Failure in Lebanon

by Peter Ryan

In it's recent assault on Lebanon, Israel destroyed much and achieved little. If the United States and Israel learn no lessons from this experience, we are both destined to repeat our mistakes.

The "end of hostilities" in the fight between Israel and Hezbollah have left both sides scrambling to claim "victory" in the aftermath, leading comedian Jon Stewart of the Daily Show to joke that the conflict has apparently been a "win-win" proposition.

Though much of Hezbollah's long range missile capacity was taken out by air strikes, the conflict earned them a sizable popularity boost among Lebanese, who saw them as their only defense against Israel's campaign, the victims of which were overwhelmingly civilians rather than Hezbollah fighters. And, despite Israel's assault (and to the surprise of many), Hezbollah managed to continue to strike Israeli targets throughout the month-long campaign. Israel's military actions failed, even momentarily, to protect Israeli civilians from attack. According to Aluf Benn, writing for Salon.com, "Israelis were astonished by Hezbollah's seemingly intact ability to hit northern Israel with a daily barrage of 100-200 rockets, holding about a million people in shelters, regardless of what the Israel Defense Force was doing to the Lebanese."

When Hezbollah successfully captured several Israeli soldiers-an act which they had publicly announced as one of their objectives-they had already scored a strategic objective in identifying one of Israel's potential weaknesses. This, of course, put Olmert's government in a very awkward position in which there were no "good" options. Israel could have done nothing, it could have bartered for the soldiers' release by offering to release some Hezbollah prisoners in exchange, they could have responded with a limited and symbolic strike against a few targets or they could have, as they did, launch a full-scale campaign. Their attack against Lebanon, of course, was not primarily about freeing the captured soldiers-there was never much hope for that-it was, instead, about decimating Hezbollah. And, by that measure, the assault unquestionably failed.

In the midst of all of this, the U.S. decided not to call for a ceasefire. Instead it called for a "sustainable ceasefire," which was basically a nice way of saying "as soon as the enemy (Hezbollah) is decimated, the fighting should stop." This Orwellian language is on par with other clever slogans like "peace through victory" or the title of one of Israel's other military campaign in Lebanon, which had been code-named "peace in the Galilee." Anytime one of our leaders launches a war and calls it peace, we should obviously be skeptical. The fact is: the U.S. wanted this war as much as Israel did. There were even some reports that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney has hopes of pushing Israel to attack Syria, creating a region-wide conflict.

In light of the failure of Israel's campaign to achieve any lasting objectives, both Israel and the U.S. will hopefully learn some valuable lessons from this experience. If we don't, we are doomed to forever repeat the same mistakes. Below is a summary of the lessons I hope that the U.S. and Israel might take to heart: