Granted, many have seen their luster as defense experts dim after entering politics, where their performance received more scrutiny than the shadows of the defense establishment allow. Ehud Barak and Moshe Dayan, for instance, were both IDF chiefs of staff, yet the former’s handling of the second intifada as prime minister was universally panned, as was the latter’s performance as defense minister during the Yom Kippur War. Former air force commander Ezer Weizman opposed attacking Iraq’s nuclear reactor as defense minister, yet the 1981 airstrike succeeded brilliantly. Mossad veteran Tzipi Livni boasted of crafting UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to end the Second Lebanon War as foreign minister in 2006, yet this resolution enabled Hezbollah to rearm so quickly that by 2009, it had three times as many rockets as it did before the war.But such failures don’t seem to have affected the reputation of serving or retired defense officials who aren’t in politics: Their “professional assessments” of defense-related issues are still eagerly solicited and deferentially received. And that, as two recent examples showed, is a dangerous mistake.One was former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s speech at the President’s Conference last month, where he said the IDF needn’t remain in the Jordan Valley under a deal with the Palestinians; it could defend the country even from the 1967 lines. Had he asserted this without explanation, listeners might well have assumed he had good reasons for this position. But fortunately, he explained his rationale – and it wasn’t just lame; it was astoundingly stupid.“The Jordan Valley had importance in 1991,” he declared. “At that time, there was a threat from Jordan, Syria and Iraq, but now it is of less importance.”Dagan is obviously correct that right now, these countries pose no real threat to Israel. Yet the man who headed our premier intelligence agency for eight years is evidently incapable of entertaining the possibility that this could someday change. Such shortsightedness would be disturbing at any time – but especially when the situation in all three countries is highly unstable.
Syria is currently preoccupied with its civil war, but that won’t last forever. And once it ends, Israel may well face a heightened threat: either an Assad regime completely in thrall to Iran, whose aid is all that’s currently keeping it alive, or a new government dominated by Islamic extremists, whose militias constitute the rebels’ most effective fighting forces.
Iraq is descending into renewed chaos as sectarian violence intensifies. If this continues, Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government may well seek help in crushing Sunni extremists from neighboring Shi’ite powerhouse Iran. That would further Tehran’s goal of turning Iraq into a wholly-owned subsidiary, which would obviously make the latter a renewed threat to Israel.Finally, Jordan has experienced repeated unrest over the last three years, and there’s no guarantee this unrest won’t someday lead to King Abdullah’s overthrow. That would almost certainly result in a government hostile to Israel: Jordan’s population, which is two-thirds Palestinian, is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, and so is the main opposition party – the Muslim Brotherhood.In short, there’s a real possibility that one or more of these countries could again become a threat – not just in some distant future, but in the next few years. Yet Dagan advocates completely ignoring this possibility and setting long-term security arrangements as if the current security situation will prevail forever.
The second example was GOC Central Command Nitzan Alon’s assertion last month that the Palestinian Authority has supported Washington’s efforts to restart negotiations by cutting off funds for a Palestinian group that foments anti-Israel riots.“The PA, for example, almost stopped financing a group that dealt with some riots and protests against Israel, and they halted the funds of this group in the last couple of months,” Alon told diplomats and journalists during a briefing at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “They weren't looking for diplomatic recognition for the move but rather for the territory to quiet down.”It doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that if PA President Mahmoud Abbas is currently tamping down anti-Israel violence by halting funding to a group that foments it, then until now, he has been encouraging such violence by funding this group. And if he’s encouraging anti-Israel violence whenever it suits his purpose, then he’s no more committed to peace than his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.
But that realization evidently escaped Alon: Instead of calling out Abbas for fomenting violence, he lauded the PA leader for temporarily ceasing to do so. Nor does he seem bothered that the PA, whose continued funding he once deemed essential to Israel’s security, is instead using this funding to undermine Israel’s security.Clearly, there are questions that defense professionals are uniquely qualified to answer – technocratic ones requiring highly specialized knowledge. If you wanted to plan an intelligence-gathering operation in Iran, you’d consult Dagan, not me. And if you wanted to know how many tank divisions are needed to keep a given army from crossing the Jordan River, you’d ask Alon, not me.
But the kinds of defense-related issues that become topics of public debate rarely fall into that category. Instead, they are primarily political assessments: Could Syria’s civil war result in a government even more hostile to Israel? What does Abbas’ stop-and-start funding of violent anti-Israel groups say about his intentions? Would a beefed-up UNIFIL force be willing to clash with Hezbollah to prevent its rearmament? How would Baghdad and other world capitals react if Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor?
Nothing in defense professionals’ training enables them to make such political assessments better than other people. If anything, the opposite is true: Because defense organizations are hierarchical, defense professionals have less experience than do politicians in identifying and weighing competing interests and assessing the likely outcome.So by all means, let’s make use of our defense professionals’ specialized knowledge. But it’s past time to realize they’re no better than anyone else at interpreting the data they amass, and deserve no special deference when doing so.