There are many ways to read the latest war in Lebanon.

Many Lebanese remain puzzled by the strategic thinking behind a month-long aerial campaign ... One goal was nearly achieved by the last days of fighting. The bombing did succeed in displacing some nine tenths of Lebanon's estimated 1.2 million Shias.

This Israeli campaign appears to have had two purposes. One was psychological: underlining the fact that Hezbollah had failed to fulfill its role as a protector of even its own people, the Shia, let alone of Lebanon as a whole. The other was military: to clear the south Lebanon "fighting box" of civilians, so as to allow the Israeli army to make use of its heaviest antipersonnel weaponry without fear of bad publicity.

Hezbollah's offensive weapons were not especially effective. The four thousand or so rockets it fired killed just forty-one civilians, a third of them "Israeli Arabs." But the guerrillas' skillful use of light field weapons ... appears to have rendered Israel's lumbering Merkava ("Chariot") tanks pretty useless.

At this writing, most Lebanese who do not share Hezbollah's triumphalism, and they are many, remain pessimistic about the chances of taming the party. "Lebanon is finished" is a refrain often heard in private.

I disagree with the author's claim that Katyusha rockets were ineffective. If the purpose was terror, rather than mass casualties, then one could conclude they were reasonably effective, as the north of Israel was essentially shut down for the duration of the conflict, with Israelis trapped in their secure bunkers.

Many Lebanese remain puzzled by the strategic thinking behind a month-long aerial campaign that killed approximately 1,287 people, injured 4,054, severed three quarters of the country's roads and bridges, smashed some fifty factories, and left an estimated 100,000 people homeless. But one goal was nearly achieved by the last days of fighting. Aside from the general infrastructural damage and occasional effectiveness at hitting probable rocket-launching sites, as well as at clobbering Hezbollah targets that ranged from its main offices in the Dahiya suburb to party-run village orphanages, clinics, and schools, the bombing did succeed in displacing some nine tenths of Lebanon's estimated 1.2 million Shias. Touching nearly every concentration of Shias in the country, the nine thousand air strikes emptied not just the Dahiya and the southern borderlands. Shia villagers even in the northern Bekaa Valley, fifty miles from the front, also found it wise to seek shelter in public schools, stadiums, and private homes across the Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Druze- dominated regions of the country.

This Israeli campaign appears to have had two purposes. One was psychological: underlining the fact that Hezbollah had failed to fulfill its role as a protector of even its own people, the Shia, let alone of Lebanon as a whole. The other was military: to clear the south Lebanon "fighting box" of civilians, so as to allow the Israeli army to make use of its heaviest antipersonnel weaponry without fear of bad publicity. In the very last hours of the war, Israel does seem to have saturated parts of the border landscape with cluster bombs. But either its army was given too little time and leeway or the technique was inefficient. The final twenty-four hours of fighting saw Hezbollah firing its single largest daily volley of rockets, some 250, at northern Israel. Many were shot from positions that had been repeatedly bombed, often within sight of Israel's border.

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Israel's loss of 116 soldiers was not large as major wars go. Hezbollah claims to have lost a smaller number of front-line fighters, although many more troops associated with Hezbollah may have been lost as well. It is difficult to judge, since rearguard reserves are typically dressed as civilians. Israel's claim to have destroyed up to 70 percent of the guerrillas' longer-range rocket launchers may also be correct. But the uncomfortable fact for Israel is that whereas Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers for every Israeli citizen it killed, Israel's ratio in inflicting "collateral damage" was, at best, exactly the reverse.