Olmert's double failure

[bemildred]

There's something disturbing about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's version of the circumstances in which the Second Lebanon War broke out. In his testimony to the Winograd Committee and in subsequent interviews, Olmert said that from the day he stepped into office in January 2006, he had prepared for the possibility of the abduction of soldiers to Lebanon, and later on decided to change his predecessor's policy of restraint and react to provocations by Hezbollah. As such, he accepted and approved the targets the Israel Defense Forces presented to him, and waited for an eruption.

Criticism of Olmert's version has focused on his responsibility for the army's preparedness. If he had anticipated a conflagration in the North, his critics argue, why did he appoint the inexperienced Amir Peretz as defense minister and why did he not ensure that the IDF was preparing to fight Hezbollah? These arguments are important, but they miss the main point: The retaliatory operation Olmert approved was aerial not ground, and the air force was prepared and carried it out successfully. The appointment of Peretz was mistaken, but it did not affect the operational plans, which had been approved previously.

The main problem lies in what Olmert did not do: Once he decided to end the restraint in the North he did not prepare the public for the possibility of war nor did he enlist the international community to prevent it. This is his double failure. The government's responsibility does not end with hearing intelligence assessments and approving the army's plans; the prime minister's supreme responsibility is to use all the means at his disposal to prevent war.

But Olmert kept his decisions secret and left the initiative in the hands of Hassan Nasrallah.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/850286.html