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Lebanon war, 2006

It has constantly attacked Israel since Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and in 2006 it again attacked Israel without provocation. Hizbollah wants to bury the Lebanon revolution. The last thing it wants is liberal democracy in Lebanon. (It's the last thing Iran and Syria want as well.)

Everything about Hizbollah is contemptible, from their methods (attacking civilians) to their goals (destroying Israel, and enslaving Lebanon under Islamic rule). As long as Hizbollah exists, the conflict with Israel will continue.

The war of 2006

• 2006 Gaza conflict
• 2006 Israel-Hizbollah conflict

• Hizbollah is the joint 4th largest party in Lebanon, with 14 seats out of 128. It is not just in parliament, but is a minority partner in the government of Lebanon.

• The government of Lebanon is not as innocent as I first thought:
  • The government of Lebanon has expressed a lot of support for Hizbollah, and there is evidence that its army has collaborated with them (also here and here). But they were in the end sensible enough not to openly join the war against Israel.
  • Hizbullah leader Nasrallah: I Told Lebanese Political Leaders We Would Abduct Israeli Soldiers (or here) "and nobody said to me: 'No, you are not allowed to abduct Israeli soldiers.'"
  • Amir Taheri says Nasrallah consulted with Iran before starting the war, but never informed the two Hezbollah ministers in the Lebanese cabinet, let alone the rest of the cabinet.
  • Alan M. Dershowitz, July 30, 2006: "Intelligence sources have confirmed that elements of the Lebanese army have been working with Hizbullah terrorists from the beginning of this conflict, providing the terrorists with electronic, radar and other logistical supports. ... Hizbullah is on the wrong side of morality, international law and human rights. If the Lebanese army now joins it in fighting against Israel's efforts to stop terrorism, it will become complicit with terrorism and a legitimate military target. ... It would be wise and moral for it to stay out of the fight and preserve its firepower to use against the real enemy of Lebanese democracy - Hizbullah."
  • Claudia Rosett on the spectrum in Lebanon from the heroic Cedar Revolution democrats to the far more compromised Lebanese government: "despite the courage and desire for healthy democratic government shown by the majority of the Lebanese people in last year's Cedar Revolution, the current Lebanese government and parliament are still packed with Syrian acolytes such as President Emile Lahoud and Speaker Nabih Berri, as well as with cabinet members and parliamentarians who serve as a political front for Hezbollah's heavily armed protection rackets and terrorist militia"

• The Cedar Revolution has blinded us to the fact that many Lebanese are extremists. They aren't at all as moderate as the Cedar Revolution makes them out to be:
  • The majority in Lebanon (May 2003) want to end the state of Israel.
  • The majority of Lebanese (Dec 2002) support suicide bombing of Jews.
  • The majority in Lebanon (May 2003) were disappointed that Saddam did not put up more of a fight.

• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
  • The future
  • Lebanon and Gaza prove that Israel ending the occupation won't bring peace.
  • Peace will only come when the Islamic world changes, and embraces democracy, human rights and religious tolerance. In particular, there will never be peace until the regimes of Iran and Syria fall.

• As Bush said in his own Bush-like fashion: "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over."
  • This actually sums up the Middle East problem in a nutshell. If the Arabs would stop attacking Israel, the problem would be over. There would be peace and prosperity. It's really as simple as that, and has been as simple as that since 1947. If you want peace, tell the Arabs to stop attacking Israel.
  • This does not of course work in reverse. If Israel disbanded its military and withdrew from the occupied territories back to its minimum possible borders, there would not be peace. The war would escalate.

• Raymond Deane of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign defends Hezbollah's July 2006 cross-border attack on Israel (killing 8 Israeli soldiers, kidnapping 2, and launching dozens of random rocket attacks on civilians in Israel, injuring several civilians). He describes Hezbollah's raid as "the perfectly legitimate capture by uniformed combatants of soldiers engaging in upholding illegal policies".

