A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman
January 30, 2008 Winograd
The Winograd Report came out today and to many it was quite a let-down. For the past few weeks the political and military establishment has held their breath saying that Winograd was coming and that would change everything. They should have known better since the Commission had stated that it would not make personal recommendations. Well it did not. It did say that the Second Lebanon War was a disaster and that the country went to war without proper preparation or proper planning. The commission stated that both the political and the military echelons did not use the proper processes for making decisions.
The area that was expected to be the most problematic for Prime Minister Olmert was the decision to engage in the large ground attack in the last days of the war. Many have criticized that decision as politically based or wrong for any number of other reasons. The commission criticized that actual operation and stated that its goals were not realistic, but most important for Olmert it stated that the decision itself was right and there was no choice.
The effect of the report is going to be very minimal. While the report was critical, the fact that it named no names limits it impact. It also talks about significant achievements of the war. The plan to have a large protest rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday night has already been cancelled.
One very important part of the report was the caution given to the IDF today. The report feared that the IDF was learning some of the wrong lessons from the war. The IDF may be reversing to the warfare of the 1970ís (large tank forces and mixed ground forces). They were warned that the wars of the future may be quite different.
