Opinion: Olmert Cannot Remain in the Prime Minister’s Office By Ari Shavit (Haaretz)
Excerpts;
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.
Commentary;
Columnist Ari Shavit hits the bullseye when he writes that Olmert can’t remain as Prime Minister after the outcome of this disasterous war. And all of the Kadima lackies, who hoped to jump on Arik Sharon’s back on what they thought was a free ride to control of Israel, they must all go as well.
They all came together in Kadima in order to advance the next expulsions of Jews, a further validation of the Hezbollah, Hamas strategy for the piece-by-piece dismemberment and destruction of Israel. But the next validation turned out to be the Olmert regime’s handcuffing and hamstringing of the IDF, defeating themselves by denying the military the wherewithal to destroy, eliminate and eradicate Hamas and Hezbollah and their client-sposor states. Olmert deliberately and with forethought held the IDF back in order to bolster his “convergence” plan.
Just as Philadelphia Eagle fans once yelled for Richie Kotite’s neck after an abysmally bad job of coaching, so too, Olmert, his OJT (On the Job Trained) Defense Minister and the crooked, corrupt, power-hungry Kadima and Amir Peretz too, every last one of them MUST be removed from power, at long last, and banned from future governmental leadership for life. It’s high time that political lackies were replaced by morally upright Torah-based leaders who have uppermost in their hearts and minds the welfare and best interests of the Jews. MB