The Israeli military response

• Israel responded by seizing the opportunity to deal with Hizbollah once and for all.
• Post about Gaza and Lebanon: "There has been some complaint about Israel's reactions in Gaza as "asymmetrical." Those complaints are, frankly, silly. Military actions in war are meant to be asymmetrical and lead to victory. They are not meant to be measured to achieve a stalemate."

• Many Lebanese support a campaign to free their country from Hezbollah, though not necessarily by war.
  • Letter to Israel from Lebanese Foundation for Peace: "It was about time. We Lebanese congratulate you on your recent actions against the Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon. We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation. ... We urge you not to hit the Lebanese infrastructure, Lebanon is a friendly country, rather hit and totally destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure in the country. ... On behalf of thousands of Lebanese, we ask you to open the doors of Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport to thousands of volunteers in the Diaspora willing to bear arms and liberate their homeland from fundamentalism."
  • In fairness, as with the Irish "Peace" Society, they shouldn't call themselves the Lebanese Foundation for "Peace", since they support war. They should call themselves the "Lebanese Foundation for Destroying Islamist Terror", and be proud of it.
  • Thank You Israel by Brigitte Gabriel - "For the millions of Christian Lebanese, driven out of our homeland, "Thank you Israel," is the sentiment echoing from around the world."
  • More Lebanese urging attacks on Hezbollah here and here.

• The most hypocritical people on earth by Michael Béhé, 30 July 2006, expresses the despair of Lebanese democrats at the cancer of Hezbollah in their midst, and (much more of a minority opinion in Lebanon) supports Israel's assault on them:
  • "The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, ... What they did not know - and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror - is the extent of this phagocytosis. In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it: we stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and that the firing of such devices without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon."
  • "The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559 and which included most of the Lebanese political movements were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home."
  • "Without the Israelis, how could we have received another chance - that we in no way deserve! - to rebuild our country? Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching - cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot - their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth."
  • "I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. ... And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims - civilian and military - whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them."

• A Strange War: Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists, by Victor Davis Hanson:
  • "The only difference from the usual scripted Middle East war is that this time, privately at least, most of the West, and perhaps some in the Arab world as well, want Israel to wipe out Hezbollah, and perhaps hit Syria or Iran"
  • "What should the United States do? If it really cares about human life and future peace, then we should talk ad nauseam about "restraint" and "proportionality" while privately assuring Israel the leeway to smash both Hamas and Hezbollah - and humiliate Syria and Iran, who may well come off very poorly from their longed-for but bizarre war. Only then will Israel restore some semblance of deterrence and strengthen nascent democratic movements in both Lebanon and even the West Bank. This is the truth that everyone from London to Cairo knows, but dares not speak."
  • "So after 9/11, the London bombings, the Madrid murders, the French riots, the Beslan atrocities, the killings in India, the Danish cartoon debacle, Theo Van Gogh, and the daily arrests of Islamic terrorists trying to blow up, behead, or shoot innocent people around the globe, the world is sick of the jihadist ilk. ... Instead, a disgusted world secretly wants these terrorists to get what they deserve. And who knows: This time they just might."

The Islamist way of war

• While the Israeli military targeted and attacked enemy Hizbollah positions, Hizbollah of course randomly attacked Israeli civilians with rockets. To them, any Jew is a legitimate target.
• Richard Fernandez notes that Israel does precision bombing, while Hizbollah does morale bombing. And bizarrely, precision bombing gets criticised more, since the expectations are higher.

