Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The pathetic leadership of Israel

The leadership of Israel has become absolutely pathetic. I don't know where to start, and I will probably ramble on here. This has been building up for days so I hope it is coherent.

The war has been completely mismanaged. At every stage, the government has approved the minimum, this has led to unnecessary casualties and lousy results. There has been a role reversal here. The army is supposed to protect the civilians. In this war, the civilians are protecting the army. The political leadership has so far refused to send in enough troops to at least minimize the number of rockets fired because they are worried about troop casualties. What this means is that over 1 million residents in the North are exposed to 150 rockets daily putting their lives and property in danger.

It is 30 days since the fighting started, 150 rockets a day have been falling all this time and only now is the government debating whether to mount a full scale invasion. What has the government been doing for the past 30 days?

I have 1 question for all those who are against expanding ground operations, how do you stop the rockets on the North? Give a realistic alternative to a ground invasion, nobody has and nobody will because there is none.

On Sunday, Amir Peretz declared, if the diplomatic efforts don't work I will tell the army to try to go full out to stop the rockets. Can you believe what you are hearing? What have we supposedly been doing for the past 30 days?

Why did the government wait until Wednesday to have the security cabinet meeting when already on Sunday everyone heard that the army was pushing for a scale invasion? The government is acting like nothing is going on and we have all the time in the world.

Talk about Orwellian speech, for 30 days, rockets have been raining down on the North, over 100 a day, but according to Olmert we already won.

Olmert's comment that Lebanon's call to send 15,000 troops is "interesting" was an idiotic comment. In the middle of a war where civilians and soldiers are being killed, rockets are falling, and the press around the world is hanging on your every word, you call the offer "interesting"?????

Olmert's refusal to fight a real ground war is very simple. If he does, he admits that territory and boots on the ground actually means something, something that he has denied for the past 2 years. The whole theory of the hitnatkut was that we don't need to be in Gaza, we can maintain security from the air. The same goes for the convergence plan. This is exactly what the army and Olmert have been trying in Lebanon and have failed miserably. Air power and limited ground incursions have utterly failed to stop teh hezbollah rockets. Territory and boots on the ground do count and therefore this spells the end to the convergence plan.

Tzachi Hanegbi, that great corrupt political opportunist who fled the Likud to Kadima showed his true colors again. he is head of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of the Knesset, a pretty important post in wartime. Yet, he went on vacation to the US last week. 1 million people are either homeless or sitting in shelters, thousands of miluimnikim have been called up, and he can't even do his cushy job in the Knesset.

7 comments:

Cosmic X said...

Excellent post Bluke.

I was pondering posting something like this but you have saved me the trouble.

I would like to add just one more thing: In 1982 I came to visit Israel. The "Peace Of Galilee" operation started on June 6th and I came on June 20th. Within a few days I was in Metulla and the Golan Heights. Those were the good old days when the IDF made sure that the war was waged on the enemy's turf. There were no signs of rockets in Israel, two weeks after the war started. Today the rockets still rain down in the North and we've been fighting for a month. No doubt that the Iranian backed Hezbollah is a more formidable foe than the PLO, and there is no doubt that the government has mismanaged this war. I don't know if your theory about the reason for this mismanagement is correct, but I heard the same thing from somebody else today. That is to say, you are not alone.

chardal said...

Excellent post

bluke said...

This has just been eating me up for days. I simply cannot believe what is going on. See my followup post as well Today's Cabinet decision: Mind Boggling

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

Bluke; Unfortunately, you are 100% correct in your assesements.

There's no way a Leftist government, PM and DM are capable of winning a war. The problem is -- it's now more the war of Kadima and Labor, than that of the State...or Am Yisrael.

The question is -- how can a person be drafted into the IDF today, when the policy makers (and many generals) are total imbiciles.

Should a person refuse to serve? This has been bugging me alot lately...more so every day.

chardal said...

This has been bugging me alot lately...more so every day.

Same here.

Anonymous said...

What absolute morons. Here is a comment I amde that is related to this from another blog:

One of the components of teshuva is admitting the mistake. Why is that?

It is human psychology, when faced with mounting proof that I was wrong, to squirm around the facts until I can claim that I was not wrong, or at least that, at the time I acted, I made the right decision. This is exactly the behavior that the government of Israel and the left wing population is exhibiting. In their attempts to vindicate their previous actions, they come up with reasons and explanations that allow them to maintain that they weren't really wrong before.

This is the single most destructive force that stands in the path of teshuva and changing our ways.

The clearest example of this was when Ehud Barak was coaxed onto a radio show at the beginning of the present hostilities. When asked if this led him to regret his retreat from Lebanon, he vehemently said no. He said that the complex political situation yadda yadda yadda neccessitated his actions, and the current situation requires us to go in again. Instead of admitting, "I was dead wrong! We should've stayed, and because of my left wing politics, over 100 Jews will die", he dodged the facts until he came out without having to apologize.

Only through brutally honest self assessment can the government and the left admit the mistakes made in the past, and correct them. As long as they engage in trying to vindicate their past errors, there is no hope to correct the underlying problems that led to the disengagement, the flight from Lebanon under Barak, and the defeatist attitude of the IDF.

Our government must place truth over politics, and honesty over pride. So must the rank and file supporters of leaving Lebanon, Peace Now, and the Hitnatkut.

bluke said...

Jameel,

See this post Army sources: Decision to freeze attack could be deadly