Return of the Camel

Dissent amongst the ranks, what are we to do? I see the Penguin is getting a little uppity. Well, the cut and thrust of healthy debate is what this blog’s all about. So let me start like this: YOU’RE WRONG, my fish guzzling, flightless friend!!!!!

Firstly, the Penguin says that everyone was well up for a good fight when the war started and now it’s hypocritical to say the war aims were too ambitious. Firstly, that was the Winograd Committee’s conclusion, not mine and I didn’t say I agreed with everything the committee concluded. I personally think that it was fine to want to really strike a blow against Hizballah but as it transpired Olmert, Peretz and Halutz relied on air-power to win the war which was never going to work against an enemy as liquid as Hizballah’s guerrilla army. As I have said previously, by delaying a major ground invasion until the last two days of the war because of a fear of higher casualties, the political leadership wasted the lives of the men who died, since the limited ground operation never had a chance of coming near to the goal of severely damaging Hizballah.

I know these words sound cavalier and perhaps show a disregard for the lives of young Israeli boys who would be sent to fight such a war and die in it. As someone who will never be a combat soldier such statements could be considered callous and unthinking. However, had Eshkol and Dayan thought this way in 1967, and had pulled the attack because of fears about what turned out to be nearly 800 casualties, who knows what would have happened. Now I know the two situations are vastly different but had the IDF significantly hurt Hizballah, it is possible they wouldn’t be sitting on the border again with more rockets and arms than before the war. As it stands, we’re back to square one but with 119 more graves and two soldiers in Hizballah’s hands.

As for the Penguin’s other points, Peretz was irresponsible in the extreme for taking the Defence Minister job, regardless of whether it would have been politically problematic for him to turn the job down or give it to someone else.

He also squawks that “Everyone from Olmert to Halutz, Sharon, Mofaz, Bibi, Barak and Rabin”. I agree apart from Bibi and Rabin (although we can still blame Rabin for Oslo). Bibi left office in 1999 while the IDF still remained in South Lebanon and seven years before the Second Lebanon War. I fail to see how he can be apportioned blame in this whole affair. If anyone should, than it should be Barak as he withdrew from South Lebanon without a bilateral agreement, a cause of much of the current problems. Doesn’t it bode well that Barak is a leading candidate to win the Labour primaries and possibly become the Defence Minister, sounds like a good idea going on his past record...or does it?

Finally, the people have as much right to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister they elect as they have to elect him in the first place. Sovereignty resides with the people and just because we are not at the appointed time for elections does not nullify that fact. If there is a problem serious enough to warrant the PM’s resignation before scheduled elections then the people have every right to demand that the man they elected to lead them competently remove himself from the office he so clearly is not fit for.

And yes, you are a pansy!