After the Sixth War

Well, the cease-fire countdown clock reached zero, and both sides went to their respective corners (except rockets are still being fired by both sides), ending the month-long "Sixth War," as they're calling it in the Arab world.

Was this all worth the cost in human lives and prestige? This war was supposedly started to degrade Hezbollah's capabilities to attack Israel. Did they do that? Larry Johnson doesn't think so:

After 34 days of fighting, Israel is occupying a portion of Southern Lebanon but has failed to accomplish its original objective of "destroying" Hizbullah.

Time to face the facts; Israel has punted and opted instead to settle for "degrading" Hizbullah capabilities. So, how did they do? Well, at the start of the invasion Hizbullah was firing less than a hundred rockets a day into Israel. Yesterday (Sunday) Hizbullah launched 250 rockets into Israel. I suspect Hizbullah was just plain worn out from lugging the rockets from their storage bunker to the launching sites. All of that lifting and shooting can make a terrorist tired. Here's a news flash for the IDF and the Bush Administration--if your adversary can fire more missiles/rockets after 34 days of combat then they did at the start your degradation campaign did not work. It is called "failure".

This didn't stop the President from claiming that Israel won the war, proving that his obliviousness about foreign policy is not limited to Iraq. I don't know how anybody can look at a situation where over 1,100 Lebanese civilians are dead, the entire population of that country is now more supportive of Hezbollah than ever, the Arab world is praising the militants as heroes, and all Israel has to show for it is an 18-mile buffer zone against what is perceived to be a much stronger opponent, and see victory. This is a terrible defeat for Israel in the world community, a puncturing at their invincibility in the region, and a confirmation that their untested leaders did not know what they were doing in dealing with the crisis.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday acknowledged mistakes in the war against Hezbollah as the Israeli government confronted widespread criticism and political recriminations over the conflict.

"There have been failings and shortcomings," Olmert, with deep circles under his eyes and a haggard look on his face, told a special session of the Israeli parliament. "We need to examine ourselves in all aspects and all areas. We will not sweep anything under the table, we will not hide anything. We must ensure that next time things will be done better."

It remains to be seen if Olmert will get a chance at a next time. Bush may be able to bamboozle the American people, because in American politics, admitting or acknowledging any mistakes is regarded by the party in power as treason. But Israelis know how damaging this war was for their continually threatened existence.

There is no mistake Ehud Olmert did not make this past month. He went to war hastily, without properly gauging the outcome. He blindly followed the military without asking the necessary questions. He mistakenly gambled on air operations, was strangely late with the ground operation, and failed to implement the army's original plan, much more daring and sophisticated than that which was implemented. And after arrogantly and hastily bursting into war, Olmert managed it hesitantly, unfocused and limp. He neglected the home front and abandoned the residents of the north. He also failed shamefully on the diplomatic front.

Author and professor Caleb Carr offered the best summation of the mistakes and problems made by both sides in this utterly avoidable conflict. The mistakes for Israel, of course, are more vital, because the stakes for that nation are so high. And I think Carr has a great historical lesson to offer them:

In 1937, when imperial Japanese aircraft "mistakenly" attacked and sank the U.S. gunboat Panay and several other vessels on China's Yangtze River, some in the U.S. called for war; but FDR realized that the U.S. was in fact neither politically nor militarily ready for such a conflict. And so he (rather unhappily) bided his time, accepting what seemed to his enemies a craven reparations deal and awaiting an event that would allow the overwhelming majority of the American public to appreciate the dangers of Japanese medievalist militarism. The wait also gave the American Navy extra years to prepare.

Similarly, when Roosevelt later tried, after the outbreak of the European war in 1939, to engineer American entrance into the conflict through elaborate trickery centered on luring Nazi subs into attacking U.S. warships in the North Atlantic, he quickly found that, much as the Allies might match his own desire to get the U.S. into the war, his own people were still not ready. And so he did not act, convincing Adolf Hitler of his own degeneracy, as well as that of the people he led.

But Roosevelt was, of course, waiting for a precise set of conditions that would allow him not simply to be the just party in the war but to appear to be as much, at home and abroad. And, of course, by the time the U.S. entered the European and the Pacific wars, there was no doubt about our moral rectitude or our increased military and naval strength.

Lives had been lost, shipping endangered, prestige — personal and otherwise — sullied, but FDR had, by bending with the early blows and waiting for what turned out to be the disaster of Pearl Harbor, pulled off the stroke that would garner the United States, over the course of World War II, so much moral authority that even his less internationally adept successors — from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush — have not been able to drain it; not quite yet, at any rate.

Israel was not tactical, had no strategy for victory or program to accomplish it, and the results were sadly predictable. Maybe that's because, as Seymour Hersh wrote this week, that's because the strings were really being pulled from the White House. And if this debacle was a prelude to a US attack on Iran, as Hersh argues, and if George thinks Israel actually WON, we're all in for it.