ISRAEL REELS FROM REPORT ON LOST WAR

Israelis are in shock after a devastating report revealed that the Israeli Cabinet and Military hastily launched its 34 day war against Hezbollah in 2006, arrogantly convinced its military might was sufficient to deter anyone, especially Hezbollah from fighting back the way it did.
During the war, Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets into Israel, killing 41 civilians. On the ground, Hezbollah fighters killed 117 Israeli frontline troops and destroyed a sizeable number of tanks and armored vehicles. In response, Israel launched a shock and awe bombing campaign that killed 900 Lebanese civilians and an estimated 300 Hezbollah fighters. The Israeli bombing also destroyed much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure.
This latest report on the war, written by a five member Israeli commission headed by retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, is probably the most withering critique ever of the actions of an Israeli government and its military establishment in a time of war. The report primarily lays blame, for what most consider Israel’s defeat at the hands of Hezbollah, at the door of the Israeli Prime minister, Ehud Olmert, his Defense Minister, Amir Peretz and General Dan Halutz, chief of staff of the IDF – Israeli Defense Force. The commission anticipated the likelihood Ehud Olmert would try spread blame for the Lebanon war debacle across his whole Cabinet. Therefore commissioners pointed out that the Cabinet only agreed to the launching of the war because Olmert presented Ministers with “ambiguous” goals. From the outset, he was determined to get Cabinet Ministers on board the war train even though some of them disagreed with his determination to go to war.
The Winograd commission as it is now known analyzed only the run up to the war and its first five days. Nevertheless, its findings have proved devastating and have shocked an Israeli public already humiliated by what it considered its military’s failure to destroy a guerilla organization. Top of the commission’s criticisms of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz was that each of them failed to fully comprehend the outcome of launching a military plan. In the opinion of the commissioners, the trio acted without “exercising proper judgment, responsibility and prudence.”
For example, there was no defined military plan when Olmert decided to go to war. He proceeded militarily without “examining professional and political reservations presented” to him. He also neglected to consider a “while range of options.” The commission found he ignored his Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, when she urged a political and military solution during the war.
The greatest indictment of the three was that they authorized military action without an exit strategy and with unclear goals. They represented what the commission called “military and political elites” within Israel who believed their country’s “military might” was a deterrent in itself. Not for a moment did they consider Hezbollah could hit Israel with 4,000 rockets.
The IDF was not spared in the report with the commissioners pointing out that the Israeli military displayed little creativity and flexibility and was less than forthright about being unable to achieve the goals set for it. There was no consideration of the complexities of a campaign in Lebanon because authorization for military action was taken much too hastily. In fact, within days of the killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the capture of two others by Hezbollah fighters Olmert decided to go to war without asking for a plan. In taking that decision he and Gen. Halutz acted “impulsively,” in the opinion of Justice Winograd.
The report blasted the IDF for being unprepared for war and naively failing to anticipate that a group like Hezbollah could strike back at Israel in the way it did, especially with its rocketry. Israeli civilians were left exposed because many air raid shelters were not properly equipped and the country’s reserve forces were not ready for war. On the front lines in Lebanon, Israeli generals had not anticipated that Hezbollah fighters would be so well armed they would have little difficulty taking out tanks and armored vehicles. In many instances, Israeli combat troops lacked proper body armor, ammunition supplies and food.
Gen. Halutz was described in the report as an Air Force officer who lacked battlefield experience and, like Olmert, believed a shock and awe bombing campaign of the type the US used in Iraq would finish off Hezbollah. Halutz refused to listen to senior officers who disapproved of his tactics and failed to provide the Olmert government with alternatives to war. There was also no early mobilization of reserves and that left the IDF overstretched when it went into Lebanon and began taking casualties.
The report firmly placed blame on Olmert, whom it said bore “supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of the government and the operations of the army.” In the commission’s view he acted with haste without having a detailed military plan or even asking for one.
“The prime minister is responsible for the fact the goals of the campaign were not set out clearly and carefully and there was no serious discussion of the relationships between these goals and the authorized modes of military action. All of this adds up to a serious failure,” said the report.
The commissioners were just as scathing about Defense Minister, Peretz whom they criticized severely for lacking experience in “military, political or governmental matters, thereby impairing Israel’s ability to response to the challenges that it faced.
Surprisingly, the report did not consider the outside influences on Olmert to act decisively against Hezbollah, an organization the Bush Administration had consistently condemned. The omission of any reference to pressure from the White House or Tony Blair in Downing Street to launch a war in Lebanon may be due to the fact the Winograd findings represent merely an interim report on the opening days of the war. Certainly, the over reliance of Olmert and Gen Halutz’s on air power had echoes of the kind of tactics promoted by Donald Rumsfeld. And, during the war the US and Britain were criticized across the globe for encouraging Israel to keep bombing Lebanon. Evidence has since shown that Britain and the US actively encouraged Olmert to expand his excessive use of air power even though it was increasingly counterproductive. It was also alienating the Arab and Islamic world from the West. To most observers at the time, the Olmert-Halutz bombing strategy was killing innocent civilians and not eliminating Hezbollah. It was also breaching the Geneva Conventions by deliberately destroying the entire civilian infrastructure.
While this initial war report makes no mention of the support Olmert got from Washington and London it tends to show that the encouragement he received from Tony Blair and George Bush was just as misguided as his war strategy because the war was a failure militarily and held the US, Britain and Israel up to international ridicule. It also damaged Israeli self confidence and for once eroded Israel’s belief in its military invincibility.
Olmert has arrogantly tried to distance himself from criticism that he was the man in charge and the buck should stop with him. Even as a time when he may face legal charges following an audit of his financial affairs relating to property deals and other issues he continued to boast that he feels “indestructible.” That was not how Gen Halutz felt in January when he resigned, less than a year after warning his military would “turn the clock back 20 years” in Lebanon by bombing the civilian infrastructure into rubble. However, even when he stepped down he refused to accept responsibility for what many considered a military failure, if not defeat.
Waiting in the political wings, hoping to benefit from this devastating critique of Olmert, is the Likud Party’s Benyamin Netanyahu, known as a political hawk. He feels the Labor Party, a partner in Olmert’s coalition government, will distance itself from Olmert as the import of the Winograd report reaches into the Israeli psyche. However, the Israeli political establishment more often than not survives on a jobs-for-the-boys mentality. The 76 members who make up the Coalition government in the 120 member Knesset may not want to walk away from their jobs at this time and risk not being re-elected. Nevertheless, if the next report on the overall conduct of the war is as damning as this one it is unlikely Olmert will survive. His popularity is in single digits but as the Winograd Commission pointed out he is a man who does not consider alternatives and in this case the alternative is life in the political wilderness. That is something he has no wish to face.ezbollah could strike Israel

