Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Monday that his guerrillas achieved a "strategic, historic victory" against Israel — a declaration that prompted celebratory gunfire across the Lebanese capital.If Olmert really said this, it was a pretty foolish statement. The "state within a state" is obviously still there. The one thing that was accomplished is that Lebanon paid a very heavy price for allowing Hizbullah to become so powerful. The Afghanistan war and the Iraq war, and now the Lebanon war, have at least made it catastrophically expensive for some terror-supporting states to be terror supporting states.
Israel's prime minister, however, maintained the offensive eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Exacting a very high price for terrorism has been a good strategy, I think, in the case of the US. The fact that regime change in two countries was the consequence for 9/11 is probably the reason the US has not experienced another 9/11-level attack. It can hardly be said that the US has been sealed off in any sense. At a rate of two regime changes per major terrorist attack, a Pax Americana would come about pretty quickly in the Middle East. That has to be a very daunting prospect to Al Qaeda.
Where does that leave Israel? Lebanon has paid a heavy price, but without the regime change. I think it is very hard to predict the future at this point. We don't know yet who won--perhaps nobody has.
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