As Israeli ground troops flood into southern Lebanon in a bid to create a buffer zone to protect its territory from rocket attacks, some military analysts believe Israel has made the same mistakes as the US in Iraq. They say its focus on high-technology warfare and tactical advantage has led it to underestimate the strategic importance of public opinion.

“Local, regional and global perceptions of the conflict will be as important in sustaining a war, and in terminating a conflict on favourable and lasting terms, as the numbers of enemies captured or killed,” Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington wrote. ~The Financial Times

One of the recurring themes in Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco is not only how the administration completely failed to plan and provide sufficient forces for the contingency of any kind of insurgency, but that the military failed to prosecute a correct counterinsurgency strategy once the insurgency started.  In counterinsurgency, as Ricks keeps drilling home again and again, the center of gravity is the people.  If you lose the sympathies of the people and drive them to the side of the insurgents/terrorists, you have lost the war.  In making all Lebanese the enemy, driving one million people from their homes and hitting civilian targets in a campaign that was supposed to hit and weaken Hizbullah, Israel has guaranteed that the only lasting solution to the problem–a cooperative Lebanese population willing to work to disarm and, perhaps if need be, fight Hizbullah–will be all but impossible.  It has managed to remake the villain of the piece into the Lebanese national resistance movement and guarantee continued hostility from all parts of Lebanese society.  Worse than a crime, the Israeli campaign has been a colossal mistake like our war in Iraq.  We are paying the price now for Mr. Bush’s careless commitment to that war, and Israel will continue to pay the price for Mr. Olmert’s equally reckless course of action.