General Knowledge - Why no one wants to be Bush's war czar

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2164058/

General Knowledge
Why no one wants to be Bush's war czar.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 12, 2007, at 6:13 PM ET

If anyone still had doubts that President George W. Bush's Iraq policy is doomed, they should be dispelled by the story about the fruitless search for a "war czar."

The story, reported in the April 11 Washington Post by the ever-reliable Peter Baker and Thomas Ricks, tells of the White House's secret attempt to find "a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies."

The punch line is that at least three prominent retired four-star generals have been asked if they'd be interested in the job—and all of them said no.

Let's be clear about the significance of these refusals. Generals do not become generals by being demure. They are, as a rule, confident, opinionated, and in many cases, arrogant. Retired generals like to talk with other retired generals about how they would handle one foul-up or another if they were still in command.

In other words, if some retired generals out there had a great idea about how to solve the mess in Iraq, and if the president offered them the authority to do what they wanted to do, few of them would hesitate to step up and take charge.

The fact that Bush has found no takers suggests one of three possibilities: The generals don't have any great ideas; they don't believe they'd really be given carte blanche; or, most likely, to some degree, both.

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[stevedeshazer]

1. As a kid, I always wanted to grow up to be a War Czar!!

Seriously, why use a term that denotes a medieval emperor?

And don't we already have Commander-in-Chief Bunnypants and Secretary of Eternal War Gates?

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. The War Czar has what powers under the Constitution? n/t

MKJ

[babylonsister]

3. Unknown; they're trying to create a new position so what powers

a czar would have have not been addressed AFAIK.

[MadMaddie]

4. Exactly....this adminstration has created more bullshit positions

than any other in history...

Apparantly this War Zar and Gates would be directly reporting to *...why the hell do you need two people to manage this? Well the answer is easy, because Gates knows he is fucked and they have to get someone in to be their fall guy...when it all finally hits the fan....

That's why the Generals are not taking the position...espeically with this administrations way of disrepecting anything the experienced men and women tried to do to improve the situation...

Is this administration saying that they can't run the war withought this war czar because if that is the case...my friends our military is in worse trouble than we already think they are....

[Demeter]

7. Or Gates Isn't Jumping On Command, Let Alone Asking "How High?"

and Dubya isn't gonna fire him just yet....

[phillysuse]

5. This is a job for LIEBERMAN!

Make him the War Czar and send him to Baghdad.

[MadMaddie]

6. Ha..ha..he is too much of a coward....he wouldn't know what to do

without his puppet string masters....

[tularetom]

8. They won't do it because the game is fixed

They will have autonomy only up to the time that they suggest that existing policies are a disaster and we should begin immediate withdrawal of American forces and get them all out in one year. They only have the flexibility to try to salvage some dignity for * out of the cluster fuck he created. In other words an impossible task. I wouldn't go anywhere near it if I were a retired general.

[C_U_L8R]

9. Everyone knows George is an idiot

on the path to his own self-destruction.

Stand back and watch.