• The Islamist way of war

• Israel tries to hit military targets.
  • The Palestinians try to kill civilians.
  • The Palestinians try to kill children.
  • The Palestinians use their own children in war

• In the cockpit, Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2006 - An F-16 pilot in the Israeli Air Force talks about bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon.
  • "Major E, my formation leader walks into the briefing room ... He is concerned about making mistakes, and bombing the wrong targets. He is experienced, and has been around long enough to see mistakes happen and innocent civilians killed. A friend of his, a helicopter pilot once mistook a letter in a target's name, and ended up shooting at the wrong target, killing a whole family. Major E does not want the same thing to happen to us. He emphasizes that there is no rush, that we must check and recheck every coordinate we receive, make sure we understand EXACTLY what we are supposed to target."
  • "It's strange how the focus in these missions is not to succeed, hit the target precisely, but rather - not to make any mistakes. The message is clear all the way from the Squadron commander to the last pilot. One mistake can jeopardize the whole war, like in Kfar-Kana, in one of the last operations in Lebanon, where artillery bombarded a refugee camp, killing over 100 people, which resulted in international pressure that halted the operation. Hitting the target is expected, no misses are acceptable. There aren't any congratulations for a well-performed mission. Only a hammer on the head if something goes wrong. Personally, I think it's a healthy attitude; it causes the whole system to be less rash and hot on the trigger."
  • You may not believe this. You may not believe the Israelis are so careful. But consider this: Can you show me one single story where Hezbollah or Hamas or Fatah or the PLO or any other Islamist fighters are ever told by their commanders to be careful to avoid civilian casualties? Has this ever happened in the last 60 years? Tell me about it here.

• UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland "accused Hezbollah .. of "cowardly blending" in among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel." He said: "Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children. I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."
• Michael Béhé, 30 July 2006, denies that Israel has caused great destruction to Beirut. (He lives there.) He says they hit enemy command centres only. "all those who speak of the 'destruction of Beirut' are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this work you understand the meaning of the concept 'surgical strikes' and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots. Beirut, all the rest of Beirut, 95% of Beirut, lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 pm to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them"
• Deadly Hezbollah chess match by James G. Zumwalt, October 26, 2006 - Article on the conversion of private homes into military sites for Hezbollah attacks. "There was one major flaw in Hezbollah's home-conversion-to-missile-launch-site plan: Their construction activities had not gone unnoticed by Israeli intelligence. Closely monitoring Hezbollah's activities, they knew in advance the locations of most sites. As each room was completed, it had been added to Israel's target list so, once fighting started, it could quickly be destroyed - its civilian hosts in many cases becoming collateral damage due to Hezbollah's illegal use of such a tactic."

• Civilians under Assault: Hezbollah's Rocket Attacks on Israel in the 2006 War, August 2007 - The anti-Israel Human Rights Watch does manage also to point out the obvious - that Hezbollah's entire military strategy was a war crime.
  • HRW says: "Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets indiscriminately and at times deliberately at civilian areas in northern Israel, ... Hezbollah's justifications for its attacks on Israeli towns - as a response to indiscriminate Israeli fire into southern Lebanon and to draw Israel into a ground war - had no legal basis under the laws of war. ... Hezbollah's explanations for why it fired rockets at Israel's civilian population utterly fail to justify these unlawful attacks."
  • Fair play to them. Though HRW do show their naivety: "Human Rights Watch urges Hezbollah, as a matter of practice and doctrine, to cease all attacks that deliberately target civilians". Why on earth would Hezbollah do that? "The report also urges the governments of Syria and Iran not to permit the transfer to Hezbollah of materiel, including rockets that Hezbollah has used in violation of international humanitarian law." Oh, Syria and Iran will be really upset that killing Jews indiscriminately is wrong.

The Qana massacre, July 2006

• The Qana massacre, 30 July 2006, at least 28 women and children killed in Israeli airstrike against Hezbollah rocket launching positions. A black day for Israel.

• Otherwise intelligent people are prepared to believe that Israel wanted to do this (i.e. actually targeted civilians). Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand the first thing about the nature of Israel, and its modern, western, pluralist, secular democratic society.
• But failing that, even more otherwise intelligent people are prepared to believe that Israel doesn't care. Again they do not understand. This is a disaster for Israel, and it knows it. This is the kind of thing the IDF is told to avoid at all costs. It is, unfortunately, a great victory for Hezbollah (their greatest victory of the war so far).

