I’m hoping that the smart money is wrong, and that they’re prepping the battlefield for a move on Damascus. An attack on Syria doesn’t have to go all the way to Damascus — or occupy it — to call Iran’s bluff, and show that Iran can’t protect their ally; but Baby Assad either has to be scared, or killed. Or scared then killed.

The mistake would be to think that the Israelis are improvising strategically; the only worse mistake would be if the Israelis were improvising strategically.

I don’t think that they are. I think that they may be making a mistake in taking too small a bite, but I think there’s every reason to believe that this isn’t an improvisation. If the point is to use appropriate force to persuade the Lebanese that they’ve got a choice of facing Hizbollah or the IDF, that’s only going to work if Plan B involves a lot more destruction of Lebanon when (not, alas, if) the Lebanese don’t get the point.

And maybe they should’t; maybe the non-Hezbollards in Lebanon are right to be more scared of the Shiite-heads. Hezbollah isn’t going to tell other factions “hey, we’re about to bomb you right about here; time to move out.” Israel, for good or ill, does.

I’m hoping that the short-term goal is Hizbollah in south Lebanon and Syria in about 2-3 days.