Chapter One

Solo, the upbeat narrative of Saul Singer plays against a prevailing minor. "Let's call it," Singer writes of Israel's halted northward offensive through Lebanon, "a squandered opportunity." But, he argues, fortune will favor diligence. "We destroyed most of [Hezbollah's] most dangerous missiles. We demonstrated we weren't afraid to subject our population to bombardment and that barrages of over a hundred missiles a day only caused our public to say 'fight harder!'" It's true that the Israeli operation did not prove Hezbollah's invulnerability.

Intractability — OK. Syria and Iran's joint venture performed above expectations reserved for a terrorist group — efficacy is not to be found where trained, uniformed soldiers oppose, and it was reported that Hezbollah gangs were more organized and more lethally fit than anticipated. And deaths of Lebanese civilians, real and presumed, in spite of the Israeli Defense Forces' pre-bombardment cold calls, were made a lurid show through the manipulative dexterity of terrorists entwined with the long-ruined Arab state. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, however, appeared in a broadcast to derive victory from a) Hezbollah's not having ceased to exist, and b) the group's refusal to disband. "This isn't a time to disarm," Nasrallah said, which is the obverse of the statement "This is a time to re-arm" — a precarious stance assumed while in close proximity to a national will and army like Israel's.

If the invitation these days is to draw parallels to the latter 1930s, think of a Rhineland investment that was — departing from history — met, matched and clove into ribbons and streaks. During their advance the Israelis faced only political strictures, and reached points on Lebanese soil that their civilian command intended; if short of where some demanded. Hezbollah, meanwhile, lost more than agents and materiel. In the course of the fighting two signal terrorist assets — collusive press agencies and foreign impresarios — were exposed. Editors for the Associated Press and Reuters, caught with fascist propaganda in and among their reports, could only temporize. Damascus and Tehran were drawn out and, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's eschatological gibberish aside, the respective regimes briefly given to contemplate a war that cannot, against major democratic powers, be fought openly. Democracies shrink from sinuous campaigns but none is quite like Israel. From Jerusalem, all major parties speak of "the next war."

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