We suppose that this was an imposture to sound heroic to the uneducated Arab masses, who look to him simply because he is supposed to be a brave leader, while what he has led to most conspicuously is the death of many Lebanese citizens and the destruction of much of the infrastructure of the recovering country.

We can also add to his murderous manias the bonkers claim by his patron and boss in absentia, the madman of Iran, the vituperative vow to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

Given the above comparison, never has a nation waged a more ethically restrained war than the one in which Israel was engaged.

Yet, even in light of Israel’s unprecedented carefulness, the little state was still reviled by Arab nations and even the United Nations for its “overreaction” and “indiscriminate bombing.”

Considering the ingratitude elicited by its make nice war conduct, we find flickers of the old and sinister observation that it is better to be feared than to be loved, especially, we should add, when making war, in which case love may be unattainable.

Given the entire indecisive mishmash, Israel’s greatest general, Moshe Dyan must have been rolling in his grave and tearing at his black eye patch. If he had been in control, he would surely have planned an initial tactic other than entering Lebanon gingerly to combat Hezbollah’s on its own terms. How he would have ranted at inching across the border to battle the guerillas, entrenched in their cement bunkers on byways long booby trapped, and then marching back home to rest up, while another troop of soldiers wandered in, treading carefully among the booby traps and jack-in-the-box Hezbollah gunners and rocketeers.

We have only been curious observers of military strategy – from Caesar, at the head of 10,000 or so cohorts, patiently monitoring tribes of barbarians in excess of, we are told by him in his Gallic Wars, 100,000 persons, until he had them in a defile to our own swift and decisive thrusts of recent times. But even we can imagine that he would have planned a dramatic movement, like a breathtakingly rapid phalanx of tanks up the 20 miles to the Litani river, along the most accessible route, accomplishing the goal in perhaps less than an hour; then slicing across the narrow land to cut the guerillas in the south off and have them trapped in a pincer action as old as prehistoric combat.