While the Hizbullah is said to run a government within a government, from what I can tell, they do not have the apparatus associated with conventional governments, including the ability to build armies for battle, train them in the open, raise taxes to pay for them, etc. Does anyone doubt what a real all-out war between Israel and Hizbullah would produce?
.......................
Israel did fight an all out war; so much ordinance and fuel was expended in the effort to destroy the Hezzies and reduce Lebanon to a pre-reconstruction state requests to Washington for supplemental supplies winged their way to the (displeased) imperial capital.
Look at this map of the targets struck within Lebanon:
<http://www.lebanonmaps.org/Locations_bombed_Aug13.jpg>
This looks like something quite close to total war to me.
And yet, the effort failed. The current political turmoil in Israel over the immense gulf between Olmert's boasts and "ground truth" indicates an understanding at nearly all levels of Israeli society that the war was a full throttle affair that produced no desired results.
...
But look mate, we could go back and forth all night over the question of whether or not Hizbollah is guilty of war crimes and find ourselves having arrived no where fast. There's vodka to be consumed and lips to be kissed so let's virtually shake hands and agree to disagree.
Modern war is terrorism.
World War Two was many things, chief among them a vast laboratory for perfecting methods of creating terror from the air (see, for example the aluminum polished wit and wisdom of Gen. Curtis LeMay).
By launching missiles into northern Israel in retaliation for IAF bombing the Hezzies broke zero new ground; they simply joined the grand tradition of the weary Earth's most civilized states.
.d.
What is the brain? If you don't know the answer to that, you've forgotten how to think.
Look Around You: Episode No. 8 ...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/
