Michael Widlanski isn't very impressed with PM Olmert, either:

As the combat has trailed off in Lebanon, it can now be said that whatever Israel’s losses, it has discovered a great comedic genius: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—a man who sent his army to war, but only after tying its shoelaces together.

In fact, Olmert is more than a performing comedic artist; he is also a director of a war cabinet that encompasses a veritable Shakespearean company performing a seemingly endless comedy of errors.

It's dismaying in the short run, but in the long run, this loss may be good news, if it results in Israel finally taking its enemies seriously. Ralph Peters agrees:

...what on earth might give us cause for hope?

* Israel's recent defeat, for one thing. Yes, you read that right. The truth is that Israel got a relatively cheap, if embarrassing, wake-up call. And Israel's a part of Western civilization, not of the Middle East's decaying cultures. That means that Israel doesn't just wallow in blame - like Americans, Israelis figure out what went wrong and then fix it. After the post-war soul-searching and investigations are finished, failed leaders will be replaced and Israel will re-emerge with a renewed sense of mission, a stronger government and a powerfully reformed military - the next time the IDF goes to war, watch the way it devastates its enemies.

* The "unity of Muslims" confronting the West is history (it was always a bogus, ramshackle affair). Sunni-Arab leaders increasingly grasp that the real threat isn't from the United States or Israel, but from the explosion of Shia ambitions, prowess, wealth and desire for vengeance. The future of the Middle East could go a number of ways, but we may find ourselves as bemused spectators, while our sworn enemies and phony friends kill each other. Afterward, we'll pick up the pieces.

... The florid American master of horror fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, warned his characters, "Do not raise up what ye cannot put down." Islamist terrorists are reviving the West's thirst for blood. And this time it won't be slaked in Flanders.

Things are going to get uglier east of Suez. And we're going to win.

Yes, if not now, then soon, I suspect that the Islamists (whose knowledge of American history seems to end no earlier than the late sixties) are going to (like Yamamoto) "wake up a sleeping giant," and they're oblivious to the consequences.

I think the only issue I'd raise with that analysis is that it still seems to assume major nation-state actors. The key to Lebanon is figuring out a way to separate the parts of Lebanon that are reasonable from the ones that aren't. Maybe you can't in the end and that's the cost of war and the cost to the reasonable Lebanese for allowing themselves to be hijacked. But every major combatant in the war she's discussing contains a minority population that may be an ally instead of an enemy.

I've always been of a minority opinion on this, but I think letting the bad guys embolden themselves so that they become more openly aggressive, and in many cases, more organized and thus visible, actually makes the end game war easier and more decisive.

Ultimately and cold bloodedly, the way one deals with an implacably hostile group inextricably embedded in a larger, supportive society is by genocide. This is what the US did with the indians (who had elements who killed settlers over a very long period in what can accurately be called acts of terrorism). The islamists should realize the West has historically been good at genocide, and that was before nuclear weapons.

Paul: “The islamists should realize the West has historically been good at genocide, and that was before nuclear weapons.”

The West has adapted to all or nothing war, maximise the peace, and if that fails maximise the war - seek ultimate solutions. Like most tribal cultures the Middle East has adapted to continuous low level war without ultimate solutions. If your enemy does not immediately fight back, then they are weak and open to attack, there is no presumption of peace.

Hence the Western response, when it eventually comes, is overwhelming and “disproportionate”, and the Middle East always gets sucked in to attacking when it should not, as Israel has demonstrated over and over again. Still they do not learn this fundamental cultural difference, and every dishonourable and disproportionate Western response just makes them angrier.

It makes no difference how many times they get told that the rules of war, and more significantly, the rules of peace, have changed, they are too arrogant and wise in their old culture to listen.

Paul, if by "genocide" you mean the deployment of konzentrationslagern and gas chambers -- nah, I disagree. The West does that kind of thing poorly, at least compared to more totalitarian systems, particularly leftist People's Republics, where it can be justified by its service to The People, or religious states, where it can be justified by the Will of God.

But if you mean seducing them culturally, luring their youngsters away by offering them freedom and opportunity, or more or less unintentionally deploying infectious plagues from smallpox to alcoholism to Brittany Spears -- then absolutely this has worked very well. Technically there are millions of Native Americans living, but hardly a one lives like a Native American. They're as American in the ways that count as any paleface. It's cultural genocide at which the West is unusually good, not so much physical.

The Islamist claim, of course, that this has already begun, and they're merely fighting back and for their (cultural) survival. Ironically, they're probably right. But they're also likely to lose, just as you say, and that's a good thing for posterity.

If we match historical examples, I'd say the best elements of Islamism -- say, its vigor -- will be absorbed into Western culture, along with some of its language and holidays, and its worst elements discarded. A hundred years from now, they'll be harmless and romanticized, like pirates of the eighteenth century (a right bunch of evil bastards) are now romanticized in Hollywood movies.

Actually, I think he means genocide by killing hundreds of millions in nuclear fire.

[If] by "genocide" you mean the deployment of konzentrationslagern and gas chambers -- nah, I disagree.

Since I refered to the indians, to which neither of those was applied (unless you count reservations as the former), then obviously not.

BTW, I view this potential violent turn of western countries to be itself the most dangerous product of all this. That violence may be turned back against the west, by the west.

Technically there are millions of Native Americans living, but hardly a one lives like a Native American.

One word: C a s i n o

Hmmm. . .

Lets give Rand's spam filter a test:

Viagra

Actually, I think he means genocide by killing hundreds of millions in nuclear fire.

Well, no. That's just war. Big war, maybe, but just war. "Genocide" means the selective killing of a particular type of person. As the Third Reich famously did with the Jews, the Turks with the Armenians, et cetera. It's not the same as making war.

If you want to commit genocide against the Arabs, for example, you've got to kill all the Israeli Arabs along with the Palestinian Arabs, and you've got to leave the Copts in Egypt alone while you blow away their Arabic co-nationalists. It wouldn't at all be the same as making war against one or several Arab states.