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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-07
Israeli army chief of staff resignation threatens entire government

Web Log - January, 2007

Israeli army chief of staff resignation threatens entire government

Israel is still reeling from the disastrous performance in the summer Lebanon war of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a war which is widely perceived to be a humiliating defeat for Israel.

With public dissatisfaction with the government extremely high, the IDF chief of staff was forced to resign yesterday, and it's possible that the entire government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may fall as well.

As we reported in our analysis of the war last month, the IDF has been conducting an intensive investigation of what went wrong. The report won't be released until February.

But some conclusions of what is to be called the Winograd Commission Report were released to the Knesset on Tuesday. Some of those conclusions, where are consistent with the rumored conclusions we discussed last month, are as follows:

"The prime minister instructed the army to halt the rocket fire on Israel but the army failed to translate it into a military objective."

There was no objective. "Everything was basically okay, but those who were supposed to provide the army with the objective it was fighting for experienced a mental collapse and didn’t do so until the last day."

Israel's leadership made the wrong decision to rely too heavily on the United Nations to control Hizbollah.

Basically, as we've discussed, Hizbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers, the Israeli government panicked and went to war in four hours, with no clear plan or objective.

These preliminary conclusions led to the resignation of IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz. He said that his decision to resign was based on "deep-rooted values, those of strong ethics, loyalty to the organization and integrity." "I served the army responsibly for over four decades, and this responsibility continued in the last few months. It is this responsibility that led me to announce my resignation."

Public pressure for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Defense Minister Amir Peretz to resign is expected to increase, as the time for the release of the full report approaches. Olmert's troubles are increased by the fact that he's become the target of a criminal probe for his part in a financial scandal that took place in 2005, when he was finance minister.

As we've said several times in the past, governments of countries that fought in World War II are all becoming increasingly paralyzed. That's because the various government agencies and infrastructures were set up by the survivors of the war, with the purpose of keeping any new war from happening again. The generation of people born after the war (like America's Baby Boomer generation) don't have the skills to effectively operate these agencies, now that the people who set them up are gone, and only know how to argue.

We can see this happening in the European Union, which is unable to agree on a new constitution, we can see it in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair is being forced to step down under fire, and we can see it here in America, where members of Congress, now mostly from the Boomer generation, are crippling the government and preventing President Bush from governing, without providing any alternative.

And the government in the most chaos of all is, of course, the Palestinian government, which is close to civil war.

If the current Israeli government falls, where will it go next? We can only guess: The Israeli people are furious about the summer Lebanon war, and they're extremely anxious and frightened because of Hizbollah and Hamas are planning for war, with Iran's support. The absolutely highest priority for the people of Israel is security, and a new government has to be in a direction that's increasingly militaristic and confrontational, and less tolerant of compromise with the Palestinians.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this is the culmination of the generational cycle, leading to a new crisis war.

As we described above, the survivors in the countries that fought in World War II set up organizations like the United Nations to prevent another such war, and set up compromises and austere rules for the same reason. The generations of people born after the war spend their young adulthood angrily objecting to the austere rules, with a "generation gap" that leads to a great deal of political chaos. This is called a "generational Awakening era." America's last Awakening era occurred in the 1960s and 1970s.

But today, 61 years after WW II ended, the survivors of the war are all gone, and the generations born after the war (Baby Boomers and Generation X) are literally incompetent to take their place, since they don't have the wisdom that comes from having lived through the crisis war. That's when things start falling apart, new chaos ensues, and a new world war begins.

Today we're seeing that happen before our eyes. There's no way to stop the "clash of civilizations" world war that's approaching; all we can do is prepare for it. (18-Jan-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-07 Israeli army chief of staff resignation threatens entire government

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 18-Jan-07
Israeli army chief of staff resignation threatens entire government