QUITE APART from all the death and destruction, one of the most disturbing images to come out of the current conflict in Lebanon was that of Israeli soldiers on their tank displaying captured flags as war trophies -- not just the yellow banner of Hezbollah, but the green, red, and white, cedar-tree flag of the state of Lebanon. It underscored that Israel's assault has not just been upon the Shi'ite militia group, but upon Lebanon itself.

For it is hard to reconcile bombing of Beirut's international airport, petroleum supplies, power plants, fishing fleets, and even attacks upon the Lebanese military, with combating guerrillas. The attacks of Lebanon's military are especially odd when Israel keeps calling upon Lebanon to take charge and disarm Hezbollah.

It seems only yesterday that the cedar-tree flag was being waved in what the Bush administration called a triumph of democracy -- a democracy that is now imperiled by American bombs in Israeli planes.

Israel seems to have two strategies at play in addition to reducing Hezbollah's ability to rain down rockets upon terrified civilians. The first is that if Lebanon can be made to feel enough pain, then it will finally rein in Hezbollah of its own accord. The choice given Lebanon is: Either you disarm Hezbollah, as the UN has demanded, or we will make life impossible for you.

The fault in this approach is that the Lebanese military hasn't the ability to disarm Hezbollah, and will be even less able to do so if Israel continues to attack it. More important, the attacks on Lebanon's civilian infrastructure are convincing Lebanese of all confessions that Israel is a bigger enemy and threat than Hezbollah.

The key to disarming Hezbollah has always been, first, convincing Lebanon's Shi'ites that they no longer need a militia and would be better off without one, and second, building up the institutions of the Lebanese state to the point where the Lebanese government can exert its authority. Unfortunately for Israel, bombing apartment buildings and whole Shi'ite sections of Beirut have strengthened Hezbollah's prestige among Shi'ites. And the destruction of Lebanon's economy, which was just getting back to normal, will give terrorists a stronger foothold in that unhappy land than they might otherwise have had.

The second strategy, beyond the reduction of Hezbollah itself, seems to have been borrowed from the old Palestine Liberation Organization playbook: Behave in such a wild manner, causing so much trouble, that the world will have to take notice and do something about it. It also sends a warning to Damascus and Tehran not to count on Israeli restraint. That strategy seems to have been partly successful as the United Nations struggles to find an international force to secure Israel's northern border.

As for the primary purpose of dismantling Hezbollah, two weeks ago Israel was saying that it had destroyed one-half of Hezbollah's arsenal, and that two weeks more would finish the job of incapacitating Hezbollah. But here we are, and Israel has been unable to reduce even Hezbollah's ability to fire at will.

A casualty is Israel's prestige built on the image of invincibility and the deterrent power of its terrible swift sword. Israel seems to have badly miscalculated its ability to bring Hezbollah to its knees. As Hezbollah's chief, Hassan Nasrallah, put it: ``If the resistance survives, this will be a victory. If determination is not broken, this will be a victory."

The United States, in turn, miscalculated Israel's abilities and the damage done to its own interests in the Middle East by blocking a quick cease-fire and allying its policies so closely to those of Israel.

As the destruction of Lebanon continues unchecked, with America's support, our friends are being discredited and our enemies heartened. Whereas the first reaction in much of the Arab world was to condemn Hezbollah for starting this latest disaster, today even such friends of the United States and Israel as Jordan's King Abdullah are talking in terms of ``victims of Israeli aggression." The angry reaction among Iraq's Shi'ites, whom Washington once put so much store in, will further imperil America's ever-deteriorating chances of success.

The messianic aspects of America's current leadership came to the fore when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked about the present crisis in Lebanon being ``the birth pangs of a new Middle East." As in Iraq, however, Rice's new Middle East will almost certainly be more dangerous and destructive to our interests than the old.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.

© 2006 Boston Globe

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