The Winograd Aftermath

The publication last week of the Winograd Committee's interim report on the second Lebanon war has sparked a raucous free-for-all of political punditry and prophecies of doom. The accusations and rebuttals have formed a cloud of verbiage so dense over the land that for seven days and seven nights the sun barely broke through. Although the democratic value inherent in this Monday morning quarterbacking exercise is of prime importance, it's hard to draw definitive conclusions from so much information. Here are a few of my muddled musings based on what I have seen, read and heard so far. All are subject to change.

1. Ehud Olmert is dead meat. I look at him and I see Houdini, straightjacketed in a sealed trunk weighted down by cannon balls, plumetting to the murky depths. It will take a miracle to see him finagle the keys and emerge on the surface alive, but stranger things have happened in the Middle East. It's interesting to remember the wall-to-wall consensus about going to war after the kidnapping of two soldiers and the imperative of regaining our deterrent capability, because the Winograd Committee seems to think this was an unnecessary war. Olmert inherited a problematic situation vis a vis Lebanon: a policy of restraint was in effect on our northern border since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 in order to avoid opening a second front. This enabled Hezbollah to camp out right under our noses. In addition, most of our military resources were invested in dealing with the urban warfare necessary to deal with terrorists. The army has not trained for the conventional warfare required last summer in quite some time, which put it a great disadvantage. Should he be blamed for that? Evidently, yes.

The committee also condemned Olmert for not thinking independently of the Chief of Staff of the army, who bullied him and everyone else into accepting his directives. Defense minister Amir Peretz, on the other hand, was criticized for not surrounding himself with sufficient army professionals to make up for his complete lack of experience. I'm no fan of Olmert but it appears the cross was cut the moment the first soldier died; all that remained after the war was over was the choice of nails. Israelis are very busy searching for a cure for cancer and floating start-ups; we don't want to go to war because life is too good even in this godforsaken neighborhood to send our sons to die. That is, of course, unless it's a deluxe war, id est a war where no one gets hurt - which is what they promised us in the beginning. Was the removal of Hezbollah from our northern border and the deployment of the Lebanese army in its place worth the deaths of 160 soldiers? Did we salvage our deterrent capability? Could it have successfully been done differently? Who the hell knows.

2.The removal of Ehud Olmert from the political leadership will not resolve anything because there is no one capable of filling the position of prime minister waiting in the wings. If Olmert goes, who will we get? All the opinion polls show that if elections were held tomorrow Bibi Netanyahu would win by a landslide, which makes me think that the people of Israel choose the leaders they deserve. The last thing we need right now is a shallow, pompous blowhard with a reactionary political agenda in the driver's seat. (If he gets in I'm relinquishing my Israeli passport and moving to an island in the Galapagos where there's no television reception. I'll write blog entries about giant turtles and survival of the fittest and pretend I can't hear Israel imploding.)
So, who are the other options? Every new leader from the Labor party since Rabin's assassination has been a colossal disappointment, including Amram Mitzna , Ehud Barak and Amir Peretz. Despite a wealth of talented individuals the party has been miserably unsuccessful in creating a leadership constellation that can effectively deal with its own back-biting politics and the major issues of the country. Tzipi Livni? Yet another well-meaning but inexperienced politician. Shimon Peres? He's eighty-five years old - forget it.
We need a giant and the horizon is empty of imposing shadows. Perhaps we can take consolation in the fact that both Tony Blair and George Bush are, to differing degrees, in the same boat as Olmert. All the western leaders up against those tricky Muslim fundamentalists are being criticized for involving their nations in losing battles. In truth, no one knows what the hell to do with them.

3. There's probably going to be another war. The Winograd report was so damning that the only way Israel can rectify all the failures of last summer is to go for another round. We won't stop until we wipe the smirk off Hassan Nasrallah's face and show those Arabs who's the boss. Hopefully, this time they'll wait until after the tourist season is over...