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[Tycho?] wrote:

resedit wrote:

If Israel bends over and does a prisoner exchange whenever Hezbollah kidnaps Israelis - they look weak.

Israel has made prisoner exchanges with Hezbollah in the past.

And what happened?
Hezbollah took some more.

btw - I'm not positive, but I'm almost certain that most of the time - Israel only does this when the prisoner is taken in war, IE taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon, not Hezbollah coming into Israel during a time when Israel is not in military conflict with them. That's the impression I got anyway from the Israeli political dude talking about it.

resedit wrote:

And what happened?
Hezbollah took some more.

btw - I'm not positive, but I'm almost certain that most of the time - Israel only does this when the prisoner is taken in war, IE taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon, not Hezbollah coming into Israel during a time when Israel is not in military conflict with them. That's the impression I got anyway from the Israeli political dude talking about it.

Where do you think Israel captured the hundreds of suspected Palestinian and Hezbollah militants it holds?  Within Israel proper, or during military incursions into Lebanon or the occupied territories?

bratboy wrote:

resedit wrote:

And what happened?
Hezbollah took some more.

btw - I'm not positive, but I'm almost certain that most of the time - Israel only does this when the prisoner is taken in war, IE taken by Hezbollah in Lebanon, not Hezbollah coming into Israel during a time when Israel is not in military conflict with them. That's the impression I got anyway from the Israeli political dude talking about it.

Where do you think Israel captured the hundreds of suspected Palestinian and Hezbollah militants it holds?  Within Israel proper, or during military incursions into Lebanon or the occupied territories?

They no doubt were taken from a variety of places.
What does that have to do with my point?

Daniel levy gives his  'big picture' interpretation of recent events in Haaretz.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746312.html

After this crisis will Israel belatedly wake up to the implications of the tectonic shift that has taken place in U.S.-Middle East policy?

In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.

Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush.

The key neocon protagonists, their think tanks and publications may be unfamiliar to many Israelis, but they are redefining the region we live in. This tight-knit group of "defense intellectuals" - centered around Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, Perle, Feith and others - were considered somewhat off-beat until they teamed up with hawkish well-connected Republicans like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Newt Gingrich, and with the emerging powerhouse of the Christian right. Their agenda was an aggressive unilateralist U.S. global supremacy, a radical vision of transformative regime-change democratization, with a fixation on the Middle East, an obsession with Iraq and an affinity to "old Likud" politics in Israel. Their extended moment in the sun arrived after 9/11.

Finding themselves somewhat bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, the neoconservatives are reveling in the latest crisis, displaying their customary hubris in re-seizing the initiative. The U.S. press and blogosphere is awash with neocon-inspired calls for indefinite shooting, no talking and extension of hostilities to Syria and Iran, with Gingrich calling this a third world war to "defend civilization."

I've gone on before about Perle and his grand vision. 

But I believe Mr. Levy has missed an important point, and that is I think Mr Cheney and Rumsfeld have more or less stepped off the neo-con train because they have achieved a significant bit of what they wanted due to the interests they represent; Energy and Defense and the new imperialism.

If other things in Perle's vision were to fall into place, fair enough, but the stated neo-con agenda of regional trasnformation in the mid east has run up against some obvious limits, and I don't think the most powerful of the neo-con disciples will allow a failing strategy to threaten what they have gained.  Maybe Gingrich is out of the realist loop, or he rejects it. Whichever it is, Cheney and Rumsfeld are far less dangerous to the world than people like Gingrich. That's saying something.