Friday, August 25, 2006
An Israeli academic speaks out
With all the intellectual gravitas of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance”, Yoram Peri, a professor at Tel Aviv University, today intones in the Washington Post that the “Decision-Making on National Security Must Be Fixed” in Israel's Broken Process. Honestly, I have no idea what the point of his commentary here is. Help me out - here’s how he frames the issue:
“What went wrong in the war in Lebanon? One part of the answer is already clear: Israel desperately needs a better system for decision-making in the national security realm.
“The civil branch of Israel's government and its decision-making machinery must be made strong enough to balance the military's input. Otherwise, there will only be more events like the one this summer, in which no well-reasoned alternatives were presented to cabinet ministers to compete with the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) recommendation to embark on a broad campaign in Lebanon.”
Fair enough if that’s how it normally plays out in Israeli administrations – but the column goes on to acknowledge just how moderating the military influence has been in such matters over the years. He then throws this at us:
“The focus of controversy in coming weeks will not be whether the war was justified; the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including myself, are convinced it was. Rather, the question will be whether it was wise to opt for full-scale war as Israel's response to the kidnapping of two soldiers. And if a military operation was indeed the appropriate response, what should have been its timing, nature and scope?”
Am I missing some semantic twist? The professor notes that the war was considered justified by most of the populace. To me, that means then that “a military operation was indeed the appropriate response” because, to a significant degree, war is a military operation. And yes, it is always fair to ask about a military operation's “timing, nature and scope” but the problem here doesn’t seem to be that the IDF overdid it. Instead, the appropriate criticism seems to be that the IDF over relied on air power and didn’t commit the troops soon enough – in other words, when the professor questions “whether it was wise to opt for full-scale war as Israel's response”, any answer he gets is suspect because it’s based on the faulty premise that the Lebanon fight was a “full-scale war”.
Professor Peri concludes with an insipid:
“Wars really are too serious a matter to be left to either fervent generals or weak politicians.”
Can’t you just picture a Volvo sporting that as a bumper sticker? The IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz is an Israeli Air Force guy and it is certainly fair to question whether he was too enamored by what he knew best. Or perhaps he just naturally acquiesced to PM Olmert’s preference to avoid the use of troops. Whatever was behind the decision-making process in this matter, Hezbollah never received the potential knockout blow this opportunity presented. I doubt whether an over abundance of “fervent generals” was the reason.
“What went wrong in the war in Lebanon? One part of the answer is already clear: Israel desperately needs a better system for decision-making in the national security realm.
“The civil branch of Israel's government and its decision-making machinery must be made strong enough to balance the military's input. Otherwise, there will only be more events like the one this summer, in which no well-reasoned alternatives were presented to cabinet ministers to compete with the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) recommendation to embark on a broad campaign in Lebanon.”
Fair enough if that’s how it normally plays out in Israeli administrations – but the column goes on to acknowledge just how moderating the military influence has been in such matters over the years. He then throws this at us:
“The focus of controversy in coming weeks will not be whether the war was justified; the overwhelming majority of Israelis, including myself, are convinced it was. Rather, the question will be whether it was wise to opt for full-scale war as Israel's response to the kidnapping of two soldiers. And if a military operation was indeed the appropriate response, what should have been its timing, nature and scope?”
Am I missing some semantic twist? The professor notes that the war was considered justified by most of the populace. To me, that means then that “a military operation was indeed the appropriate response” because, to a significant degree, war is a military operation. And yes, it is always fair to ask about a military operation's “timing, nature and scope” but the problem here doesn’t seem to be that the IDF overdid it. Instead, the appropriate criticism seems to be that the IDF over relied on air power and didn’t commit the troops soon enough – in other words, when the professor questions “whether it was wise to opt for full-scale war as Israel's response”, any answer he gets is suspect because it’s based on the faulty premise that the Lebanon fight was a “full-scale war”.
Professor Peri concludes with an insipid:
“Wars really are too serious a matter to be left to either fervent generals or weak politicians.”
Can’t you just picture a Volvo sporting that as a bumper sticker? The IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz is an Israeli Air Force guy and it is certainly fair to question whether he was too enamored by what he knew best. Or perhaps he just naturally acquiesced to PM Olmert’s preference to avoid the use of troops. Whatever was behind the decision-making process in this matter, Hezbollah never received the potential knockout blow this opportunity presented. I doubt whether an over abundance of “fervent generals” was the reason.
