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Opinion
Editorials are posted and archived on JNonline.us.
Dry Bones PYRAMID
THEPALes"
SCHEME
r YOU WANT TO KIDNAP
Editorial
DOZENS MORE ISRAELI
HOSTAGES?
War Lessons
E
hud Olmert failed as a war prime
minister. That much is clear from
the Winograd Commission's
interim report last month on the Second
Lebanon War.
Northern Israel is no more secure today
than it was a year ago. Hezbollah is just
as strong. And Israel's other enemies have
new hope that the Israeli military isn't
invincible after all.
But the importance of the Winograd
Commission's findings runs far deeper
than one month of mistakes by Israel's
Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Lt.
Gen. Dan Halutz and others. The value of
the report lies not in assigning blame for
2006, but in pointing to a way forward in
2007 and beyond.
Much has been made of the lack of
military experience of the men who com-
mitted Israel to war last summer. Olmert
and Peretz were decades past their limited
army service; and Halutz, as an air force
officer, showed no understanding of the
need to win any war on the ground with
infantry and armor.
Those men made mistakes that cost
lives and that could cost them their
careers. Halutz is already retired. Peretz
looks likely not only to lose the Labor
Party leadership, but also to finish third
in voting. Olmert has survived an aborted
challenge within his Kadima Party from
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, but we can't
be sure Kadima even will survive for more
than one more election.
Israel needs structural changes that
will overcome the flaws of individual
leaders, and we like what the Winograd
Commission suggests.
Going back to a proposal that came out
of the Yom Kippur War three decades ago,
Israel needs a strong National Security
Council, based on the American model,
which makes room for the defense and
foreign ministers, any other Cabinet min-
isters involved in security matters and top
military and intelligence professionals. As
the Winograd report shows, Israel has a
non-functional National Security Council,
and that means the prime minister isn't
getting the information and advice he
needs to make correct decisions during a
crisis.
Olmert never was told that the Israel
Defense Forces had no plan for fighting a
war with Hezbollah, despite watching the
terrorist group stockpile rockets for six
years. And the IDF never knew what the
politicians hoped to accomplish in the war,
which made planning and executing strat-
egy impossible.
The current crisis involving Gaza and
Kassam rockets is providing the first test
ANO WE'LL
HAVE THE
MANPOWER ONCE THEY
TO DO II RELEASE THE
HUNDREDS OF
CONVICTS
of last summer's les-
sons. Hamas learned
that rocket barrages
can damage Israel's
self-confidence and
unity and can draw
Israel into a poorly
conceived war.
Desperate to halt
IN RETURN FOR THE
its fighting with
HOSTAGE WE'RE
ONE
Fatah and unify the
NOW HOLDING!
Palestinians, Hamas
wants war. We want
a rational response
that resolves the
impossible living
conditions of the
resident of Sderot
but doesn't deliver a
moral or propaganda
victory to Israel's
enemies.
drybonesblog.com
Having civilians
instead of generals as
Israel's top politicians is not the problem.
but while waiting for them to emerge,
That shift represents a healthy evolution
Israel needs its current leaders to listen
in Israeli society after nearly 60 years as
and learn and set a precedent for healthy
a nation. Israel faces far fewer existential
internal debate instead of rash decisions
threats these days, so the ability to lead in
on war. ❑
war isn't the No. 1 quality Israel needs in a
prime minister.
Send letters of no more than 150 words to:
Israel could use a few great statesmen,
letters@thejewishnews.com .
Reality Check
War At The Polls
I
n the election year summer of 1864,
not many people believed that
Abraham Lincoln had a chance of
winning a second term as president.
The war had been dragging on for
three years, and for the last two the casu-
alty figures were appalling. There were
4,808 dead and 18,573 wounded on both
sides in one day at Antietam. At the three
days of Gettysburg it was 7,508 dead and
33,264 wounded.
Ulysses S. Grant's Virginia campaign
was threatening to eclipse even these
numbers, and the general was being
denounced as a butcher throughout the
North.
A Confederate force under Jubal
Early had come within hours of tak-
ing Washington, D.C., that summer and
William Sherman was bogged down in a
seemingly endless campaign in Georgia.
The promise of a negotiated peace held
out by the Democratic candidate, former
Gen. George McClellan, sounded good.
There were, of course, no public opinion
polls 143 years ago — but
had there been Lincoln's
numbers probably would
have made George W. Bush
look like the homecoming
king.
I am reading a wonderful
new book, Lincoln's Sword,
by Douglas L. Wilson. Its
subtitle is The Presidency
and the Power of Words
and it is an examination of
Lincoln as a writer. Beyond
all his other abilities, he was a superb
craftsman of the English language,
approached in our history by only
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and,
perhaps, Theodore Roosevelt.
More than a century after the out-
come of that war was settled, it is hard
to place ourselves back in a time when
it was not at all certain the Union would
prevail.
Lincoln's ability to define what the
great issues were and how they were
to be resolved, and to rally
the country to his vision, is
what set him apart among
the great presidents. It is the
utter inability of the present
administration to articulate any
such ideas, except in the most
sweeping and imprecise terms,
that is as much to blame, along
with its failed military policies,
for the plunge in support of the
Iraq War.
To speak of Iraq as a national
crisis is absurd. Lincoln faced down the
greatest crisis in our history; the possible
dissolution of the United States and the
prospect that any political minority who
didn't like the outcome of an election
could secede in the future.
Most Americans supported the war
in Iraq at its inception, mostly because
they thought its planners knew what they
were doing.
That turned out to be a fallacy. They
wanted a war on the cheap and when
the price became too steep they had no
answer. The military was not set up to
fight an urban guerrilla war.
While it appears to be changing into
that kind of force now, it may well be too
late.
But even more disturbing to me is
the fact that the Democrats have now
hitched their hopes for success at the
polls in 2008 to accepting failure in Iraq.
I think you would have to go back to the
1864 election to find a precedent for that
strategy, which has a very high risk of
backlash, then and now.
The fall of Atlanta in the summer of
1864 and Grant's brutal successes in
Virginia turned public opinion around.
Now another Memorial Day is
approaching, a holiday first conceived as
a way to honor the dead of the Civil War.
I don't know that conceding defeat hon-
ors anyone. 7
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com .
May 24 9 20(i
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