Saturday, May 19, 2007

COMPLEX REALITY

A recent opinion piece by Thomas Friedman puts some perspective on the situation in Israel and in Lebanon in post Winograd times. I'm posting his opening and you can read it all here:-

"HEZBOLLAH'S leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made a remarkable statement last week. He praised Israel for conducting an inquiry into last year's war with Hezbollah - an inquiry that accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of 'serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.':-

"Nasrallah was quoted by the BBC as saying Israelis 'study their defeat in order to learn from it,' in contrast with the Arab regimes that 'do not probe, do not ask, do not form inquiry commissions, as if nothing has happened.'

One has to be impressed by his honesty, but he did not take it all the way, since the Arab leader who most needs to be probed is Nasrallah himself. He started the war with Israel, which was a disaster for both sides."

We don't need a sign more certain of Hizbullah's declining popularity since the war's end than today's news that the terrorist group doesn't believe that Lebanon can hold Presidential elections until a solution is reached to the six-month impasse it created with the ruling anti-Syrian majority in that country.

And Dutch-Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld also has some interesting views on the Winograd Commission’s interim report in Ehud Olmert Is Not Solely To Blame. As he points out, the reality of what took place is far more complex than might first meets the eye.

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