Liberal Talk Radio

The problem Israel faces now is the same one the U.S. faced in 1991 in Iraq and in smaller conflicts this time around — specifically, the need to “keep it short.” If you read, for example, about the first Gulf War, Arab countries agreed that Saddam had to be removed from Kuwait, but added that the coalition troops didn’t have a lot of time to dither in doing so — tolerance for such Western aggression had a short shelf life on the Arab Street. I recall similar thinking about Falluja in 2004.

In the case of Lebanon, the delay in really lashing out against Israeli actions — by the Lebanese government, by the Saudis, by even the Iraqi PM — probably marked the limit of what is considered “short” there. There was a small window of about two weeks when it was kind of quiet and I wonder if that may be the end. Which makes this Times piece worrisome:

A week ago, Israeli officials said their military had knocked out up to half of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers and suggested that another week or two would finish the job of incapacitating the Lebanese militia. That talk has largely stopped.

Hezbollah is still launching 100 rockets a day at Israel, nearly as many as it did at the start of the war. Soldiers return from forays into Lebanon saying the network of bunkers and tunnels is more sophisticated than expected. And Iranian-made long-range missiles apparently capable of hitting Tel Aviv remain in the Hezbollah arsenal.

“Two weeks after Israel set out to defeat Hezbollah, its military achievements are pretty limited,” lamented Yoel Marcus, a columnist and supporter of the war, in the daily Haaretz on Tuesday.

Israeli military commanders say they are not surprised. The struggle is so difficult, they say, because Hezbollah is an organized, well-trained and well-equipped force and is fighting hard.

“Hezbollah is organized more like an army than the Palestinian militias, and they are supported with some of the best weapons systems that Iran and Syria have,” said Yaakov Amidror, an Israeli major general, now in the reserves, who headed the research and assessment branch of Israeli military intelligence.

“Never before in history has a terrorist organization had such state-of-the-art military equipment,” from medium-range rockets and laser-guided antitank missiles to well-designed explosive mines that can cripple an advanced tank, General Amidror said.

At the same time, Hezbollah has no armor or easily visible storehouses or logistics lines, the Israelis say, and its members live among the civilian population of southern Lebanon, storing their weaponry in civilian buildings.

That is why Israel’s top commanders say this operation may take many weeks.