I pretty much agree with Lepus Rex on this one, Slag. Hezbollah has won the psychological victory this time, and that was the vital key.

It's very comparable to the psychological victory won by the Viet Cong in the famed Tet Offensive in the 60's. In military terms, the Viet Cong lost...if you go by body count, material losses, who controlled the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and so on...in fact, the US military command was delighted by the situation, because they were able to inflict such heavy losses on the usually elusive guerrilla forces in that fight. However, psychologically speaking it was an enormous victory for the Viet Cong, and it basically began the slow slide to defeat and withdrawal for the USA in that region. It convinced the American public that the war could not be won. That was the key factor. It gave the lie to the illusion that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were going to soon be worn down and defeated and just fade away.

In the case of this fight in Lebanon, some other popular illusions are now going down to destruction. One is the belief of Israelis that their forces are invincible on the battlefield, to the extent that they can always score an easy and almost bloodless victory. They're not going to be thinking that way so much in the future. This will have quite a chastening effect on their strategy, and it should temper their recklessness a bit, I would think. It should contribute to more even-handed negotiations between Israel and its opponents.

I do not fault Hezbollah for fighting in the only way possible if they want to fight effectively and not be slaughtered, Slag. That is what smart soldiers do. Fools make banzai charges across open ground against superior weaponry and get slaughtered. Hezbollah's tactics were smart, well-thought-out, and exactly geared to the realities of the situation. They have shown good organization, good discipline, and they appear to have good support among most of the civilians in the areas where they are operating...plus they have the wisdom to offer a lot of non-military support to civilians in those areas. That, again, is smart. You don't just win wars on a battlefield, you have to address yourself to other social matters as well as fighting if you want to win wars.

It's been a most interesting and unexpected shift in dynamics for the Middle Eastern conflict. Not what Bush was hoping for. I believe what he had in mind was the usual lightning-fast decisive Israeli victory, followed by a much larger war on Syria and Iran, with Israeli forces advancing toward Damascus.

If so, everyone can thank their lucky stars that Hezbollah stalled the Israeli advance and turned it into a stalemate. By doing so, they may have saved a great many lives.