>>513967002
Comparing the Gaza battlefield to past asymmetric wars, it was clear from the outset that "total victory" was a dangerous delusion. A war waged without a clear political objective inevitably succumbs to the same law of diminishing returns that Kissinger warned against. In the absence of a Kissinger-style exit strategy, Israel's current government behaves like a compulsive gambler in a casino, recklessly throwing in more chips – more exhausted soldiers, more hostages left to die, more Palestinian civilian casualties. The result is a growing perception of Israel as the embodiment of evil in the eyes of the world.
This is the same kind of gamble that characterized in American efforts in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both cases, it proved futile. Military surges failed to change the strategic reality because the battlefield did not allow for the kind of maneuver warfare that conventional armies are accustomed to. More crucially, the enemy – motivated by deep hatred for the invader – has nothing to lose. As the war drags on, they gain international sympathy and spark unrest and fatigue on the home front of the occupying power.
The U.S. lost the war in Vietnam after it lost it on university campuses and in Western public opinion. In Afghanistan, it lost to a jihadist enemy whose indifference to death and casualties no troop surge could overcome. America also could no longer withstand the effect of the destruction it unleashed on public opinion at home. It wasn't just the Russian winter that broke the spirit of Wehrmacht soldiers in Operation Barbarossa; it was also Stalin's endless ability to send fresh divisions into battle from the depths of Russia's vast geography.