BITTER EXCHANGES
PART OF REAGAN-BEGIN
LEGACY


President Ronald Reagan was so angered by Israel’s bombing of Beirut in August 1982 that he deliberately used the term holocaust to the describe Israel’s actions.
That is just one of many revelations from “The Reagan Diaries” due to be published by Harper Collins on May 22. In excerpts from the dairies in the latest edition of Vanity Fair, Ronald Reagan is also quoted as having been unhappy with Israel’s unilaterism. In particular he was upset that he only learned of the Israeli bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor on June 1981 after the event. In his dairies, he sometimes restricted his thoughts to simple yet powerful sentences:
“Got word of Israeli bombing of Iraq – nuclear reactor. I swear I believe Armageddon is near,” he wrote.
In February 1982, he again became fixated on the Middle East and wrote “trouble brewing.” The trouble he foresaw was Israel living up to his threats to invade Lebanon. He felt Israel had already “lost a lot of world sympathy” and was doing the wrong thing. He was proved right because there was international outrage six months later after the Israelis blew up the Accra building in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing 250 refugees sheltering inside it. In the wake of the bombing, he received a phone call from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia imploring him to stop the Israeli bombardment. Fahd pointed out that aside from Israeli bombs, Israeli artillery shells were also raining down on Beirut causing a serious loss of innocent life.
In his diaries, Reagan wrote that King Fahd was “begging me to do something. I told him I was calling P.M. Begin immediately. And I did. I was angry. I told him it had to stop or our entire relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately and said the symbol of war was becoming the picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off.”
But Reagan for all his anger made it clear in one diary entry that “we are not turning on Israel. That would be an invitation for the Arabs to attack. It’s time to raise H..L” The abbreviated word was Hell because Regan throughout the diaries refrained from fully spelling out profanities. For example, instead of damn he would write “d..n.”
The dairies are also said to contain references to his fears about the spread of communism in Central America and the fact he received what he called “definite evidence” that Nicaragua was moving “hundreds of tons of arms” from Cuba to El Salvador. The conflict in Nicaragua and El Salvador would later blight his eight year presidency in what would be called “The Contra Scandal.”
However, his comments about Israel will spark the most interest, especially his anger at its failure to inform the US before it bombed the Iraq nuclear reactor in 1981 and its excessive use of power in Lebanon. People will see parallels with the present day. For example, Israel has repeatedly warned it might bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. The question is would it repeat the Regan era mistake and not inform the White House in advance. Another glaring parallel is the recent Israeli commission report on its 2006 war in Lebanon. In 2006, just as in 1982, Israel was condemned for its excessive use of force against Lebanese civilians and the country’s civilian infrastructure. But, unlike Ronald Reagan, George Bush, encouraged the Israeli bombing of Lebanon rather than trying to end it.