18-Aug-06: A Lebanese View of Hizbollah's "Victory"

Under the headline "La victoire fictive du Hezbollah au Liban", the francophone Lebanese site Libanoscopie summarizes Hizbollah's 'victory' with some conclusions that must be fairly uncommon in the Arab world. (Thanks to Google Translate for providing us with a rough French-to-English translation to get started with.)

Hizbollah's Fictitious Victory in Lebanon
At the end of 34 days of combat, Hezbollah's secretary general announces victory... Syria applauds, Iran is jubilant. The victory of the Umma over the Zionist enterprise. But how to measure victory? Libanoscopie put this question to an expert in political strategy:
Declaring victory in war calls for three conditions to be satisfied. Military force prevents the losing party from being in a position to continue fighting. Military invasion gives the victor possession of the enemy's territory. And the victor achieves the objectives which it declared for that war. In the case of Hezbollah, none of these conditions has been satisfied.

• The Israeli army, though it has suffered some reverses, is far from having suffered significant losses. The capacity of its air, naval and land forces remain practically intact.
• Far from achieving the invasion of the enemy's territory, it is the Israeli army which invaded [Hizbollah's] territory and now occupies parts of South Lebanon.
• As for Hizbollah's declared objectives - recovering the Shabaa farms area and the release of the Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli prisons, the first is not even close, and Israel now holds 15 more prisoners from Hizbollah's ranks.

Despite its efforts to conceal the facts from the local and Arab media and to prevent the disclosure of the true data, it is clear from semi-official sources - often needing to preserve their anonymity for fear of reprisal - that Hezbollah has undergone the total destruction of its logistic and economic infrastructure. The number of its militia and leaders killed in this war is around 1,500.
To advertise this as an achievement is an attempt to convert defeat into victory - consistent with the culture from which the Party of Gd [Hizbollah] emanates.

Libanoscopie may be the only Arab news source prepared to imply the question that needs to be on the mind of every Lebanese: How many more 'victories' like this can Lebanon possibly endure?