The War in the Middle East -- for what?

The UN cease fire agreement that was adopted last night and apparently accepted by Olmert and, hence, Israel appears to be an almost complete capitulation on Israel's part, at least relative to the grandiose talk at the start of the war about completely eliminating Hizbollah from the face of the earth. The plan now in place seems likely to leave Hizbollah largely undisturbed. As Billmon puts it:

And for this, Lebanon was ravaged, thousands were killled, millions of civilians on both sides spent weeks couped up in air raid shelters, and the credibility and any lingering shreds of respectability the U.S. government had in the Islamic world were flushed straigh down the you-know-what.