Israel suffers from the cult of the offensive, which also afflicts the U.S. military. Believing that grabbing the initiative and taking the fight to the enemy wins wars, both of these militaries have stumbled into the tar pit of fighting wars that only guerrillas could love. Both Israel and the U.S. militaries should have known the potency of defensive guerrilla warfare tactics from their prior experiences in Lebanon and Vietnam. But both were arrogant in thinking that their forces should not "slum" by training to fight against such rag tag enemies-even though it was fairly clear that politicians with no military training would be oblivious to the internal contradictions of counterinsurgency warfare and would once again order them to undertake it.

The esteemed Israeli military has always been expected to wipe the floor with its Arab enemies. Yet the only way Israel could have won the fight in Lebanon was to completely exterminate Hezbollah, something that was unlikely to happen, given the Israeli army's reluctance to have another quagmire on the ground-as it did during its 18-year occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. This occupation was Israel's Vietnam, and Israelis, much like Americans, have become casualty averse.

Instead, to reduce casualties in the current conflict, the Israeli military decided to degrade Hezbollah's strength using only air power and a minimal army presence on the ground. But, just like the American experience in Iraq, to fight guerillas, one needs sufficient forces on the ground that can be more selective than air firepower in distinguishing between insurgents and civilians. In counterinsurgency warfare, killing large numbers of civilians turns the all-important popular opinion in the target country away from the occupiers toward the guerillas. But both the Israeli and U.S. militaries have used massive firepower because it holds down their casualties and thus maintains support longer at home for the foreign adventure. So adventure-seeking government officials are caught in the unenviable trade off of alienating the target country's population or their own at home, the two key groups to win support from during a counterinsurgency war.

Although foreign policy elites detest casualty aversion in democracies, it is actually a good thing-or would be if overly adventurous political officials would see this inherent, abysmal trade off in fighting against guerillas and avoid it. Guerilla tactics are the most successful type of warfare in human history, and the aforementioned contradiction is one of the reasons why. The other is that the guerillas are on the defensive and are usually fighting on their own terrain, which they know far better than the occupying power. They also have a better intelligence network on their home soil than does the occupier, who probably has a deficiency in speakers of the native language. Such has been the case in both Lebanon and Iraq.