• Unlike, say, the deliberate allied bombing in WW2, the fact is this is a screw-up. How could such a screw-up happen?
  • IDF video of Hezbollah launching rockets from civilian area of Qana, date unknown.
  • IDF video: of Hezbollah in Qana, 22 July (8 days earlier).
  • Photos of Hezbollah artillery in built-up civilian areas, with Hezbollah fighters wearing civilian clothes to blend in.
  • Why do Hezbollah do this? Why do they launch their rockets from the middle of their own civilians? And then run into civilian buildings afterwards?
  • The Islamist way of war
  • Hezbollah must be delighted by the Qana airstrike. They have been trying to achieve such an effect for weeks. (In what way have they behaved otherwise? In what way have they been trying to protect their own civilians? Show me evidence here.)

  • The IDF says: "Residents in this region and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance to leave the village. ... The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians, but this is the result of Hizbullah terrorist organization's contemptible use of Lebanese civilians as human shields."
  • IAF admit there were no rocket attacks that day. The building seems to have been on the list from previous rocket attacks. "what the IAF is admitting here does not reflect well on their targeting policies."
  • IDF report: "Hizbullah places Lebanese civilians as a barrier between us and them, while the IDF places itself as a barrier between Israeli civilians and the terror of Hizbullah. This is the chief difference between us and Hizbullah." That is true, but the IDF still screwed up.

• The anti-Hezbollah, Lebanese World Council of the Cedars Revolution agrees with the IDF:
  • Hezbollah Is Responsible For The Massacre - "The WCCR accuses Hezbollah and its regional allies of intentionally forcing .. the communities under the control of Hezbollah's militias to become a shield for Hezbollah's military operations. By doing so, Hezbollah is breaching international law and must respond to international responsibility. ... The Council .. strongly condemns the deployment by Hezbollah of artillery and rockets in the vicinity of civilian population centers. This tactic, which puts civilians at risk of death and destruction, is a war crime to be sanctioned by international law. The Council attributes the responsibility of the deaths of Lebanese citizens by Israeli fire, to Hezbollah's leadership and to its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. ... The Council calls for an investigation of this war crime by questioning Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah militiamen who were deployed at the location of the massacre. The Cedars Revolution is not going to allow Terrorists to use the blood and flesh of Lebanese citizens to shield their organization from disarmament. It won't accept that an entire Lebanese community is taken into hostage by a Pro-Iranian, pro-Syrian organization which aim is to obstruct democracy in Lebanon and reverse the Cedars Revolution. ... the Council calls on the Lebanese masses to resist the tactics of Terrorism and to upraise against Hezbollah's control of civilian centers. Let M. Nasrallah and his supporters chose another land to wage their personal wars with whomever they want. Lebanon is not their private property to use and abuse."

• This was a screw-up:
  • Charles Krauthammer: "Israel .. has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed. Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not"

• Too Nice To Win? Israel's Dilemma - Fascinating article by John Podhoretz. What if defeating Islamism will ultimately require war crimes like those committed by the Allies in WW2? "If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?"
  • Can we do it? The answer so far is no, and I am glad of that. Let us fight cleanly and morally and according to our rules, not theirs, as long as we can. But if Israel, America and other western countries really start to feel an existential threat, I believe we will do as our grandparents did. A nuclear attack on Tel Aviv and heavily-armed Israel would not go meekly into the gas chamber. It would suddenly change, as America suddenly changed in 1941. It would suddenly care little about enemy civilian life as it struggled desperately to survive. And it would unleash hell on Iran and its other enemies. Because this is how other fighting democracies have always behaved when faced with extinction.
  • The whole point of confronting Iran and other Islamists now is to ensure it never comes to that. As I've said many times, the neo-cons are trying to fight this war now, in 1933, when Islamism is still new and weak, rather than wait until 1939, when Islamism is strong and nuclear armed, and the West turns to real war crimes in a desperate struggle for survival.

Iran and Syria next?

