I doubt the Leopard 2 has strong top armour as well.
That's like saying the AH-64D is useless to have because it can,
and has gotten shot down, and 2006 was hardly an indication of the
Merky doing what it does best, which it did not get the chance
to.
The "failure" of the Merkava is due to bad tatics, intelligence and
planning, not because the tank was unable to do its job. I think we
would be hard pressed to find any MBT in the world that is as
suited for fighting urban as the Merky.
Unfortunately they were deployed poorly in 2006 and never got a
chance to truly put the pressure on the enemy given their orders
and objectives were highly restricted given the politics of the
affair. In short they did not get the chance to really take the
fight to the enemy as much as they could have done.
This is not a case of the MBT being worthless to have, but a case
of bad tatics and planning leading to unnecessary losses. At the
end of the day technology only gets you this far, but you still got
to use your brains to fight.
