The summit of the bunglers

[bemildred]

If I had to give a name to the Bush-Olmert meeting, I would call it the Summit of the Bunglers. Both of them are mixed up in wars that have no solution despite the might of their armies. Both are saddled with deadweights in the defense department. Bush has let his secretary of defense go; Ehud Olmert is still in partnership with his. Both were dragged into a military campaign without thinking about the consequences or the price tag. Both are doing poorly in the opinion polls. Some 72 percent of Israelis are in favor of ousting the defense minister and the chief of staff, and Olmert's popularity has taken a similar dive.

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With Israel's "successes" in the war in Lebanon and Beit Hanun, and its inability to stop the Qassam rockets, he probably had America's generals racing for the Pentagon bomb shelters. They already refused our help back in the Gulf War, so you can imagine how much they want it now, in Iraq and Iran. The U.S. Defense Department is beginning to understand what has also dawned on Israelis of late - that the Israel Defense Forces is not what it used to be. The last thing the Pentagon wants is our assistance in matters they don't know how to handle themselves. Have we managed to fix our own problems?

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This whole dispute over who is responsible for the bungled business of an army that wasn't ready, and for a war that did not have to be so long, incur such a high death toll and cause so much suffering to the home front is a bunch of bull. To stick with the sports terminology, the chief of staff needs to hang up his boots and his fancy shades without waiting for the investigating committees to finish their work. As a soldier with no understanding of land combat, he was the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time.

And if we're talking about the army's lack of readiness, much of the blame falls on the shoulders of Moshe Ya'alon, who is a land operations man, and has been silent as a fish in this raucous shouting match of reservists and army officers.

Haaretz