"Hezbollah has demonstrated that total Arab defeat is not inevitable. ... Israel has lost its tremendous psychological advantage," says George Friedman, an intelligence analyst and CEO of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm in Austin.
"Israel will be perceived by its enemies as weak, constrained and dysfunctional," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
The conflict also has dealt a blow to Bush's campaign to bring democracy to the region. It bolstered Iran, Hezbollah's main patron, and Shiites elsewhere — including in Iraq, where, "having first experienced the limits of American power, (the Shiites) are now seeing the expanding boundaries of Iranian power," Friedman says.
"Israel will be perceived by its enemies as weak, constrained and dysfunctional," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
Yet, the United States is taking a different lesson from the conflict. President Bush said this week that Hezbollah lost. That shows just how ignorant and wrong these Republicans are and continue to be.
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