• Robert Tracinski:
  • The War Comes to Us - argues that this is, at last, the start of the showdown with Iran and Syria. Of course, Iran and Syria have been at low-level war with Israel and America (e.g. in Iraq) for years. They just have been unable to provoke a full-scale war yet. "this is a regional war. It is a not a series of isolated conflicts in Gaza and Iraq. It is all one battle, with America and its allies on one side - and Iran and its agents on the other. ... Iran has revealed its hand, challenging the US and its allies and openly demonstrating its desire to dominate the Middle East through force and terror. While we have been trying to delay the war with Iran, it has brought the war to us ... There can be no question here about whether Iran really has aggressive designs in the Middle East, whether it really seeks the weapons to attack the US and its allies, and how long it might take for such a threat to materialize. The threat is here and Iran's newest war on the West has already begun."

  • Iran's Strategy Is Crudely Obvious - So Why Can't We Fight It? - Iran and Syria started this war for obvious reasons, to fight back against the democratisation of Lebanon and Iraq. There is no real solution until the end of these two regimes.
    • "The Iranian strategy to buy time .. is simple to defeat: declare that Hezbollah's aggression against Israel is proof of Iran's evil intentions and that we don't require any further diplomatic justification to bomb Iran's nuclear sites and bring down its regime."
    • To Syria, "the answer is obvious. By bringing the war home to its Syrian sponsor, we could make it clear that initiating this war will topple the Syrian regime, rather than propping it up."

• Why Hezbollah attacked when it did by Bryan Preston. The short version: "Hezbollah's offensive is a counter-attack to the US-led drive to democratize the Middle East."
• James Lewis: "Ultimately, Tehran is protecting its nuclear ambitions. If Hezbollah cannot be defeated in Lebanon, Iran will increase the number of its long-range missiles pointing at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem under the nominal control of the Hezbos. Any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will elicit an immediate counter-attack on Israel's civilian population. It is in the interest of the West for the Hezbos to be severely degraded."
• Michael Ledeen: "there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable. ... Iran has been at war with us all along, because that's what the world's leading terror state does. ... The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus"

• Israel humbled by arms from Iran, Adrian Blomfield, Daily Telegraph, 15 Aug 2006. The Israelis discover advanced weapons (laser-guided anti-tank missiles) from Iran and Syria in Hezbollah positions, explaining how Hezbollah managed to kill more than 100 Israeli troops. "The discovery of the origin of the weapons proved to the Israelis that their enemy was not a ragged and lightly armed militia but a semi-professional army equipped by Syria and Iran to take on Israel. The weapons require serious training to operate and could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly regular armies in the Middle East." The fact is Hezbollah are not the Lebanese "resistance". They are the Iranian Army on Israel's border.

• Iran
  • Iran and Syria next

The ceasefire, Aug 2006

• The Cease-fire, August 11, 2006 - The pro-Israel Pakistani Tashbih Sayyed on the looming cease-fire. "The latest flare-up in a 59 years long war to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the world is fast approaching its expected closure. Israel is once again being forced to leave the job of eliminating the Islamist threat unfinished. The world's powers ... are not ready to accept that in case of political Islam, cease-fires are nothing but tactical pauses which are used as tools to gain time in order to recoup losses, re-arm forces, and rebuild terrorist infrastructure. ... Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the "enemy" is a sign of its weakness. No one has more experience with this treacherous mindset than the Israelis. ... There is no doubt in my mind that the cease-fire at this stage when Hezbollah is still seems to posses enough rockets and other armament to continue to terrorize the Israeli civilians for some time, will be perceived as a total victory of Hezbollah by the Muslim world. The terrorist group will be transformed instantly into a standard bearer of global jihad and Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah will certainly become a leader worth emulation."

• Claudia Rosett sees the ceasefire as prolonging the problem: "we now embark on a period in which Hezbollah will seize the opportunity to regroup and reload. The feeble and compromised mix of U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army ... will fail to stop them. Iran and Syria will proceed apace with their terrorist infection and subjugation of Lebanon."
• Richard Waghorne: A bad result for Israel. It stopped way too early. Hezbollah and Israel's other enemies will step up their campaigns. "The UN is simply incapable of achieving Hezbollah's destruction. It will quickly revert to its old, failed attempts at overseeing a non-existent peace."

