Winograd Report
Thanks to the US presidential horse-jockeying, this story seems to be off the radar for the moment, but it certainly deserves some attention.
The preliminary stories seem to confirm what many have said all along; a complete clusterf*ck for the IDF, though it appears Olmert is going to get off easier than he probably should:
The committee called the war a "great and severe missed opportunity."
"Israel embarked on a prolonged war that it initiated, which ended without a clear Israeli victory from a military standpoint," Justice (ret.) Eliyahu Winograd told a press conference in Jerusalem.
"A quasi-military organization withstood the strongest army in the Middle East for weeks," he said.
"Hezbollah rocket fire on the Israeli home front continued throughout the war, and the IDF failed to provide an effective response," he continued. "Daily life was disrupted, residents left their homes and entered bomb shelters."
"These results had far-reaching consequences for us and our enemies," he continued.
Winograd assailed the final, large-scale ground operation launched in the final 60 hours of the war in which dozens of IDF soldiers were killed, saying it "did not achieve any military objectives nor did it fulfill its potential."
"The ground operation did not reduce the Katyusha fire nor did it achieve significant accomplishments, and its role in accelerating or improving the political settlement is unclear," said Winograd. "Also unclear is how it affected the Lebanese government and Hezbollah regarding the cease-fire."
. . .
"The failures began long before the Second Lebanon War," said Winograd. "Ambitious goals were chosen for the war, after which Israel was left with only two main alternatives - the first was a short, severe strike [on Hezbollah], the second was to fundamentally alter the reality in southern Lebanon through a wide-scale ground operation."
"The manner in which the original decision to go to war was made, without discussing the alternatives, and the manner in which Israel embarked on the war prior to determining which of the alternatives it had chosen, or an exit strategy ? these were severe failures that impacted the entire war, which were contributed to by both the political and the military echelon," said Winograd.
"The indecisiveness continued into the war itself," the retired justice continued. "There was no proper discussion or decision on the war's objectives for several weeks."
"There was also a serious delay in preparing for a wide-scale ground operation, reducing Israel's options," he said. "The result was that Israel did not make do with maximizing immediate military achievements, but rather was dragged into a ground offensive only after a cease-fire [decision] made it impossible to effectively fulfill its potential. Both top military and political leaders are responsible for this."
Two points: The first is that, given the failures stem from ambitious goals chosen, "long before the Second Lebanon War", seems to confirm that Israel was waiting for an excuse to launch the war.
Second, the two main alternatives listed are what the IDF would actually be capable of, though whether the wide-scale ground operation would have accomplished anything beyond bogging Israel down in another long-term occupation of southern Lebanon is anyone's guess. (When I examined this war as an example for possible Turkish action in northern Iraq, I concluded that a short, severe strike was the best a conventional military could hope to do against a non-state force like Hezbollah/PKK.)
The biggest problem from a decision standpoint, was that the decision makers didn't seem to really see those alternatives clearly. They believed they could fundamentally alter the reality in southern Lebanon purely by an overwhelming application of air power. They went well beyond the short, severe strike before they realized that they couldn't achieve their objectives without a wide-scale ground assault that they hadn't planned for, called up troops for, trained for, or had sufficient supplies laid in for.
And so, clusterf*ck, and strategic defeat.
