The IDF failed in their recent fiasco into Lebanon, so all the chest thumping about how the IDF can defeat Hezbollah in combat is somewhat comical. I guess the caveat was if the IDF had a better plan they would have won, because they can fight better.

By most accounts the IDF's active duty forces did superbly, but several of their reservists didn't fare so well in tough urban combat. That is probably true for most nations, you have the A-Team and then a distant C-Team that normally requires a fair amount of time to knock the dust off of it after they mobilize to be combat ready.

The fact remains that irregulars achieved their goal, and just as in Vietnam it doesn't necessarily matter who actually wins the individual battles. This conventional mindset still blinds our military to the reality that in irregular warfare the fight is to shape the perceptions of the population (and other target audiences), not destroy the opposing military forces, because they know they can't.

We need to evaluate how the Hezbollah utilized tactical operations to defeat Israel in the last campaign, not how they used tactical operations to defeat the IDF, because they didn't, but then once again that wasn't the point.

We have this habit of saying we kicked their butt based on metrics that simply are not important, when we're actually getting our butt handed to us if you look at the metrics that count.