• The Mideast's Munich: War With Mullahs Is Coming by Arthur Herman, August 16, 2006:
  • "Historians will look back at this weekend's cease-fire agreement in Lebanon as a pivotal moment in the war on terror. It is pivotal in the same sense that the Munich agreement between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain was pivotal in an earlier battle against the enemies of freedom. The accord in October 1938 revealed to the world that the solidarity of the Western allies was a sham, and that the balance of power had shifted to the fascist dictators. Resolution 1701 shows that, for the time being at least, the balance has likewise shifted to the terrorists and their state sponsors. Like Munich, it marks the triumph of the principle of putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Like Munich, it will mean not peace in our time, but a bigger war in our future. ... The other loser is Lebanon."
  • "The men of Munich acquiesced to Hitler because another world war like the first seemed unthinkable. The Bush administration clearly feels it cannot face another major confrontation even with a second-rate power like Iran. Yet by calling off the war on terror, it has only postponed that conflict."
• Ralph Peters says it is a disaster:
  • "Israel's rep for toughness in tatters. Hezbollah triumphant. Iran cockier than ever. Syria untouched. Lebanon's government crippled. ... Thanks, Prime Minister Olmert. Great job, guy. The debacle in Lebanon wasn't even a war. It was only round one of a war. And Israel's back in its corner, dazed and punch-drunk."
  • Nothing has been solved: "The U.N. resolution called for Hezbollah to disarm - a fantasy only a diplomat could believe. ... There will be consequences. Iran's convinced it's on a winning course. Syria got away with murder (literally). And Hezbollah will come back more determined than ever. ... Get ready for Round Two."

• Richard Waghorne: "Israel should .. resume the job it left unfinished at the soonest opportunity, this week, using the ground operations that proved militarily highly effective in the last days of the recent fighting. It won't, but it should. As Hezbollah grows in strength and Iran in boldness, it will have to attempt the job again soon in any case, only not at a time of its choosing and against a resurgent enemy. Rarely is strategic logic so clear-cut, the enemy's intentions so openly laid out, and the inevitability of future conflict so transparent. Weakness of will and mendacious advice and pressure from abroad endanger Israel more and more gravely by the day. Hezbollah's paymasters are pursuing a nuclear bomb and have promised to destroy Israel, not once, but repeatedly and clearly. I haven't felt so alarmed by the state of the world since September 2001. Disaster is the norm in history, and peace never an entitlement but an achievement."

• Five Minutes to Midnight: The War Is Coming, No Matter How Hard We Try to Evade It by Robert Tracinski, Aug 10, 2006:
  • "The time is very short now before we will have to confront Iran. The only question is how long we let events spin out of our control, and how badly we let the enemy hit us before we begin fighting back. We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it. That is the real analogy to the 1930s. ... Iran's theocracy has chosen, as the nation's new president, a religious fanatic who believes in the impending, apocalyptic triumph of Islam over the infidels. He openly proclaims his desire to create an Iranian-led Axis that will unite the Middle East in the battle against America, and he proclaims his desire to "wipe Israel off the map" ... And when we hesitate to kill Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, when we pressure Israel to rein in its attacks on Hezbollah, ... we reinforce his impression of our weakness. ... It is widely acknowledged that World War II was made far more horrible by the years in which free nations appeased Hitler, allowing him to strengthen his armies before he took over Europe. That analogy lends itself to one conclusion: the sooner we attack Iran, the better."
  • "The good news, such as it is, is that the air of foreboding about this new war is somewhat exaggerated. ... Iran is not Nazi Germany - a large, united, economically and technologically advanced nation that could nearly equal our military capability. Iran is a poor, backward nation with a large, restive dissident movement. Its military bluster is a hollow shell hiding its underlying weakness. It's time to break that shell and kill the monster inside - before it grows any bigger and more powerful."

