By now you all know that IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the Air Force General most people blame for the Lebanon war turning into a debacle resigned. But let us not let Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz off the hook for their miserable conduct of the war, either. Because the Israeli public isn’t.
85% of Israelis want Peretz to resign. And Olmert isn’t looking too good, what with being investigated in yet another financial scandal involving high-level Israeli politicians. (By the way, Israeli politicians make New Jersey politicians look honest and clean, which is not saying a whole lot for Israeli politicians.) Is there a single major Israeli politician who is not corrupt? Just wondering.
The idiots in Hezbullah are celebrating this as a “victory.” So is Hamas. The fools don’t realize that this is anything but a victory for them, presuming Olmert chooses a better Chief of Staff. It’s difficult to see how he could choose any worse. The problem is that the IDF under Halutz was refusing to take responsibility for the major mistakes made, or implement changes so that they don’t happen again. When you send reserves to the front with incomplete equipment and not enough food, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with the IDF. These problems need to be addressed, responsibility assigned, and changes executed.
Overall, I think it’s a very good thing that Halutz is gone. Peretz needs to go next, and he needs to be replaced by someone who actually knows something about defense. As for Olmert: The clock is ticking, Ehud.
And this was not a relatively recent happening. It stems from way back to before 2000. Mofaz was not much as a Chief of Staff and poorer as Minister of Defence.
Ayalon also has to answer for taking his eye off the “Northern” ball when training for the reserves went to pot and intel in its application to tactics was neglected; witness the shock at discovering in the hands of Hezbollah the communication and bunker network, Russian anti-tank missiles etc.
Even so, with all the problems the IDF encountered, at the end of the day (war) it was Israeli boots on Hezbollah land.
The UN ‘peacekeepers’ are in Lebanon to protect Hezbollah from the IAF/IDF; not the other way around.
Admitted Hezbollah war dead is now at 250. No one is certain what the eventually Hezbollah actual casualties will turn out to be.
All this after Hezbollah taking 6 years and vast sums of Iranian money and weaponry to make their land into a ‘killing ground’ against the IDF.
The MSM might have claimed a ‘great victory’ for Hezbollah, but the reality was somewhat different.
The clock is not ticking in a countdown to Ehud Barak. It is more likely ticking down to his former platoon mate Netanyahu.
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There’s an old line that in a democracy people get the government they deserve. I think it was Amnon Rubinstein who, commenting on that, said that “only a vicious anti-Semite would say that about the people of Israel.”
Good riddance to an incompetent Halutz and may the idiotic troika of the Joe Stalin lookalike Peretz, the imbecilic Olmert, and the bad make-up Livni soon follow. Giving Peretz the Defense Ministry is cause for being prosecuted for criminal negligence. Israel is one of the most corrupt democratic nations in the world.
Livni looks good only in respect to Olmert. With the troika of Olmert, Peretz, and Livni we seem to have a crooked incompetent, a clueless ideological incompetent, and apparently a (relatively) honest incompetent.
As I said before, maybe they are attempting to bring the moshiach (Messiah) by ensuring that there is nothing that human beings can do to save Israel.