How Goes the War?

There is a view on the American Right that a) Israel is either "losing" this conflict or, according to PowerLine , b) will lose this conflict:

... if it is unwilling either to occupy problematic territory such as southern Lebanon or invade it when the lack of an occupation force leads to the kind of trouble we're seeing now.

But signs are beginning to emerge that Israel doesn't feel up to a full-scale military assault. And a limited mission, to "clear out bunkers" and leave, will have very little effect on Hezbollah as an organization: some of their people will fight and die and take as many Israelis with them as they can, but for the most part they will slip away when things get tough, and return when the Israelis go home. So either, as the guy from Powerline suggests, Israel sends troops into Lebanon every time a bunch of rockets get fired over the border (which then amounts to accepting intermittent barrages as a fact of life), or they occupy Southern Lebanon, which is a position that does not have a lot of popular support behind it.

There is a second issue: Israel does not have much time left before public pressure moves the U.S. to intervene diplomatically. From the World Tribune:

The analysts said Israel has adopted a bombing campaign that resembled the U.S.-led NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999. For 78 days, NATO warplanes struck civilian and military targets in an effort to stop President Slobodan Milosovic from expelling Muslims from Kosovo. In the end, Milosevic agreed to a ceasefire after NATO threatened a ground invasion.


"I can't see this as a successful strategy," another analyst said. "In Yugoslavia, NATO had all the time in the world. Israel can't count on more than two weeks."

So, on a strategic level, the Israeli/Lebanese conflict will almost certainly wind up constituting a military setback and loss of face for Israel. And it will almost certainly boost the status of Hezbollah. Israel should have launched a series of retaliatory pin-prick raids into Southern Lebanon in an attempt to get their guys back, bombed a few Hezbollah buildings and, if the raids came up empty, arranged a prisoner swap. Their current wounds are mostly self-inflicted.

And there's a lesson here for the political Right in Canada and the States as well. Bush, Harper and Co. allowed Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert free reign and he has driven the nation into a swamp.

Its important to know the difference between being a supporter and being an enabler.