Victory Hezbollah Style: Do the Math

It's widely reported today that this week's answer to "Who are the Three Stooges, really?" has got to be Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and Assad.

They're widely proclaiming victory in the late unlamented mugging of Lebanon to anyone who will listen. Mr. Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying that God more or less had his way here.

So let's do the math.

Hezbollah operatives crossed the Lebaneseborder, killed three Israeli soldiers, and kidnaped two others, no doubt in a misguided effort to swing a prisoner exchange.

What they underestimated was the fury of the response that it would provoke. The war settled down on two parallel tracks. Israel systematically pounded the infrastructure of Lebanon into jelly. Apparently they took the notion of bombing them back into the stone age literally. In the process of reducing Hezbollah's host country to rubble, better than 1,000 civilians met their end.

At the same time, the Hezbollah rocketeers ran around south Lebanon lighting the fuses on a virtually endless supply of 122mm rockets provided by the Iranians and their lapdogs in Damascus. They'd light off a couple hundred a day with minimal results, because what the 122mm rocket is is an area weapon. It was designed to be launched by the thousands at fleeing, closely concentrated German divisions on the Russian Front.

Pinpoint it's not. They did manage to kill 100 or so Israeli citizens, and in one really stunning day, they lit off 250 at about $500 a copy and managed to kill one putz on a bicycle. They did have slightly better results with their few Silkworms and TOWs but the end result was not changed.

So how's this God given incredible victory stack up?

Lebanon's destroyed.

Hezbollah's been ground down pretty hard.

A lot of people in Lebanon are probably mad as hell because Hezbollah dragged them into this mess and offers nothing but more of the same, and they were too weak or otherwise occupied to take charge of matters in their own government.

The status quo ante is likely to prevail.

Nothing was resolved.

Northern Israel has a few singe marks and some busted cinderblocks but it more or less came through unscathed.

The Katyusha turned out to make great film, but was pretty much useless for anything else.

It shifted the focus from the Palestinian ruckus.

In the words of one historical figure, "One more victory like that and we are finished."

Great job, everyone.