The story is told that Hitler, during the disaster that we now call the battle of Stalingrad, forbade his generals to read, or even possess, the memoirs written by Armand de Caulaincourt, adviser to Napoleon during his own catastrophic invasion of Russia 120 years earlier. (I'm indebted, as always, to my literary hero Herman Wouk, for teaching me this and so much more about the last war from his majestic books). Reading this work, the madman reasoned, would open his army's eyes to the possibility of defeat, and his crooked mind couldn't countenance such things.
Why is this relevant today. Because there's an old saying - "Generals train to fight the last war". But probably more importantly, politicians plan for the last war. So we need to see what went wrong in the last war in Lebanon, and make sure we get a set of politicians that understand where, why and how we failed, and prepare for round two.
To do this, we need a thorough, independent and strong investigation. Its purpose is not to point the finger at who made mistakes last time (although hopefully that will happen too), but to tell us how to prevent the same, and worse mistakes, happening again. Every citizen of Israel should be crying out to the heavens for this investigation, and should make sure they understand what it says, because the next government we elect MUST do better than the one we've got now.
