Losing It

Caroline Glick sees a parallel between Israel's war in Lebanon ten years ago and the current war in Afghanistan:

Today US forces in Afghanistan are fighting in a manner that is depressingly similar to that forced upon IDF forces in Lebanon in the 1990s. Like the US forces in Afghanistan today, during the 1990s, concerns about civilian casualties caused Israel's political leadership to constrain IDF actions in southern Lebanon in a manner that effectively transformed soldiers into sitting ducks. Israel's finest were reduced to fighting from fortified positions and Hizbullah was given a free hand to intimidate Lebanese civilians, commandeer private homes and schools to use as firing positions and forward bases, and generally maintain the initiative in the fighting.

As he withdrew IDF forces from south Lebanon ten years ago — like Biden today — then prime minister Ehud Barak claimed that Israel didn't need boots on the ground to fight Hizbullah. If we needed to go in to fight, we would send in commando squads or fighter jets to do the job. Of course, as US drone operations in Pakistan again demonstrate, without a presence on the ground, you cannot have any certainty that you are attacking real targets.

The important story this week was not about a US general with abysmal judgment about the media. Rather the story is that in Afghanistan, the US is repeating a sorry pattern of Western nations of not understanding — or perhaps not caring -- that if you are not willing to fight a war to victory, you will lose it.