Beware the Siren Lebanon

[bemildred]

ARIEL SHARON wakes up from his long coma in a sweat and says he’s had a terrible nightmare. “What was it?” ask his aides. “I dreamed we were back in Lebanon.”

The bitter joke, which has been making the rounds here since the war against Hezbollah last summer, goes to the heart of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s broken career. For a quarter-century, Lebanon has been the graveyard of Israeli politicians reckless enough to venture there.

---

Given his Lebanese trauma, most Israelis believe, Mr. Sharon would not have gone to war. He would have responded, “but in a limited way, and in his own time, and in a way that would hurt the other side — Hezbollah — and not the Lebanese government,” said Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University. Mr. Sharon used to say: “As far as action on the border with Lebanon goes: don’t do whatever doesn’t need to be done.”

The inexperienced, incurious Mr. Olmert “didn’t realize he was getting into a real war,” Mr. Avineri said. Rather, the committee found, “The prime minister made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/weekinreview/06erla.html