Olmert Must Go

The first political casualty of the current Israeli conflict in the Middle East may now be brought on by the affect Hassan Nasrallah has on the Israeli electorate. You can imagine the Jewish left is in almost a shambles, with Likud poised to make major gains in the Kenneset with the inevitable vote of no-confidence in Ehud Olmert's Kadima government, the likely beneficiary will be Bibi Netanyahu's Likud party.

It's been plainly obvious from almost the beginning of this conflict that Olmert didn't know what he was doing, nor did many of the top generals initially assigned to lead the battle against Hezbollah, and the conflict has therefore been floundering, which has provided Israel it's first real military defeat since statehood and has only served to embolden Nasrallh and his Iranian handlers in such a way that the Arab's can claim total victory while the brave and valiant Israeli soldiers, 40-50 of whom have lost their lives in this conflict in vain, will return to their bases in Israel as defeated soldiers, as pawns of the Arab nations bent, eventually on the complete and total destruction of Israel.

Nasrallah now becomes the defactor leader of the Arab alliance against Israel and with the aid of yet another anti-Israeli UN Resolution, which didn't even seek to return of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, for whom this conflict was supposed to be all about. Israel loses face and Nasrallah comes out as the victor. Thanks to the UN for again preventing Israel from finishing a mission which may have future imnplications on the very viability of the Jewish state, and thanks to the Bu$h administration, who forced Israel's hands in the matter and essentially bullied Olmert to sign on to the UN Resolution.

Olmert's weakness is that he never served in any front line unit while on compulsory IDF duty. He would not allow the commanders on the ground to get the job done in southern Lebanon, but has ultimately not let the Israeli people feel safe after almost a month of bloodshed and life spent in bomb shelters.

Olmert's head will roll because of this, and I for one don't care if the preceeding description is either literal or figurative. Olmert failed to protect the Israel population, and is responsible for many military and civilian deaths and he MUST be held accountable for his actions.

A short item in NRO posted by John Podhoretz briefly sums up the reaction in Israel,

...Olmert is still toast. My nephew, who is a veteran of the Israeli army but has not been called up because he's here in the States for a few months, writes:
"I can't believe he's doing this. I cannot believe we are once again running from Lebanon with our tails between our legs. Olmert's picture will now appear in the dictionary next to the word 'coward.'"

This will be a very common opinion across the political spectrum.

For all my friends in American Left, who claim that Bush administration and Israel's strategic interests are joined at the waist an entry on NRO by Rich Lowry perhaps explains the situation more clearly.

Was just talking to a friend who was noting that there is intense anger toward Israel within the administration for botching the war. He thinks the attitude was, "What's the point of giving them more time when they do nothing with it?" He thinks it's the worst defeat for Israel since 1948. He also guesses that the reason that the French flipped against the first resolution wasn't so much the Lebanese reaction as the realization of how poorly Israel was faring militarily. His general rule when it comes to U.N. resolutions in the Middle East is that they either simply reflect the facts on the ground, or make the victor give away a little bit of his victory; they never let someone pull victory out of a hat from defeat. So Israel will ultimately get from this resoltuon what they won on the ground, which is to say not much.

From Cross Currents the following salient entry:

News reports claim that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is going to recommend that the cabinet accept the cease-fire to be voted upon by the UN Security Council tonight.

If so, this is a betrayal of everything Israel said when it went to war over the abduction of two Israel soldiers—to wit, that Israel would not leave Lebanon without them.

A UN resolution has two types of paragraphs: preambulary and operative. The preambles describe the problem that they are addressing. The operatives define what is to happen.

The draft resolution states in one of its preambles:

PP3. Emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers,

There is no operative paragraph calling upon Hizbullah to release the soldiers as a precondition for Israel to cease fire and withdraw from Lebanon.

This will undoubtedly set the stage for Israel to, once again, release hundreds of unrepentant murderers in exchange for two soldiers whose goal was merely to keep the peace. It will be celebrated by terror groups everywhere for years to come as a victory for Hizbullah.

