Winning all the battles but losing the war

Keeping with the theme of my last post, I just want to remark on the inexplicable stupidity of Israel's handling of the situation in Gaza. I am somewhat led to believe that Israel is less concerned with actually preventing terrorism as much as they are perpetuating it, because as long as they can paint all Palestinians as terrorists, they can hope to keep international opinion on their side while they continue to expand their borders in violation of UN Resolution 242. Perhaps they are just simply guilty of being foolish. Whatever the case, I think they should take notes from the pages of the book The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World:

In comparison to Western high-tech forces [terrorists and insurgents] are ill-equipped, and adapt readily available civil technology to their own military ends, as with the cell phone used for initiating an improvised explosive device - an event now so common it has the military acronym of IED. The threats they pose are not directly to our states or territories but to the security of our people - in the flesh and in the media - and it is there that the fight takes place. But this fight must be won so as to achieve the ultimate objective of capturing the will of the people; in other words, one can escalate with increasing firepower and high-tech forces to the theoretical point of massive destruction - but beyond bringing great collateral damage, this will play into the hands of the opponent. Israel's attacks on Lebanese civilians infrastructure in the conflict of 2006 gives a good example of these consequences. Apart from raising serious legal and moral issues, it is this way of thinking that leads to the phenomenon of winning every battle and losing the war. - Gen. Rupert Smith


Clearly, no one within the IDF has read General Smith's book.