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Israel: A strategy gone awry?

"During the Vietnam War, a Communist leader famously told his U.S. counterpart that the United States could kill 10 Vietcong for every American who died, and yet would still lose in the end. The same is true of Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel is losing for the same reasons that it lost its previous struggle with Hezbollah: Bombardment from the air is ineffective; occupation on the ground has to be permanent, and involves an unacceptable stream of Israeli casualties; and outright massacre is (presumably) out of the question."

So writes Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington in an op-ed piece in the IHT.

Read the full Lieven analysis here.

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