One facet of a leader in any stream of life is the capability of foretelling what an action or inaction could produce to a reasonable degree of certainty. Another is the capability of weighing risks to rewards.
Nasrallah, by his own admission last night on the Lebanese NewTV, and as I have written before, has suffered a huge lapse of judgement at best; at worst, he has declared his incapacity to continue to run a militia organization or even culpability in killing over one thousand human beings, and causing various injuries to thousands more, the destitution of over a million, and the destruction of a country already limping into what would have been a rosy future.
To me listening to him stating categorically that he “would not have done it” if he thought kidnapping a couple of soldiers would have resulted in such an overwhelming response by the Israelis left me in shock and bewilderment…
“We did not think that there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war of this scale and magnitude,” Sheikh Nasrallah said.
“Now you ask me if this was 11 July and there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war like the one that has taken place, would you go ahead with the kidnapping?
“I would say no, definitely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons.”
BBC News
Is this person worth being called a leader? One that cannot even envisage the possible scale of retaliation of a strong enemy in response to an act of war by kidnapping combatants? That means that one more of Nasrallah’s failing is the complete collapse of his intelligence apparatus, or at least wrongly listening to unworthy advisers.
All in all, he would have been served much better should he have kept his mouth shut. At least then, the Arabs and Muslims will have continued to sanctify him and continue to believe that he is the defender of the faith and the champion of the Arabs and Palestinians, the upholder of the Arab dignity and all the other nomenclatures he has been given.
The truth of the matter is he screwed up, but in doing so also demonstrated that his militia could stand up to the Israeli onslaught; and with his charisma and the already boiling passions in the Arab world against Israel, he has created a political victory none of his Arab compatriots have ever done before.
Even with that political victory, and in light of this interview, I contend that he should step aside and concentrate on his religious research and fatwas and let the government to decide how best to defend its country’s territories.
A personal cult does not a country make, and most certainly winning a battle does not a war victor make.
Or does he truly believe that Israel will not attack again when threatened?
