-up between Hezbollah and Israel. One group of bloggers says the Hezbos won, another claims an Israeli victory. But it is only round one in what is going to be a long struggle. Let us not yet ask the fat lady to start warbling.
Hezbollah has spent the last 6 years preparing the ground in southern Lebanon. It built underground tunnels and installations, collected thousands of missiles and launchers and established itself politically and militarily as a force to be reckoned with. It has set up Syrian and Iranian contacts and re-supply lines. The Hezbos have shown the world that nothing gets done in Lebanon without its approval. Its methods to win the hearts and minds of the locals could be delicately described as efficient.
When Hezbollah struck Israel it is perhaps true that its leader Nasrallah completely misjudged how the Israelis would respond. It might also be true that Olmert was a poor war time leader, hesitant and insecure. It might also be true that the IDF was not allowed to fight as it wished to, hamstrung as it was by the political leadership in the Knesset. It might also be true that George Bush at first encouraged Israel to completely destroy Hezbollah, to root out the terror infection root and branch from southern Lebanon. It might also be true that Bush was appalled at the sight of Olmert going wobbly, and so sent Condi out to cobble together the best cease-fire he could get under the auspices of the UN to end the fighting until Israel could elect a more competent war time leadership. It might also be true that Nasrallah actually believes that he and his practiced killers had defeated Israel.
Nothing in the above paragraph is known for sure. All is speculative. The truth of all of it will not be known for some time—maybe a long time. But we do know unquestionably some things. Such as:
Hezbollah lost at least 3000 of its killers. Israel lost 120 soldiers. Israel has maintained the brutal calculus of the ‘western way of war’ kill-ratios, in this case 25 to 1. The US in the Pacific 1942-45 maintained a kill ratio of 22-1. The infrastructure of terror painstakingly built over the past 6 years has been by and large demolished. Nasrallah can jump up and down upon the rubble of his shattered castles and scream ‘Victory!’ all he wants. Such bombast is in keeping with the ‘Arab way of war’—blood curdling threats, as many civilians killed as possible, hiding behind women and children, bringing in the Western media and parading around a bunch of corpses on camera—but the facts of war are pesky things. Hezbollah has suffered a severe degrading of its combat capacity.
The Hezbos are in no shape to initiate another war. They need arms and money from Iran and its Levantine puppet, Syria. Israel, however, if given the political will could have the Jewish flag over Damascus in one week. And the IDF is still in southern Lebanon.
So those who have been crowing about a Hezbollah victory or obsessing over an Israeli defeat, please calm yourselves. The thing is not over. All opinions about the war in the Pacific right before the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea were also rendered moot right afterward. The US has cards yet to play, as does Iran, Israel, Syria and the Hezbos.
So stay tuned. There is yet much blood to be spilt.
(Update: See this Haaretz editorial concerning some of the issues mentioned above. The game is not over. Far from it, in fact.)
(Update: As usual, Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent assessment.)
4 Comments;
You make a good case, Mike, but, in the interest of playing devil`s advocate, it bears pointing out that Hezbollah is being given the chance to disarm thanks to this idiotic cease-fire, and that the popular perception in the Arab world is that they won a great victory-and the perception is sometimes more important than the reality.
Still, I agree with you in most ways; Israel gave better than they got, and there will indeed be more blood spilled.
Good post!
This latest UN cease-fire wil go the way of all UN cease-fires. I ask you: Is there any organization in the history of man so insipid, so impotent, so wasteful, so vapid, so inane, so full of hate and so corrupt as the UN? Your recent post on that Turtle Bay imbecility makes the point better than I can.
I have a sneaking hunch that neither side put anything more than rhetoric into the cease-fire. And you are right on the money, as the Hezbos are indeed re-arming.
But so are the Israelis. They have learned and they will make the necessary tactical and logistical corrections. I doubt that Nasrallah, suffused as he is with fantasies of victory and the cheers of the mob, has learned anything. So be it.
The Arabs will never admit defeat. The Arab street has been force-fed dreams of grandeur for so long that it has rendered itself incapable of seeing the absurdity of its position.
I call this the opening shot of what our children will call The Great Middle East War. It will pit Western Civilization—what is left of it—against the ideology of radical Islam. It will be fought everywhere and all the time. Only one side will survive. The other will go the way of Carthage.
Fasten your seat-belt, Tim!
Once again, you have sought out the plain truth and have found it.
So many people try and put words like defeat and victory onto things that are not yet finished.
God Bless.
John.
Thank you, John, for your kind words.
You reminded me what a real victory in the Middle East would look like. Not like Korea in 1953 or Vietnam in 1973, but rather like a bunch of Japanese officials on board an American warship signing terms of surrender.
But who could speak for the ideology of Islamic fascism? Would there be anyone remaining with status enough to surrender? Or might the last holdouts choose to go out in a blaze of suicidal horror?