by Claude Salhani
In his bid to wipe out Hizballah in northern Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unsheathed his secret weapon: a precision-guided boomerang. This weapon certainly did cause massive destruction in Lebanon and then, with noted precision, wreaked damage upon its return to sender. Indeed, Olmert's foray into Lebanon may well cost him his job.
In his bid to wipe out Hizballah in northern Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unsheathed his secret weapon: a precision-guided boomerang. This weapon certainly did cause massive destruction in Lebanon and then, with noted precision, wreaked damage upon its return to sender. Indeed, Olmert's foray into Lebanon may well cost him his job.
And Israel itself, as conventional wisdom has correctly had it, has also been damaged, in that an illusion of invincibility has been shattered. Of course, the Islamist victory in Lebanon builds on a succession of such triumphs, from Algeria to Somalia, and potentially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the chorus on the Lebanon conflict has failed to recognize the decent prospects for a successful multilateral peacekeeping operation in Lebanon. This is because, despite the reversals for Israel, each side has a modicum of victories to highlight--and defeats.
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