Reply #9: the proper way to assess victory or defeat is to measure... [View All]

[theanarch]

...pre-war expectations with the results actually achieved; and by this standard, Israel got its ass handed to it on a silver platter.

Did they secure the release of captured soldiers? No, and won't, until they negotiate a prisoner exchange, which Hezbollah offered before the first shot was fired.

Did they secure northern Israel from future rocket attacks? No, and won't, because Hezbollah still controls the ground, and has ample supplies of Katusha's left.

Did they compel, through the use of terror bombing, the Lebanese population (and government) to turn against Hezbollah and help the IDF fight them? No, and quite the opposite--Hezbollah's standing among Lebanese (and Arabs in general) is now at heroic to near-mythic proportions, and more legitimized than ever. (This also answers the question of Israel destroying Hezbollah as both a military and political organization, which was another upper-tier priority of the war.)

Yes, Israel committed one of the worst war crimes/against humanity of this century (right up there with Rwanda genocide and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq)--and we still have 93 more years to go till the next one, and in the end, suffered the most humiliating defeat in its history--not just diplomaticly and politically, but militarily and economically as well...and all they have to show for their orgy of violence is creating another generation of Lebanese (and others) who will go to their graves having prayed every day that someone will do to Israel what Israel did to them.

In this context, causalities and equipment loss is immaterial to the determination of who won and who lost.