>>63966118An interesting thing about this war has been how practically everybody underestimated Hamas and overestimated Hezbollah. I think at some level, the morale or spirit (or whatever you want to call it) of the people involved in any conflict matters a lot. It's impossible to measure this objectively like you can the number of bullets or bombs, it's a feel, and Hezbollah just didn't have whatever that was. Hezbollah is a more opportunistic but cowardly mafia-like group with a lot of bluster. But Hamas is built out of different stuff and they believe in something that's more existential (and crazier and apocalyptic) when they go in for Mortal Kombat:
https://youtu.be/lSI2KECd9oA
Iran messed up too. They should have never backed Assad. That didn't even make sense ideologically because that was a family dictatorship descended from Arab nationalist socialism, and Iran supporting that reflects a degeneration of the ideals of the Islamic revolution.
I think Michael Totten retired from journalism, but he wrote long-form essays about the Middle East, and he was threatened by Hezbollah while working in Lebanon. They called him on the phone and told him to watch his back or whatever. And he was like oh mah gerd, and then his Lebanese friend was like, hey, threaten them back! Totten was like, what? Yeah, you can't let them push you around. So he called the guy back and was like NEVER threaten me again and I'm an American and blah blah blah, and the Hezbollah guy was like "What... ahh... I never threatened you!" and tried to play coy. They're afraid of Americans.