Ben Stein has it right with this article in the American Spectator.

We are in real serious trouble, and I'll tell you how and why I know it:

* Because the Hezbollah -- as has been well reported -- launches missiles at purely civilian targets in Israel as a matter of course, and no one in Europe or in the American left says "boo" about it. It's considered the Hezbollah's "right" to kill Israelis and when they do, they boast about it and promise to do more;

* Because it's been also well documented that the Hezbollah hides behind civilian targets and adjacent to civilian dwellings in Lebanon to fire its rockets at Israel, and when Israel fires back and mistakenly hits a home with civilians, the world of "intellectuals" and "thinkers" blames Israel and calls Israel bloodthirsty;

* Because when the Israelis kill civilians, they apologize, but when the terrorists kill civilians, they brag -- and the beautiful people scream at Eretz Israel and excuse the terrorists;* Because if you substitute "America" for "Israel" and the "terrorists in Iraq" for the Hezbollah, you get what's happening in Iraq;

* Because it is impossible to beat a terrorist movement without using terror tactics, and we as a people of compassion and restraint, both in Israel and the U.S., will not use terror tactics even when survival is at stake, and this means we will not survive.

Read the whole thing.

Mario Loyola says the Israeli offensive is failing.

Israel cannot lift the terror umbrella by fighting in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s positions are too well-dispersed, and its increasingly long-range missiles can be fired from central Lebanon — and even north of Beirut. The buffer zone Israel is trying to create in south Lebanon — now whittled down to a few miles even on the drawing board — will only inconvenience the Hezbollah missile teams. Any stabilization force is likely to have to watch impotently as missiles get fired into Israel over their heads, and they will have as much luck rooting the missile teams out as Israel is having now, which is to say, very little. With all the firepower Israel has unleashed against Hezbollah, the shower of missiles reaching its towns and cities has hardly abated. Israel’s offensive is palpably failing.

Unfortunately, Loyola thinks the only thing that can save the Israelis is the United Nations. If that is the case, the Israelis are doomed.

Sebastian Mallaby says it is time for the U.S. to retreat from its earlier stated goal of a cease fire that includes the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Even before the death toll spiked yesterday, the Bush administration's diplomacy on Lebanon looked like a long shot. The goal, as laid out by administration officials, is to secure a cease-fire that removes the threat that Hezbollah poses to Israel. But Hezbollah's central function is to threaten Israel; that is the purpose for which Iran and Syria sustain it. Hezbollah is unlikely to renounce its reason for existence in the course of a negotiation. And the promised international peacekeepers will be hard-pressed to contain a militia that has proved capable of resisting Israel.

If its diplomacy fails, the Bush administration will have to face the dilemma that it's now avoiding: whether to support an indefinite cease-fire that goes beyond the 48-hour suspension of airstrikes announced yesterday but does not neutralize Hezbollah. To support such an outcome would be to retreat publicly. It would boost the prestige of extremists in the Middle East and encourage Iran to defy the West over its nuclear program. Yet refusing to support an imperfect cease-fire would be a greater error...

If he is right, then we are in a lose-lose situation, and for the Israelis, it is an even worse scenario. The only thing I can hope for now is that the Israeli government will suck it up, defy the world, and unleash the IDF in a massive ground offensive to root out and destroy Hezbollah's military capability in southern Lebanon. If they can smash Hezbollah in the south, stop the waves of rockets (which the IAF has been unable to do), then declare a cease fire and call for a an international force to come in as the IDF withdraws back to Israel, perhaps they can pull out a victory.