Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator.

While I wouldn't necessarily ascribe this to their being from the Air Forces of their respective countries (war hawk Ariel Sharon was a tank commander, and Douglas "Let's attack China" MacArthur was in the infantry), as you noted in a later comment, we had our own Halutz years ago, Curtis LeMay. Thankfully, he was not allowed to do what Halutz was allowed to do.

Or none of us might have been around to discuss this.

Go back to Gulf War I, which I assume that you supported (as I and most Americans did at the time). Remember all those scuds that Saddam rained down on Israel, which caused a lot of physical damage but luckily only one documented fatality (an elderly person who suffered a heart attack)? Remember how Israel found the wisdom and discipline to not respond to these attacks? Remember how it received the world's admiration and respect for doing so (including that of some Gulf states with whom it ended up opening up ties with), since had it responded it would have split apart the coalition and changed the whole outcome of the war? And remember how, despite the predictions of all the usual chicken littles, Israel was not wiped from the face of the earth as a result of its restraint? Surely you remember all that.

I'll tell you one more thing about that time. My cousin was nearly killed by one of these scuds. It hit the street in front of her parents' apartment building, and completely destroyed the front of it and a number of other nearby buildings. Thankfully, she was in the back of the apartment at the time and was only lightly injured, and no one else was home, nor did any of the neighbors suffer any major injuries. Most had by then fled south to escape the rain of scuds, but she couldn't as she was attending nursing school at the time (ironically, several years later, she was the attending nurse when Rabin was brought in after being shot, and was one of the last people to see him alive). And yet I and most Israelis supported Israel's smart decision to not retaliate, because retaliation was precisely what Saddam wanted Israel to do, so he could divide the coalition.

What is it about thinking things through that you neocon chickenhawks--most of whom haven't been in the military let alone seen combat--simply cannot or will not grasp? People lives are at stake in these knee-jerk assumptions that you make and yet you clearly don't give a damn, because others will pay the price for your need for cheap and illusory glory. There are times when you strike back, and times when you don't. Israel had a right to retaliate against Hezbollah last summer, but not in the way or to the extent that it did. And look at the consequences of its not having thought that through. Hezbollah was empowered and Israel lost much credibility and the myth of its military prowess was seriously weakened, with who knows what future consequences. Kind of like another mideast war of recent years.

Use your head, dammit. This is NOT a game.