"There are no bad battalions, only bad colonels."
The IDF was, and is, rotten from the top of the political echelon down to the commanders on the brigade level. Those fighting kids, the junior officers - the real fighters - were great, are great, and will always be great. But the top of the IDF "food chain" was rotten.
Then again, what can Israelis expect? The former Defense Minister, Amir Peretz ,had no military experience, interest or bent. But he knew that he would never ever be Prime Minister without having "his ticket punched" as Defense Minister. So, in accordance or compliance with the corrupt political tradition of Israeli government, he cut a deal and became Minister of Defense. A completely incompetent, inexperienced, untrained leftist politician was thus in charge of the security of Israel during the war in Lebanon last year.
Some folks say that the political echelon lost its aggressiveness and the IDF its fighting soul in southern Lebanon twenty years ago. If that was true, then it was the sworn and sacred duty of the IDF officer corps to change that. They had the obligation to once again instill aggressiveness and to teach the mantra of always carrying the fight to the 
Last summer's campaign was not a tactical or strategic failure.
enemy. However, that didn't happen, and the political echelon and the IDF senior officer corps are solely to blame.
Last summer's campaign was not a tactical or strategic failure.
enemy. However, that didn't happen, and the political echelon and the IDF senior officer corps are solely to blame. Last summer's campaign was not a tactical or strategic failure, but it was horribly mismanaged. Had IDF commanders been permitted to call up reserves in a timely manner and do what the IDF has always done best - carry the fight to the enemy - then those "good terrorists" (and the bad ones, too) would have had their backs well broken.
The political echelon is as impotent now as it was last summer, and Israeli society is every bit as fragmented. But "the times, they are a' changin'" for the Israel Defense Forces. General Gabi Ashkenazi, the new Chief of Staff, has obviously made an honest, no-nonsense assessment of his troops. As a result, commanders have been replaced and troop training has increased. Even more importantly, tactical and strategic lessons have been learned.
This is not the first time that the IDF has been in a "down-turn." In the late 1950s through the early 1960s, the IDF had to transform and rebuild itself. Later, after this rebuilding, the IDF destroyed the enemies of Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
Yet, all of the reconstruction underway now in the IDF will be for naught if Israeli society does not achieve a consensus and elect political leaders who care more about survival in Eretz Israel than they do about their own narrow, self-serving agendas.
Nationalism - overt, jingoistic, Israeli nationalism - must be the message of some party in Israel and it must be the overwhelming attitude of any new government of Israel. Otherwise, no matter what the brave deeds of Israeli fighters, or the number of them there are, the war will have been lost.
"We have met the enemy - and he is us."