It always seems strange how many of the chiefs in the government and the army, all of them men, were prepared to sacrifice their lives in battle but became scared for their sensitive skin when danger hovered over their careers. This amazing spectacle is again being performed by the chief of staff and the senior officer cadre. They are feeding the media with horror forecasts of how the Winograd commission has "marked Chief of Staff Dan Halutz" and how "heads will fly," as though the commission had been appointed to look into some hitch concerning a sentry booth. The top officers, with Halutz marching at the head of the battalion, are doing everything possible so that not a hair will fall from their heads.

Is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni cut from different cloth? Would she conduct her war differently? This is one of the most fascinating of political questions, because Livni's courage will have an effect far beyond the rules of the game at the top. Without fear or favoritism, it is liable to affect the country's diplomatic path.

The first outstanding instance in the past decade's repertoire of fear was Ehud Barak. A daring man in war, he was not prepared, as a civilian, to sacrifice his political life. He delayed the discussions of an agreement with the Palestinians until the election season was approaching and then he retreated, as he would never have done in any military battle. Especially regrettable was the fact that Barak rose to leadership as the first chief among those who grew up with the state, of the handsome forelock and appealing looks, younger than Yitzhak Rabin by half a generation.

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Benjamin Netanyahu after him, also intelligent without a doubt, started making moves toward an agreement. He abandoned them in favor of ratings, for the sake of his career. Without any known record of military heroism, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now behaving in the same way. Speculators will say that the third son of the state who has risen to the top will not shed a tear if the heads of the military establishment roll. Any head lopped off will protect his own. But, in politics, he is fearful like the last of the hacks, lest moves of compromise toward the Palestinian leaders exact a high price at the ballot box for him personally. And Olmert will not sacrifice himself for what looks to him like an insufficiently important aim.

Yesterday the results of the probe into the scandalous neglect on a navy missile boat during the war made headlines. Previous investigations indicated far-reaching blunders. One of them quoted the words of the commander of the navy to the effect that an Iranian land-to-sea missile in the hands of Hezbollah seemed like "an imaginary and ridiculous scenario," despite two warnings. Thus, there was the memorable blunder of neglecting sophisticated means of defense. A prior inquiry also determined there had been "an operational intelligence failure" on the missile boat.

This week the chief of staff decided to make do with reprimands here and there, a decision that the ship's commander will not be given a command position in his next posting, and other bits of fudging. This is also Halutz's attitude concerning himself. He inherited this tone in part from his predecessors, but has upgraded the stance to an axiom: In the army no one pays a high price for big mistakes; we only minimize mistakes for the sake of a teeny, tiny punishment. The Israel Defense Forces' top brass, therefore, comes across as a kind of workers' committee of the senior staff's labor union, whose concern is protecting its members from work accidents.

This brings us back, and not indirectly, to the foreign minister. One feels she is the first politician of the past decade (perhaps Dan Meridor resembled her; Labor MK Shelly Yachimovich is her opposite) who has declared she will stick to her opinion even if she clashes with the top echelon and the very top. Livni wants a qualitative change in the nature of the contacts with the Palestinian Authority leadership. Explicitly, without fudging, she has declared an outline for an agreement in the coming years. And she is neither stupid nor naive, heaven forbid. This rising woman has made it clear that she will battle her colleagues, while they are watching out to save their skins. If necessary, she will also fight for the position of prime minister. This is quite a disgrace for the men in politics and the army. It appears that she, more than they, is the one wearing the pants in the house.