The establishment this week in Jerusalem of a government-appointed committee, headed by retired judge, Eliahu Winograd, to investigate and report on the failings of last summer’s war against Hezbollah marks the more or less successful culmination of the public protest that led to this development. True, the protesters had called for a public commission of inquiry, whose legal status would have been slightly different from that of the Winograd Committee, but all in all the difference is not great.

And yet the fact of the matter is that neither an investigative committee nor a commission of inquiry can add very much that is substantive to what Israelis already know and understand about the poor performance of their government and army last July and August. The Winograd Committee is not needed to tell them that for six years, since the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in the year 2000, a succession of governments knew about the Hezbollah military buildup and decided to ignore it because they already had their hands full with the Palestinian intifada. The committee is not needed to tell Israelis, either, that intelligence on the full extent and military sophistication of this build-up was nevertheless faulty, because Israel was channeling most of its intelligence resources elsewhere during this period.

Israelis also know without the benefit of an investigative committee that their country started the war with no realistic strategy for achieving its goals. They know that Israel’s defense minister, Labor Party chief, Amir Peretz, had a background that didn’t remotely qualify him for the job. They know that the false calculation, which determined the course of the war’s first two weeks, that air power alone could decimate Hezbollah’s fighting force was based partly on wishful thinking and partly on the government’s concern to avoid ground casualties.

Israelis know, too, that this concern continued to cause much hesitation and irresoluteness once Israel’s infantry was committed to the battle. They know that many reserve infantry units were ill-prepared for the fighting because, as part of the army’s attempts to save money, they had not been called up for years for what were once annual maneuvers and training. They know that the army has had severe financial problems because over the years more and more of its budget has gone into expensive hardware and into generous salaries and pensions for its professional officer corps, leaving less and less for its front-line units. They know that many of the military depots that supplied their units were short on equipment when the war broke out because no one had foreseen that this might happen.

One could go on. The Winograd Committee will no doubt look into each one of these shortcomings, along with others. The committee will seek to analyze why and how they occurred, identify the individuals responsible for them, and recommend measures for avoiding them in the future. It will publish its findings with great fanfare, will be in the headlines for several weeks afterwards, and then will fade from sight. And the army would have implemented those recommendations on its own anyway, based on a more professional internal investigation done by the army. Any other recommendations will probably be forgotten.

This is all fairly predictable. Israelis have been to this movie before. They are used to committees and commissions that produce reports that are partly or wholly never acted on, and they have the specific precedent of the Agranat Commission, which labored long and hard to analyze the mistake made in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and ultimately had little effect on anything.

Commissions of inquiry have always been a common way in Israel of trying to fob off the responsibilities of politicians and other leaders onto the legal or quasi-legal system. They have served not so much to sweep problems under the rug as to vacuum them off the rug and then leave them inside the vacuum cleaner. It won’t be any different this time.

The real question is whether, irrespective of the Winograd Committee report, Israel’s political system and military are capable of renewing themselves from within. Each is faced with many of the same problems. For years now, fewer talented young Israelis have been going into both politics and military life as the attraction and glamour have declined along with the ideal of public service in general.

The Israeli political system has been increasingly dominated by self-serving careerists. A new, up-and-coming generation of capable future leaders with a true sense of national responsibility is hard to discern. The army, too, has become progressively more professionalized and career oriented. Fewer officers are willing to take the risks calling for basic reforms. Once a high percentage of senior officers were reservists who had other, civilian pursuits in everyday life and were not afraid to challenge the military system. Today this is no longer the case.

The failures in Lebanon this summer were not those of a few individuals or of the weeks and months immediately before and during the war. Numerous institutions and processes contributed to them. Some of these have been in the making for dozens of years. It is beyond the scope of any commission of inquiry to deal adequately with such things. Even in the unlikely eventuality that the Winograd Committee comes up with a report that calls for the heads of high political and military figures, their mere guillotining will not solve anything. Other, better people have to be available to replace them, and it is not at all clear right now that Israel has the political or military cadres necessary for this. Israel’s next problem will be to find them.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.