Fox News is showing the IDF moving south out of Lebanon, and The Jerusalem Post is reporting:

The booms of Katyusha rockets continued; another day of what has become routine in the North. But the IDF was holding position, waiting for orders that did not come. After 30 days of fighting, the war with Hizbullah seemed to be nearing its conclusion Thursday.

Just a day earlier, the situation had looked drastically different. The security cabinet had approved the army’s request to send thousands of troops up to the Litani River and beyond in an effort to destroy Hizbullah’s infrastructure and to stop the Katyusha attacks. After the cabinet meeting, one division actually began moving north from Metulla. Its goal – to clear out al-Khiam and Marjayoun and to reach the Litani.

But then, under pressure from the US, Defense Minister Amir Peretz made a frantic call to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and ordered him to stop the division in its tracks. “We need to give the diplomatic process one last chance,” Peretz told Halutz. The orders trickled down the chain of command and by the time they reached 366, it had already reached Marjayoun, a stone’s throw from the Litani.

With the UN Security Council on the verge of passing a cease-fire resolution, the IDF understood on Thursday that Operation Change of Direction was ending, for better or for worse.

The IDF was disappointed. Senior officers said they had been looking forward to the fight. Reaching the Litani and eliminating Hizbullah from the villages on the way could have provided, senior officers believe, the victory that Israel has been trying to obtain since July 12. By Thursday night, the chance of that happening was drifting away.

The only way to hurt Hizbullah, a high-ranking officer in the Northern Command said, was to use the military. “Diplomatic processes will not achieve the right effect,” he said, acknowledging that the incursion up to the Litani was not to be. “The key is the military operation. That is the only way to stop Hizbullah.”

But the political echelon thinks differently, and from the first day of this war the politicians, senior officers said, held the IDF back from escalating its offensive and hitting Hizbullah hard. First it was the massive air campaign. Then came the limited, pinpoint ground raids. Only when all that failed did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet approve a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and the re-creation of the security zone.

This wishy-washy decision-making process cost the IDF lives, according to one senior officer. “A military force always needs to be on the offensive, pushing forward and keeping the enemy on its toes,” he said. “When you sit still for too long, you turn into a target and you begin to get hit again and again.”

My readers know that I have been pushing General George Patton’s philosophy of war in this conflict.  “Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity,” Patton said.  Offense was indeed the only way to clear and defeat Hezbollah; a strong, rapid and deadly use of all of the force that the IDF had could have done this in two weeks to a month.  The alleged strength that Hezbollah had with its fixed fortifications would have turned into its weakness.  Their fortifications would have become their tombs had the IDF advanced without hesitation.  Fixed fortifications are confined spaces and can be used against their occupants.  Where we are now in time — right now — the IDF would have had Hezbollah significantly weakened, if not completely defeated, had the Israeli security council allowed the IDF to do its job from the beginning.

As the situation currently exists, however, Hezbollah remains, gets to claim victory, and is stronger in the eyes of the Arab world.  Force and strength is the only thing that the Arab world understands.  Negotiation has cost Israel not only the war, but the lives of IDF soldiers.

Shame on the security council.  They have endangered Israel — now and in the future.