{"id":10509,"date":"2007-04-13T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-13T20:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10509.html"},"modified":"2007-04-13T16:35:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-13T20:35:00","slug":"the-ongoing-and-utterly-foolish-search-for-a-war-czar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-ongoing-and-utterly-foolish-search-for-a-war-czar\/","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing (and utterly foolish) search for a ‘war czar’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, the WaPo had a major scoop<\/a>: the White House has been quietly been searching for a “high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The person would apparently be the new Commander in Chief — coordinating military policy and having the power to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies.<\/p>\n

Of course, the story was more humiliating than anything else. The White House has approached a series of retired four-star generals about the job, and none of them is interested, including Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who literally helped craft the current “surge” policy, but who doesn’t want to help implement it. Retired Marine Gen. John J. “Jack” Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job, told the Post, “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going.”<\/p>\n

Given all of this, I more or less assumed the White House would slink away, tail between its legs. Instead, the Bush gang is doing the opposite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Bush’s top national security adviser said Thursday that there is an urgent need to name a high-powered White House official to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

“It’s something I would like to have done yesterday and if yesterday wasn’t available, the day before,” National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters during a briefing at the White House. A day earlier, the White House had said the idea for a so-called war czar was still in its infancy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I get the sense Hadley doesn’t quite appreciate what’s going on around him. Indeed, he’s only making his problems worse.
\n
\nIf I’m part of the White House communications team, I immediately downplay Wednesday’s story. I deny that any formal offers went to anyone, I say that the idea was only in the discussion stage, and I conclude that the czar isn’t really necessary because the president and his team have been managing the war(s) just fine for the last five years, thank you, and don’t need anyone else.<\/p>\n

Instead, Hadley is making the administration look hapless and desperate. Given the AP article, I get the sense he was going to start asking reporters, “You guys don’t know anyone who might want this job, do you?”<\/p>\n

Slate’s Fred Kaplan explained<\/a> that this fruitless search for a “war czar,” helps demonstrate why the president’s Iraq policy is “doomed.”<\/p>\n

Gates envisions this person’s job as follows: If, say, Ambassador Ryan Crocker or Gen. David Petraeus asks for something and doesn’t get it, or if it’s moving too slowly through the bureaucracy, then here would be “somebody empowered by the president to call a cabinet secretary and say, ‘The president would like to know why you haven’t delivered what’s been asked for yet.’ ”<\/p>\n

But there already is such a person — the national security adviser, a job now held by Stephen Hadley. And if Hadley doesn’t convincingly speak with the president’s authority on such matters (just as Condoleezza Rice didn’t before him), it’s hard to see how someone who drops in out of the blue is going to do so either, no matter how loudly he can yell or pound his fist on a table.<\/p>\n

Actually, there’s another official who, as Baker and Ricks describe the job, has the “authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies.” He’s called the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war in the place where there’s fighting, with the officials you’ve got. The problem with the war in Iraq isn’t that we don’t have a war czar. The problem is that the war is in Iraq and that George W. Bush is the president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One wonders how long it will take for the Bush gang to realize that the more they emphasize the need for a “czar,” the more pathetic they look in mismanaging the fiasco they started.<\/p>\n

On second thought, let’s not tell them. The weaker the White House’s political position, the more likely we’ll see some kind of policy change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, the WaPo had a major scoop: the White House has been quietly been searching for a “high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The person would apparently be the new Commander in Chief — coordinating military policy and having the power to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}