How Do You Say, "See, I Told You So" In Yiddish?

Far from being an "act of diplomatic jiu jitsu," Israel's calling off the dogs of war has put them in a box of their own making. By caring what the "international community" thinks, and deluding themselves into thinking that by so doing they could gain the world's favor, Ehud Olmert and his Kaditha-ites have effectively abdicated their national security decision-making authority to a world opinion that will always run heavily against the Jewish state. And by investing so much in this act of suicidally rank folly, the Israeli leadership will have an immense interest in spinning every Hezbo violation and every Turtle Bay reneging as being no big deal, not important, and nothing to be concerned about. Or as a "sacrifice for peace." Or, hell, even as another "victory."

-Me, 351 days ago

"The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War]," a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday.

In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another ten days.
...

The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization's gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies.

-"An unnamed Hezbollah officer," today, in the Jerusalem Post

Ten days. Ten lousy days.

That's why you don't fight half-wars, and why you don't entrust national security to falafel-for-brains pacifists without the stomach or balls for it.

What most dismays me about the situation in the Levant a year later isn't that the Hezbos are tanned, rested, ready, re-stocked, re-armed, and raring to go murder more Jews, but that Ehud Olmert - the pathetic, bumbling, weak-assed oaf who FUBAR'd last summer's "lost opportunity" to wipe up Lebanon with Hezbollah's dead bodies - is still Israel's Prime Minister.

The last time a lefty Israeli PM botched a war against Hezbollah, in May 1996, Shimon Peres was practically clotheslined out of office by Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu within a matter of weeks. That Olmert can still be in power in Jerusalem a year later, having forgotten about the IDF soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah and Hamas and still languishing in captivity, merrily planning "Give back the Golan Heights with a side of fries" summits with Bashar Assad, and waiting indifferently for the inevitable next Hezbo offensive is an astonishing window into how dilapidated Israeli national will has become, and the burgeoning certainty of more and bitterer defeats to come.