And, remorseful as it sounds, it appears that the sudden taking of life, while terrible in itself, often, as the result of the shock it produces, prevents the loss of more life over a grueling pattern of half measures. These are terrible observatins, but what is more dangerous than to don blinders while the enemy is aiming at you?

While we are, in all our being, advocates of life, life in fact as our principal defense against death, we also know that a slow war of attrition can kill more people than a deft move that achieves a military goal suddenly.

The war, whether over now or not, will finally wane, either as a result of the UN resolution or Israel’s belated resolve to pick up the forceps and remove the inflamed molar by the name of Hezbollah.

Should peace prevail, it will be, in the remembered annals of the area, an unprecedented felicity. Not since recorded history began, some 5,000 years ago, cut in Sumerian cuneiform, has peace reigned in the persistently irate and combative region.

As for now, on the part of Israel, there is unavoidable shame at not achieving a decisive victory, apologies by Olmert and the leaders of Israel's defense forces, and blame-placing from myriad sources. There are also bound to be unforseen and perhaps dangerous sequelae, witness Nasrallah's boast, "We are today before a strategic, historic victory, without exaggeration."

For Hezbollah, considering the Lebanese civilians who have died as a reaction to its ill-considered kidnappings and the damage that has been wreaked on Lebanon’s material wealth, there must be, as painful realizations set in, a point in which the guerilla group may pay a price at the hands of its own countrymen, regardless of Nasrallah's false protestations of victory. It is unlikely, we think, that those bereaved and bludgeoned citizens will be in much of mood to make nice.