מיסיון אקומפלישעד, מיסיון אכומפלישעד

Billmon calls the play:

Kabuki Offensive

This is like a scene from a bar fight, where one of the pugilists first makes sure his friends have a good strong hold of him, and then starts yelling "Let me at him!"

'Ehud Olmert's office said late Friday that the expanded incursion into Lebanon would continue "for the time being," despite agreeing to a cease-fire resolution drafted by the United Nations Security Council.

Senior Israel Defense Forces officers said that the IDF is "continuing forward at full power. . . " '

This, of course, is 100% kosher bullshit -- nobody in their right mind would start a major offensive at "full power" knowing full well it will all have to be shut down within 48 or at most 72 hours. So it looks like the big push was just a big fraud all along -- a desperate attempt by Olmert and his bedraggled colleagues to try to kick a little dust in the eyes of their domestic constituents. But the message -- "Yeah, boy, if they had'na stopped me I would have kicked Hizbullah's ass but good" -- isn't very original or at this point even slightly believable.

What else are they going to do? They've blown it, right down the line, from the opening bid for an aerial knockout, through the defeats and retreats, the incredible shrinking war aims, and the daily humiliation of seeing a third of Israel bombarded with rockets. And now this -- a ceasefire that appears to give Hizbullah all or nearly all of what it demanded (although not the Laker tickets), supervised by a "reinforced" version of UNIFIL (most of the reinforcements will probably never arrive) working under a limited one-year mandate...

And for this, Lebanon was ravaged, thousands were killed, millions of civilians on both sides spent weeks couped up in air raid shelters, and the credibility and any lingering shreds of respectability the U.S. government had in the Islamic world were flushed straight down the you-know-what.

All for this:

'Why did we embark on the war, if not to ensure that French soldiers will protect Israel from the Hezbollah rocket battery.'

The long knives are out -- for Olmert, for Peretz (the ward boss and ex-"peace" activist turned defense minister) for Halutz and the commander of the Northern Front (who was effectively sacked in the middle of the war) and for that matter probably half of entire IDF general staff -- if they don't sink daggers into each other's backs first. Losing is never pretty, and the post-war settling of accounts after this loss is going to be even less so.

Already it seems as if every minor league neocon in Washington is taking the opportunity to remind Israel that if there's one thing Americans detest it's a loser. So much for all that tearful singing of the Ha'tikvah. If Washington's Middle Eastern Rottweiler wants to keep getting its kennel ration, it's going to have to put a little more teeth into its work next time.

At this point I'm not sure if the Israeli branch of the punditburo has yet to recognize the full magnitude of the debacle, or whether it's just trying to put a brave face on it. But this statement, from Ha'aretz's Ze'ev Schiff, is a leading nominee for the Emperor Hirohito Memorial Prize for Ridiculous Understatement:

"In regard to other Arab elements, it is very possible that Israeli deterrence will be somewhat undercut."

All the bellicose rhetoric in the world -- like Schiff's threat that Israel will respond with "cruel craziness" if other red lines are crossed in the future -- can't conceal the multiple failures: of a miltary aristocracy's arrogant faith in technology, of an Army that's grown accustomed to waging war against Palestinian teenagers, of a political establishment that believes with zombie-like intensity that the cure for its own incompetence is ever greater applications of military force. (Because, of course, that's the only thing the Arabs understand.)

There will be hell to pay for this fiasco -- coming as it did on top of Uncle Sam's own murder suicide pact in Iraq. When and where that payment wil be demanded isn't clear yet, but if the past is any guide it will be paid in the blood of the innocent, not the guilty...

As always, you should read it all to get the full flavor.