James Joyner has an article at TCS Daily explaining why the current cease fire is a defeat for Israel and a victory for Hezbollah.
Money quote:
Israel has accepted a truce that falls far short of its original war aims, failing to establish control over their border with Lebanon, let alone deliver a crushing blow to Hezbollah. As many of us have argued from the moment Israel launched this campaign, there was no way a modern state, constrained by a Western moral code and the pressures of a democratic society, would achieve these incredibly ambitious goals. Failure to achieve one’s political objectives in a war, by definition, constitutes defeat.
This is much the situation the United States faces in Iraq and, in a broader sense, in the fight against al Qaeda and Islamofascism. We could defeat them easily. We certainly have the military might to do it. Right now, though, we are constrained from using the full force of our military might because of contemporary Western values that place a high value on innocent civilian life. Ironically, then, it is the very values of Western civilization that the Islamic radicals are fighting against that are keeping them from being utterly destroyed.
Joyner has a sobering thought for what the future of this war might look like:
Short of turning their enemies into radioactive parking lots, well within the military capabilities of the United States and Israel, there is no defeating an entrenched, motivated guerrilla force through the application of strategic bombing or massive armored assaults.
Someday, I fear, we may face an attack so severe that the gloves will finally come off. If that day ever comes, we may actually see a final battle between Islam and the West.
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