Prudence Mike Rappaport

As readers of this blog will know, I think the morality of Israel’s war against Hezbollah is an easy case.  What is harder to determine is the question of prudence — whether the war is being conducted well or whether the initial response was well-considered. 

Mathew Yglesias makes the case that Israel’s initial response was not prudent.

If they wanted their soldiers back .. [and] wanted to acttough in the face of threats, they could have refused to negotiate andmounted a smallish, well-targeted retaliatory strike that would havegarnered significant international support. Instead, Israel chose toescalate a low-intensity border conflict that posed no serious threatto its security into a much larger-scale battle it can’t possibly win– one that will only harden anti-Israeli sentiments in its neighbor tothe north.

There is something to this point, but how much is hard to say.  Israel could have responded with a less fierce attack and then seen what happened.  If Hezbollah did nothing or engaged in a small response, then what?  Israel would have lost its soldiers and did little to respond.  Is that a prudent course?  Not very, unless of course the current course turns out to be worse.  Assuming it can be continued without a premature international intervention, there is a reasonable chance the current course will be superior.  But there are no assurances.   

The rest of Yglesias’s column is unfortunately filled with the usual blather that what the US and Israel need to do is solve the Palestinian problem, as if they haven’t tried or the Palestinians are willing to make a deal.