Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

UNIFIL was just an excuse to allow the IDF to retreat with honour.



How long was Israel in Lebanon before finally couldn't stomache the losses anymore? Let's not forget the disaster that was called the South Lebanon Army. This last invasion was obviously because of the UN's failure to prevent a Hezbollah build up and action. To expect the UN to succeed when it is its failure that prompted this Israeli failure is in itself simplistic.



Let's not do a revisionism. We can examine and debate the details but the fact is that Israel lost this one. There is some shame and your pride is hurt. Swallow it and learn where you went wrong. There is no better teacher of humility and battle tactics than failure.

The fact was that Israel was the one who started this war under conditions that did not allowed victory. Whether misjudgement, ill-informed, poor soldiering, bad luck, or just the coffee was bad, these things have to be examined with one goal in mind - to understand the defeat. To ignore the defeat or gloss over it with other accomplishments (such as the OPOBJs were achieved) would ignore the lessons altogether.