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Unless you can show that the IDF could NOT have won in a gloves-off all-or-nothing fight, I maintain that the firepower advantage of the IDF would've absolutely gutted Hez, but for the Israeli's self-restraint of their armed forces. This restraint was not justified in any way, mind you, as ANY force employed by Israel would've been condemned, and NO restraint of the Israeli's power by themselves was even going to be acknowledged by a hostile world.
If the Israelis had wanted to road-march to Damascus, in my professional opinion they would've been able to do it almost at the speed of re-supply. Losses were what they were because the Israeli political leadership temporized, dithered, an d bumbled their way through strategic decisions, choosing poor courses-of-action when they were able to choose at all.
In Lebanon 2006, Israel began to wage war like a true Western Power, seeing the phantoms of considerations that should ALWAYSALWAYSALWAYS be relegated BEHIND victory, once the decision to send their forces into battle.
WIN YOUR WARS. If you think world opinion is against you if you win, no matter whether you showed any care whatsoever to being 'humane', just wait until you know what they think about you when you LOSE, and again, it won't matter how careful you were.
VICTORY is important, and nothing else even comes close to second place. It really is the only consideration, once you've decided to fight. Which is why, for the second time of pointing this out, war is such a weighty, serious matter. If you're going to risk your young men and your country's interests, and kill the people of an enemy's country, MAKE IT WORTH IT.
WIN YOUR WARS. Or don't fight at all.
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"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
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