Olmert gets Bush-like

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was sounding an awful lot like US President George W. Bush Wednesday night when he announced his cabinet had given a green light to the IDF to crush the Hizb’allah threat.

Israel’s military chiefs expect Hizb’allah to respond by unleashing its massive arsenal of medium and long-range missiles (obtained with the help of Syria and Iran) on Israeli population centers and strategic facilities as far south as the coastal city of Netanya.

Nevertheless, Olmert boldly declared:

“We will confront the threat with determination and we will win this battle. This is not an easy test for the leadership, for security forces or for Israeli citizens,” but “…there are times when the state needs to protect its citizens, even at the price of the rocket threat or international tensions.”

A far cry from the man who just one year ago said:

“We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want to be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies.”

Let’s hope the transformation continues until Israel too has the kind of terror-fighting, international condemnation-deflecting, cowboy of a leader as the one occupying the White House.

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