Iraq and Lebanon, that's what happens when you don't win

Jack Valenti, the movie industry's top lobbyist in Washington, who passed away last week at 85, was among the late president Lyndon Johnson's closest advisers during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War. As his memoirs, scheduled to be published this summer, will attest, he remained Johnson's loyal supporter. According to Valenti, Johnson provided an easy target for those who wished to blame him for the ongoing American involvement in Vietnam, but in retrospect, it was obvious that "the Democratic right and the Republicans would have torn Johnson to pieces" if he - president John F. Kennedy's ill-experienced successor - had decided to cut America's losses abroad by leaving.

And that is the inherent problem with analyzing politicians' decisions in hindsight: The consequences of their actions are well known, whereas the possible ramifications of abstaining from those actions are pure guesswork.

A fine example of this could be seen in the words of Senator Hillary Clinton during the recent debate among the Democratic presidential candidates. When she was asked to explain why she had voted in favor of the war in Iraq, she replied: "It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me at the time. If I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way." President George W. Bush, in a moment of frankness, could have provided a similar answer to that question.

The American retrospection on the war in Iraq is something that Israel can identify with, given that it is currently in the throes of the Winograd report, dedicated to the examination of the government's performance during the Second Lebanon War. America is reviewing Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq; Israel is reviewing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to launch last summer's war in Lebanon. The similarities are easy to see.

In both Jerusalem and Washington, more embarrassing discoveries concerning the two wars emerge with every passing day. This is what happens when nations go to war, but fail to deliver victory.

In comparing the media's differing approach to World War II and the Vietnam War, Prof. Douglas Porch wrote in the Naval War College Review shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that "it is not the presence of censorship in World War II making the coverage different, but the absence of victory in Vietnam." In other words, it was the difference between victory and defeat that dictated the media's favorable coverage of World War II, despite all the internal struggles between its generals, compared to the critical coverage of the Vietnam War.

The difference between the Israeli process of retrospection and the American one stems from the fact that the two countries have very different systems of government. American legislators are mounting a fierce attack on their president, but they cannot oust him. He will preside until 2009. The Israeli predicament is the exact opposite: Lawmakers are refraining from any action that might bring the prime minister down in order to keep from going down with him. Still, it does seem that Bush may see a new Israeli prime minister during his own term in office.

In a new book slated for release today, former CIA head George Tenet writes of the hasty decision to embark on the Iraq War: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat." According to Tenet, the decision to go to war was made in Bush's inner circle, without a proper examination of the ramifications. But the same applies to the enemy: Hezbollah failed to foresee the severity of Israel's military response, just as former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein failed to anticipate the severity of the impending threat from the United States. Both Arab leaders believed that their respective foes would hesitate to strike. They both attributed an exaggerated degree of cowardice - and, it would seem in retrospect, intelligence - to their adversaries.

Nor were Olmert and Bush the only ones on their sides to misinterpret the situation. They enjoyed the overwhelming support of most of their constituents when they gave the order to go to war. They provided compelling arguments for war, which remain reasonable even in retrospect: They promised to remove an ongoing threat and pledged to hound the terrorists and their sponsors. Bush decorated his war with the promise to export democracy to the Arab world. Olmert embellished his with the promise to retrieve the Israeli soldiers whom Hezbollah had abducted.

And so, we arrive at the conclusion that the Israeli public stands to learn from the Winograd report what the American public has learned following the Iraq War: Successful leaders require good judgment, moderation and farsightedness. In lieu of these, they must produce victories on the battlefield.