Why? Israeli leaders have been making the same mistake over and over again over the past 60 or so years. There can be no compromise or "talks" when dealing with those whose stated aim is your death and the destruction of your country.

They're not being coy or disingenuous. They are and have been saying, death to all Jews and the complete removal of Israel from the face of the earth. What part of that don't Israeli leaders understand?

They're going to compromise.

They didn't "battle" for 18 years. They mostly sat. This time it better be different.

Fighting a guerilla group is different than fighting an army. Armies can be surrounded, isolated, or ignored (temporarily). And when their survival is at stake, their nation will end the war rather than lose the army. Armies are assets. Terrorists are quite different. They have to killed to the last 'fighter'. Like the Pacific theater.

Israel can win any 'war' against an opposing army in a week or two. Finishing off the Hezbos will take a lot longer. Iwo and Okinawa took months until the Japanese were finished, and they had no one to hide behind, and no hope of resupply.

Israel might need to make some beach landings south of Beirut, and pincer the Hezbos to death. They might need to conduct airborne assaults in the Bekaa Valley for weeks.

Of course, the process would be speeded up considerably if the IDF was racing towards Damascus, Assad was dead, and every Iranian in Lebanon was under arrest, being grilled 24/7.

It's not different.

Ratbert is correct. The other side thinks it can win because they are meaner and badder than our side--just like pre-reformation Shintoists.

As to the difference between fighting guerillas and fighting regulars, the correct answer is sort of yes and no. The doctrines behind the principles of war still apply, mass, offensive, objective, surprise, security and all the rest, only they apply differently. The old Marine Corps Small Wars Manual spells all this out. One must fight a little smarter, but is still war.

We need to get a grip on the Maoist "people's army concept. It is not always necessary to crush a people to vanquish a people's army, one may sucessfully separate the people from the army. This was done in Nicaragua, and it was working in Vietnam, prior to the Dolchstoss.

The problem the Israelis have is their leadership.This is Israel's first war when their leaders weren't up to the task. Olmert is really a peacenik and his wife is a member and leader of "Peace Now." He is already talking about still vacating the West Bank. I fear that the IDF like the US army is fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. Restrained by the political leadership and the MSM hatchet job on Israeli "atrocities" and say nothing about the 2000 terror weapons the Hezbos have already hurled against the civilian population of Israel.

Sharon and Begin biffed the same war.

It's all good. Patience, ye of little faith.

Sharon and Begin didn't fight hard enough in 1982. They should have killed Arafat and wiped out the PLO. The Hezbos might not have arisen as they did (in the vacuum following the departure of the PLO). And nobody had the guts to drive Syria out of Lebanon completely. If Israel had fought on the ground as they did in the air (about 80 Syrian jets downed to none for the IAF), Assad would have been humiliated and the politics in Lebanon (and the occupied territories) would have been quite different.

Of course, it's easy to say now. But Begin was sick in 1982, and Sharon was still fighting the last two wars. And after the massacre in the camps, Israel was hog-tied.

Another two or three weeks, with 1000-2000 more dead Hezbos, some dead Syrians/Iranians, and daily Israeli incursions into the Bekaa Valley, and things will look much better. Nobody is going to put troops into Lebanon for some time, so all the talk at the UN is just that.

The fulcrum will be whether Iran/Syria try to resupply Hezbollah with more rockets (or surface-to-air stuff).

If Begin and Sharon weren't willing to kill enough Arabs for you no one will be.

Agree with Ratbert. Have seen notes that Iran is openly stating that they are resupplying Hezbollah and other materials. The fulcrum will be whether the West says enough and goes after Syria and Iran or just goes for a ceasefire and the current muddle continues.

Who's going to fight Israel's war for them?

If Ahmadinjad moves directly against Israel, you'll see Tomahawks flying over Iran for days. No one will see the B-2s and the F-117s, of course. Bush could forestall it by asking the Ayatollah to kill his President, but that doesn't seem likely (when even Khatami is on record as calling Hezbollah the 'shining sun of Islam').

The issue isn't killing Arabs - it's killing terrorists. Just because most of active terror groups are comprised of Arabs (from Al Qaeda to Hamas to Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad to Ansar al-Islam) is no reason to get all huffy.

If it makes you feel any better, the same fate should go to all the terror groups in Pakistan, Indonesia, Chechnya, Serbia, Kosovo, India, and the Philippines. Last time I checked, they aren't Arab.

That's not an if but a hallucination.
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Saddam fired missiles at Israel in 1991. We fought to take them out. Had he put any funny stuff in the warheads, we would have nuked him. At least, that's what James Baker told Tariq Aziz on January 9.

Sure, it would be an all-or-nothing gamble for Ahmadinejad. But, we've seen such chutzpah from these messianic nutjobs before. They almost always overreach, no?

The end of the 'war' in Lebanon is dependent on one thing - that the Hezbos will not be shooting across the border, in any way, shape, or form. Nor will they be taking Israeli soldiers hostage.

Right now, no one can enforce that condition. So the IDF will keep killing the Hezbos, all throughout Lebanon. The possible widening of the war (against Syria and Iran) is just that - a possibility, dependent on actions from Damascus and Tehran. Resupplying the Hezbos is a clear statement. That's why it's the fulcrum.

Saddam calculated precisely right, no?

Hezbollah will govern Southern Lebanon and be rearmed by the West. Your terms for winning are unattainable.

How about the Judd solution - 600 kilotons on Damascus? And a few hundred more on Southern Lebanon? There would be no more rockets into Israel, no? Add a few overflights of Tehran, and they'd be scrambling for the holes.

You can't have it both ways. Either you go extreme at the beginning (for absolute deterrence), or you learn how to outfight the enemy on his turf - how to cut his throat, how to terrify him, how to beat him.

Do you want to be arguing about this when you are 75? Then it has to be settled now, before the only option we have is to vaporize Mecca. Which is what will happen if they set one off here.

Sure, extermination would be a viable solution to the current kerfuffle with the Arabs, it's just not realistic. To keep hoping for the unrealistic to occur is the very nature of insanity.

Face it. The options are to surrender, to wage war or to deter war. One can not deter war unless the deterrent is credible.

Those who hold that extirmination is unrealistic are therefore either appeasers or war-mongers, for they are choosing either surrender or endless war by allowing the other side to think that we lack the will to destroy them.

The best deterrent is statehood, which creates conditions wher war is a viable response. Note how quiet Hamas is since it took real power.

Isn't Hamas allowing Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Brigades to do the terror now, just like Arafat let Hamas (and the others) do it for years? And who dug that tunnel, anyway?

The war you describe would be 'viable' if it were going to be fought the way Sherman (or Zhukov) fought. Israel isn't going to fight that way because they have no intention of absorbing Gaza (or much of the West Bank) again. Ditto for Lebanon. There's your "difference".

This is not 1996, where the craven Euros and a short-sighted American President fawned before Arafat and Syria. So Israel can fight, at least for a while longer. But it isn't 1967, either - where victory can be classically achieved and clearly understood.

However, Syria's hash must be settled. That is something everyone can understand.

Hamas doesn't control them and they aren't doing much of anything either.

Absorb? What's left to absorb if you kill them all?

But Hamas is the "real power", as you so diplomatically put it.

It will be. They need to take over the remnants of the PLO's power and declare themselves a sovereign state first though.