And I fear that they will be right. If the first goal of this month of military operations was the Mitzvah of Pidyon Shevuyim, redeeming captives, then it will have been a failure.

The Israeli acceptance of the UN Resolution, this suicide pact, if it is forthcoming in Israel on Sunday, will eventually usher in the defeat of Olmert and the grand experiment that was the Kadima party (the first viable third party in Israel's short history) and will likely lead to the ascension of Netanyahu as the next Prime Minister...and not a moment too soon. With the Israeli left in tatters the Likud has an unprecedented opportunity to move to seize the debate on who is most able, most willing, to protect not only Israel civilians but Israeli security north of the border with Lebanon. It's plainly obvious the UN never held the Lebanese to any standard for implementing the elements of Reolution 1559, which for 6 years allowed the virus of Hezbollah to spread through southern Lebanon faster than Yersinia Pestis through a colony of rats.

Judith as Kesher Talk poignantly writes: "I myself feel that the destruction Israel wrought on Lebanon is less morally defensible for serving so little purpose. Since that damage was not in service of some useful end, like destroying Hezbollah, or destroying Hezbollah more than it did, if there is no useful, strategic, moral point to it, than it is harder to see the point of it at all.

The FACT remains that the UN sponsored Ceasefire proposal does not eliminate the Hezbollah
threat from southern Lebanon/Syria and now provides Hezbollah with a tremendous victory that they can use to help recruit additional Islamo-Fascist bastards in the coming weeks and years to defeat Israel once and for all.

My only hope is that the minute Nasrallah makes a single public apperance ANYWHERE, Damascus, Beirit, etc, an Israeli missile should be in close range and blow him into pieces too small to even be burried.

Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post writes:

American participation in the French-Arab attempt to force a premature ceasefire on Israel, before Hezbollah is sufficiently degraded, will embolden Iran. If this was a way to maintain the international consensus on confronting Iran, it is a strange way to do so. Just as Hezbollah's survival will be widely seen as a defeat for Israel, it is also a defeat for the United States by Iran.

Finally, Ari Shavit writes in Ha'aretz:

Ehud Olmert may decide to accept the French proposal for a cease-fire and unconditional surrender to Hezbollah. That is his privilege. Olmert is a prime minister whom journalists invented, journalists protected, and whose rule journalists preserved. Now the journalists are saying run away. That’s legitimate. Unwise, but legitimate.

However, one thing should be clear:

If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say - oops, I made a mistake. That was not the intention. Pass me a cigar, please.

There is no mistake Ehud Olmert did not make this past month. He went to war hastily, without properly gauging the outcome. He blindly followed the military without asking the necessary questions. He mistakenly gambled on air operations, was strangely late with the ground operation, and failed to implement the army’s original plan, much more daring and sophisticated than that which was implemented. And after arrogantly and hastily bursting into war, Olmert managed it hesitantly, unfocused and limp. He neglected the home front and abandoned the residents of the north. He also failed shamefully on the diplomatic front.

Still, if Olmert had come to his senses as Golda Meir did during the Yom Kippur War, if he had become a leader, established a war cabinet and called the nation to a supreme effort that would change the face of the battle, a penetrating discussion of his failures could be postponed. But in blinking first over the past 24 hours, he has become an incorrigible political personality. Therefore, the day Nasrallah comes out of his bunker and declares victory to the whole world, Olmert must not be in the prime minister’s office. Post-war battered and bleeding Israel needs a new start and a new leader. It needs a real prime minister.

As Jews we are all charged with Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh LaZeh. The Prime Minister failed in his efforts to help protect all Jews and the blood of all of Israeli victims, both civilian and military, now drips slowly from Olmert's hands. May Israel swiftly and decisively remove Olmert and the Kadima government from power and install those who are not afraid to fight for the survival of the Jewish State.

Mike