Operation Cast Lead is clearly being run and managed supremely better than the Second Lebanon War.

While it is difficult to say we won or lost that war, it clearly was poorly managed, no clear gains came out of it, and we lost any deterrence factor we were holding at the time.

The IDF has implemented many organizational lessons learned from the failures of the Lebanon war.

The big difference, I think is just who is running it. In the Second Lebanon War, the war was run by three people who were not right for the job - PM Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz (he of the backwards binoculars), and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (who was an Air Force brat and did not trust the ground troops or understand them).

This war is being managed by army masterminds. The two main players are DM Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazy. While I think Barak would make a horrible Prime Minister, he knows the army and he knows army strategy. Ashkenazy is a real pro.

These two people are the main difference between the failures of Lebanon and the successes of Gaza. Yes, anything can happen in the future and we can stay too long, get bogged down, Hamas can come up with some small "victory" to wave in our faces and try to demoralize us with, but right now we are dealing them a heavy blow and not making any of the mistakes made in Lebanon. Hopefully it will stay that way, and the future will not put a question mark on the war, and we will pound the bejeebees out of them until it is time to get out with our objectives accomplished.

So here is a shout out to Ehud Barak and Gaby Ashkenazy for making the difference.