Israel's failure is the neo-cons failure.

Ehud Olmert announced yesterday that Hizbullah's infrastructure had been all but destroyed.

Hizbullah swiftly answered his overblown claim by firing 210 rockets into Israel, the largest show of military muscle in the history of the organisation.

The rockets - some thought to be Khaibar-1s, four times more powerful than Katyushas - reached as far as the West Bank, landing near the town of Jenin. One Israeli riding his bicycle was killed near Nahariya and another 21 were injured. Forests blazed on the hillsides near the border.

Olmert is Midas in reverse. Everything he touches turns to shit.

There were many of us who predicted weeks ago that Bush, if he were a true friend of Israel, would protect Olmert from his worst excesses and force a ceasefire. I said on July 18:

It is for this reason that I believe Bush will shortly step in and bring an end to this conflict. Not to stop the damage that Israel is inflicting upon Gaza and Lebanon, but to stop the damage that she is inflicting upon herself and her reputation.

Olmert, by continually trying to out-Sharon Sharon, has to be saved from himself. If Bush insists that he stops, he can at least save face by claiming that US interference brought matters to a climax rather than a realisation that the plan was fatally flawed.

How badly I underestimated Bush's intransigence and stupidity. Had Israel been asked to stop then she could still have claimed some sort of military victory, she could once again have complained that the US was tying her hands. As Nehemia Shtrasler explains:

There was one moment during the war when we had the upper hand. It was the moment when Israel had succeeded in striking Hizbullah with strong and surprising force, Haifa was peaceful and the number of casualties was small. That was the right moment to stop the war, declare victory and move on to the diplomatic track.

This opportunity came when the G8 convened in St Petersburg on July 14, two days after the fighting broke out. The G8 formulated a four-point plan, and nothing could have been better for Israel. According to that plan, the three Israeli soldiers abducted to Gaza and Lebanon would be returned unharmed, the Katyusha rocket fire against Israel would stop, Israel would halt its military operations and pull back its forces, and it would also release the Hamas ministers and MPs.

The G8 statement declared that the full responsibility for the crisis fell on Hamas and Hizbullah.

But Olmert and Amir Peretz, the defence minister, did not know when to quit. They wanted to show the public that they, the "civilians", were more courageous than their predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. That is why they continued the war in order to attain goals that from the outset were unattainable.

That moment passed, and both Bush (and toddling along behind him, Blair) allowed Olmert to stumble on with calamitous effect to Israel's reputation both as a nation and as a military power to be feared in the Middle East.

The fearful destruction unleashed upon the civilian population of Lebanon will live in infamy.

The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows: 508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians.

In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas.

And all for what? For what? News coming out of the UN says that the Security Council "appeared on the verge of breaking the deadlock over Lebanon last night, paving the way for a security council resolution in which major powers including the US and UK would demand an immediate end to fighting."

Even the US and UK are now throwing in the towel, finally demanding that this madness be brought to an end.

Olmert still appears to think he is a position to negotiate as he attempts to dictate the size and scope of any UN troops to be sent to the area:

"I think it has to have about 15,000 soldiers," said the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in an interview with the Times. "It has to be made up of armies not of retirees, of real soldiers, not of pensioners who have come to spend leisurely months in south Lebanon. We will not pull out and we will not stop shooting until there is an international force that will effectively control the area."

It is a mark of how delusional he has become that he still feels he is in a position to dictate terms.

I am honestly unsure if Olmert will even survive. The damage he has wrought to Israel's reputation is immeasurable.

And this is to a very large extent attributable to the fact that Olmert appears to have embraced the neo-con logic, the unshakeable belief that military superiority will allow victory in all circumstances and against all foes.

And just as Bush has learned in Iraq that military superiority counts for little when faced with an enemy which Mao Zedong described as, having an ability to "move among the people like a fish in water", so Olmert learns the same lesson in Lebanon.

In short, this is not simply a defeat for Israel, it is a defeat for the whole discredited neo-con philosophy which should now be placed on the rubbish heap of history as an example of a flawed way of thinking that briefly afflicted a great power at her moment of maximum grief.

Of course, there is no way that the neo-cons are ready to admit that their thinking is flawed; they continue to confuse confidence with success, desire with achievement, military muscle with the ability to achieve practical goals.

But to all observers, the neo-con experiment is over. And southern Lebanon might be the ideal place to bury it.

Tags: Olmert, Bush, Blair, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, Hizbullah, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, UN resolution, neo-con, neo-cons, experiment,