Who Won the
Lebanon War?
September
08 , 2006
Now that a
ceasefire in Lebanon looks to be in place, it
is certainly a sensible question to ask, who won?
A war in which over a million people fled their
homes, over a thousand died, and several billion
dollars of economic damage was inflicted is no
small thing.
The government of Israel declared that it had
won the conflict, while the Economist this week
stated on its cover that “Nasrallah wins
the war” in no uncertain terms. On the other
hand, the mood in Israel has been very downcast
after this conflict, and there are strong calls
for a commission of inquiry to look into the failures
of the war. Prime Minister Olmert’s political
standing has certainly suffered.
To answer the question correctly, we have to clearly
define what we are asking. On the simplest level,
we can look at what actually happened on the battlefield.
Secondly, we ask what were the actual war aims
of the combatants and judge if they achieved them.
Finally, we can look in the broader context of
the real political end results of the conflict.
On a military level, Israel won this war hands
down. It killed far more Hezbollah fighters than
it lost, and the war was almost entirely fought
within Lebanon, with the Israelis attacking and
Hezbollah defending its positions. The only offensive
actions Hezbollah took was the daily launching
of about 100-200 short range Katyusha rockets
that have only the crudest guidance systems. These
rocket attacks were essentially random bombardments
of Israel, with most rockets landing in empty
fields and brush land. Only the occasional rocket
would actually strike a town or hit a building.
The end result was mostly civilian casualties,
and many of them were in fact Palestinian Israelis,
as northern Israel has a rather large number of
Palestinian citizens.
Israel on the other hand was able to pound away
at the entire nation of Lebanon, with little danger
to its air force. It did suffer a bit of a bloody
nose when it committed tanks on the ground, as
Hezbollah fighters made effective use of Iranian
anti-tank missiles to destroy a number of Israeli
tanks. It is an odd paradox of this war that Hezbollah,
which made no claim to be trying to avoid killing
civilians, mostly killed Israeli soldiers, while
Israel, which loudly claimed it was doing all
it could to avoid killing Lebanese civilians,
mostly killed civilians. This paradox is not so
odd when one realizes that Israel’s claims
were false, and they in fact often intentionally
targeted civilians, as many international observers
noted (not to mention that they also killed international
observers, despite hours of pleas to stop shelling
them in the case of four UN soldiers).
But the war aims were different than simply trying
to kill each other. Hezbollah was trying to obtain
a bargaining chip to trade prisoners with Israel
when it captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel
on the other hand declared that not only was its
war aim to recover the two soldiers, but to also
destroy Hezbollah as an organization. On that
basis, the Israelis clearly failed, and in fact
had no chance of success. They mistakenly set
the bar way too high, and were doomed to fall
short. Hezbollah has on the other hand kept the
prisoners, but it did take a pounding, and its
long-term position in Lebanon is less certain
now.
This brings us to a broader political landscape.
In addition to Israel and Hezbollah, there were
other players in the game. These include the Lebanese
government, Syria, Iran, and the United States.
Hezbollah has now agreed to the deployment of
the Lebanese Army to the south of Lebanon for
the first time in over 25 years. In addition,
a much larger UN force is also deploying into
the south. These two events will now significantly
reduce Hezbollah’s capacity for independent
action. It has effectively been locked into a
long-term ceasefire with Israel, which actually
partially accomplishes an Israeli war aim, but
indirectly.
Syria has not been able to capitalize on events
and remains in a weakened position in Lebanon.
For America and Iran, the outcome has a different
significance. Bush and Cheney looked at Israel’s
air campaign as a possible model of what an American
air war on Iran might accomplish. There were two
theories that warmongers have put forth. The first
is that air power is so effective that Hezbollah,
and by corollary Iran’s military and nuclear
assets, could be gutted reliably in a short campaign.
The second theory was that if an air campaign
inflicted enough damage on civilians and urban
assets, the people would rise up in revolt and
turn on Hezbollah or the Iranian government. Both
theories were total failures. It turns out that
Israeli airpower could not take out Hezbollah,
and that despite tremendous pounding, the Lebanese
people’s fury was directed at the Israelis
for bombing them rather than at Hezbollah. This
hopefully will give pause to the Bush/Cheney plans
of an air war against Iran that will solve all
our problems. Because of this very powerful fact,
it could be truly said that the main winner of
the Lebanon war was Iran. Comments can reach me
at Nali@socal.rr.com.
