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Originally posted by Sidd Finch My point was (1) that they always have anyway, and (2) that the whole "David v. Goliath" thing wears a little thin when you pull out the cruise missiles and laser-guided anti-tank weapons.
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Hezbollah will derive more legitimacy and support from the conflict than they previously had. This doesn't help them if they're all dead, but our experience in Iraq has shown that laser-guided munitions don't work so well against an enemy that hides in a civilian population. To win, Hezbollah needs to retain the capacity to keep lobbing rockets at northern Israel. Is the bombing stopping that? Not yet.
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My issue is not that the Lebanese government was not strong enough actually to get Hezbollah to disarm, but that it had no interest in doing so. I think that's where we disagree.
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I don't know why you think a central government -- any central government -- would be happy to tolerate a state within a state, with its own military. In a range of very practical ways, Hezbollah was acting as the government through much of the country. I can't imagine why the central government would want to let this continue if it had a choice, and I haven't seen anything to suggest that the rest of the country was keen on this arrangement.
