{"id":319,"date":"2007-08-08T10:40:01","date_gmt":"2007-08-08T10:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html"},"modified":"2007-08-08T10:40:01","modified_gmt":"2007-08-08T10:40:01","slug":"no-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html","title":{"rendered":"Lebanon War: No Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wish I shared <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/lebanon-one-year-later.html\">Rabbi Grossman\u2019s<\/a> rosy assessment of the legacy of the Lebanon War, which marks its one-year anniversary next week.  She lists a number of factors that she cites as positive outcomes from the war, and it is certainly true that there are some improvements.  On the other hand, she fails to mention Hamas\u2019 takeover in Gaza, the decreased morale of Israel\u2019s citizens, the stagnation in the current administration and at the top ranks of the army, the strengthening of Palestinian militants in southern Lebanon, and the final nail in the coffin of the all-important myth of Israel\u2019s invulnerability.  All of these factors can be traced to Israel\u2019s disastrous decision to go into Lebanon\u2013a fitting irony since it was Israel\u2019s original incursion into Lebanon under Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon that first began to erode that myth.<br \/>\nIf there is one lesson to come out of the last 50 years, it is that wars launched to gain territory or with the &#8220;strategic intent&#8221; of realigning the neighborhood hardly ever go the way the aggressor intends or desires.  From Korea, to Vietnam, to the First Lebanon War; from the Soviet Union\u2019s invasion of Afghanistan to Rwanda to Kossovo to Iraq to the Second Lebanon War, time and again the hostilities have backfired in the face of the aggressor.<br \/>\nThe clear lesson is that voluntary wars, in Hebrew <em>milchemet reshut<\/em>, <em>have<\/em> no winners. (Witness the immortal words of Kevin Kline\u2019s pro-America character in &#8220;A Fish Called Wanda&#8221;: \u201cWe didn\u2019t lose Vietnam. It was a tie!\u201d), and there is something distasteful about debating who lost less, as Rabbi Grossman does.  This is not to say I\u2019m a pacifist; Israel needs to stand up to aggression and to respond militarily if provoked to maintain its security. However, launching full-scale wars on the shaky premise of installing friendly governments or creating new allies ought to be so thoroughly discredited as a tactic that any minister or government official should be ashamed to propose it. Yet <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y1FI5r4vtqc\" target=\"_blank\">Dick Cheney is making coy remarks about attacking Iran<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/commentisfree.guardian.co.uk\/tom_porteous\/2007\/08\/ethiopias_dirty_war.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ethiopia is fighting a proxy war in Somalia<\/a>, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.<br \/>\nFor all countries considering military action to promote foreign policy, the Lebanon War should serve as a stunning rebuke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wish I shared Rabbi Grossman\u2019s rosy assessment of the legacy of the Lebanon War, which marks its one-year anniversary next week. She lists a number of factors that she cites as positive outcomes from the war, and it is certainly true that there are some improvements. On the other hand, she fails to mention&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel-and-palestine"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lebanon War: No Winners - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lebanon War: No Winners - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I wish I shared Rabbi Grossman\u2019s rosy assessment of the legacy of the Lebanon War, which marks its one-year anniversary next week. She lists a number of factors that she cites as positive outcomes from the war, and it is certainly true that there are some improvements. On the other hand, she fails to mention&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-08T10:40:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Joshua Waxman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lebanon War: No Winners - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lebanon War: No Winners - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"I wish I shared Rabbi Grossman\u2019s rosy assessment of the legacy of the Lebanon War, which marks its one-year anniversary next week. She lists a number of factors that she cites as positive outcomes from the war, and it is certainly true that there are some improvements. On the other hand, she fails to mention&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2007-08-08T10:40:01+00:00","author":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html","name":"Lebanon War: No Winners - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-08-08T10:40:01+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-08T10:40:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/08\/no-winners.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lebanon War: No Winners"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/b2c907457be70b05b78f556cde42041f","name":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6ea\/6eaad0ba16ec89046c9580c3b08d2e4cx96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Joshua Waxman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/jwaxman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}