Ehud Olmert is under intense pressure to step down after a blistering report on his leadership during the "Second Lebanon War."So it has come to this. All those bodies, all those photographs of dead children -- more than 1,400 cadavers (we are not including the 230 or so Hizbollah fighters and the Israeli soldiers who died) -- are to be commemorated with the possible resignation of an Israeli prime minister who knew, and who cared, many Israelis suspect, little about war. Yes, Hizbollah provoked last summer's folly by capturing two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese-Israel border, but Israel's response -- so totally out of proportion to the sin -- produced another debacle for the Israeli army and, presumably now, for its prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Looking back at this terrifying, futile war, with its grotesque ambitions to "destroy" the Iranian-supported Hizbollah militia, it is incredible Olmert did not realize within days that his grandiose demands would founder. Insisting the two captured Israeli soldiers should be released and the militarily powerless Lebanese government should be held responsible for their capture was never going to produce political or military results favorable to Israel. One would have to add that Tzipi Livni's demand for the prime minister's resignation sits oddly with her support for this preposterous war.
A close reading of the interim report of Judge Eliahou Winograd's report on the summer war -- to which Olmert himself only granted the title the "Second Lebanon War" a month after it had happened -- shows clearly that it was the Israeli army which ran the military, strategic and political campaign. Again and again in Winograd's report it is clear that Olmert and his defense minister failed to challenge "in a competent way" (in the commission's devastating phrase) the plans of the Israeli army.
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