Alternative, optimistic views

• Hezbollah Didn't Win by Amir Taheri - As the excitement and euphoria end, there may be a long-term backlash in Lebanon against Hezbollah for provoking such destruction.

• Hezbollah was beaten, says IDF Captain Dan Gordon.
  • "By any legitimate measure Hezballah was handed a resounding military defeat by the IDF in the recent fighting, and while the cancer that is Hezballah was not cured by Israel's soldiers, it was put into remission. ... All of Hezballah's Siegfried line like system of fortresses and strongholds, their network of command and control bunkers along Israel's Northern border were destroyed, abandoned or under the control of the IDF by the end of the hostilities. Hezballah's mini terrorist state within a state south of the Litani had been dismantled. ... in Beirut, its command and control center and infrastructure were in ruins."
  • He notes that:
    • Egypt and Syria in 1973 killed 2,700 Israeli soldiers, and hit 1,000 tanks, destroying 400 of them.
    • Hezbollah in 2006 killed 120 Israeli soldiers, and hit 30 tanks, destroying 5 of them.
  • On the 120 dead he notes: "those numbers in fact represent the fewest casualties suffered by Israel in any of its major conflicts. In 1948, Israel suffered 6000 killed. In 1967, in what was regarded as its most decisive victory, Israel lost almost 700 killed in six days. In 1973, Israel lost 2700 killed, and in the first week of the first war in Lebanon, Israel suffered 176 soldiers killed. ... They are the lightest casualties suffered by the IDF in all of its wars. Military historians will spend years deciphering why exactly this was so."

• Daniel Seaman, Israel Government Press Office: "at the end of the war, Israel sat nearly 20 miles in Hezbollah territory, while not a single one of the Hezbollah's fortified positions along the border with Israel exists. Every Hezbollah location, center and building was destroyed or hit and hundreds of their fighters were killed. ... Every rocket launcher exposed was destroyed. Hezbollah leaders are on the run and remain in hiding, knowing very well that, when they finally do expose themselves, Israel will avenge the murder of its civilians. ... Supporters of Israel are welcome to raise concerns, but should not be carried away with unfounded hysteria that plays into the hands of the enemies of liberty and freedom. We in Israel will make the necessary amends. We realize there is yet a long struggle before us."

• Update at end of 2006: The pessimists were right of course. Hezbollah is re-arming. The Hezbollah-Iran-Syria axis is moving against Lebanon, with the assassination of Pierre Amine Gemayel. The UN forces are a waste of time, with no interest in disarming Hezbollah. French troops in the UN even threaten to shoot at Israel and do the jihad's work for it.

• "The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict", study by Marvin Kalb, Feb 2007, of the media in the war.
  • From the paper: "The paper .. shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda."
  • From commentary: "Kalb painstakingly details how Hezbollah exercised absolute control over how journalists portrayed its side of the conflict, while Israel became "victimized by its own openness." ... Kalb .. points to the challenges to journalists in future "asymmetrical" conflicts in which a radical militia provides access only to journalists agreeing to the strictest of rules. Journalists did Hezbollah's work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia's effort to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people, ... With Hezbollah's unchallenged control of journalists' access within its territory, it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts, such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers, counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers where they stood. ... armed Hezbollah fighters were all but invisible to the media. Also invisible were Hezbollah's thousands of rockets and rocket launchers strategically positioned near schools, hospitals and apartment buildings. ... The Harvard paper shows the need for journalists to brace themselves and remain vigilant when they cover conflicts between open societies on one side, and media-controlling militias on the other."

• Hizbullah would have surrendered if the fighting had continued for another 10 days - Interview with Hizbullah officer, July 2007. "The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization". He said that Hizbullah "had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies." He said Hizbullah "were forced to fire Katyusha rockets from inside urban populations because of the IDF's efficiency in destroying launchers minutes after a launch had been detected. He said that when the gunmen relocated to cities and villages, they knew innocent civilians would be hurt as a consequence."