Everybody Loses, Except Those Who Don’t.

So that means it’s fair, right? A quick cut, assuming that things fall together like the Times suggests…

Given the situation on the ground right now, the deal seems to be about as good as Israel could have hoped for. Hizbollah was neither going to be destroyed nor disarmed, and the Israelis get their UN /Lebanese force, which seems to have some teeth, if probably not enough to fully disuade Hizbollah from launching attacks. Had the Israelis (and their allies on the American Right) not made such extravagant claims at the beginning of the conflict, the outcome might even look kind of like a draw. The blood and treasure cost of this operation for Israel may be eventually be dwarfed by the increased political (if not military) strength of Hizbollah and its expanding influence on the Lebanese political scene.

Iran, as usual, wins. Its client survives, if not quite with the same amount of teeth, and Israel spends a lot of time and effort making Hizbollah really popular everywhere in the Islamic world.

France wins. It gets to be the “honest broker” and can pretend to be a great power again for a while. That is, at least, until its soldiers start getting killed in southern Lebanon.

The US just looks inept. Our client, in spite of vast military superiority, is unable to destroy Iran’s client, and the latter goes from being an unpopular terrorist organization to a very popular terrorist organization. We have to rely on France to bail us out. Not good.

All that, and a lot of Israelis and Lebanese die.

Also see Billmon, Greenwald, and for the enraged wingnut reaction, Powerline.