The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon’s infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon’s large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. ~Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

Now, I ask you, does that even remotely make sense?  Engage in collective punishment in order to separate part of the population from Hizbullah?  This is beyond stupid–the Christians and Druze already were against Hizbullah when the war started.  The bombing brought them together!  It’s not as if this was something that no one could have foreseen–people always rally around the leader or the group that represents the resistance when their entire country is under attack.  What would we do if an enemy started bombing our roads, ports, power stations and airports?  Would we say, “Thank you for convincing us to turn against George Bush”?  I should think not.  If this report is true–and it seems to me the only thing that makes sense of the general devastation of Lebanon’s energy and industrial sectors–it confirms that the Israeli government was not simply unjust in its methods but phenomenally, indefensibly stupid in the way it went about trying to achieve its goals. 

Whenever anyone says to you that the government knows more about a situation than we mere citizens do, don’t believe them.  Whatever secret intelligence they have, we at least have common sense, which seems to be more than we can say for most government leaders.