(Newsweek) Messenger Man: The Problem with Bush's new War Czar

[brooklynite]

May 17, 2007 - Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute is by most accounts a formidable fellow: smart, efficient and expert in all aspects of nation-building—civilian and military. As the top operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he’s also intimately familiar with all aspects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “Lute is about as broad-gauged a senior military officer as they could find,” says Philip Zelikow, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s former senior counselor, who’s known him since Lute was a captain. “He’s perfect,” adds retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a harsh critic of George W. Bush’s “surge” plan in Iraq.

But Lute, who was named this week to be Bush’s new war “czar” for Iraq and Afghanistan, is also just a three-star general, and he’s still on active duty. What this means is that while nominally he’s the president’s man—his title puts him on par with national-security adviser Steven Hadley—militarily he’s still inferior in rank to four-star Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational forces in Iraq. Neither will he be in a position to tell Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Rice what to do. “The term ‘war czar’ is terribly misguided,” says McCaffrey. “I do think he’ll be an extremely able White House operative.”

Lute, in other words, is being hired on as Bush’s messenger man—the guy who, theoretically, can deliver presidential demands to State or Defense that certain resources are to be delivered to certain places. But there’s the rub. The only way for Lute to be even marginally effective is if a president who has been consistently uninterested in the details of the Iraq conflict for the past four years—and in the nitty-gritty of Afghanistan for most of the last five years—starts obsessing over those details with just 18 months to go in his term. And that’s unlikely to happen. A leader who’s already poring over plans for his presidential library doesn’t start changing his governing habits this late in the game.

And Lute is preparing for his pseudo-czardom—he still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, which could take weeks—just as progress in Iraq is slowing to a halt on almost all fronts. While sectarian violence is down since the “surge” began, a new spate of Sunni suicide bombings has paralyzed efforts by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to reconcile his fellow Shiites with the Sunnis. A large number of those bombers—perhaps 80 to 90 percent by some intelligence estimates—are still coming over the border from Syria. Yet diplomacy with Damascus is still all but nonexistent, despite Rice’s recent meeting with the Syrian foreign minister at Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt. And with each passing week, the price that the Syrians—or the Iranians—are demanding for cooperation in Iraq goes up, as Bush edges closer to lame-duckhood.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18727565/site/newsweek/

[Cha]

1. We'll see what happens..the

thing I took note over was "pouring over his presidential(sic) library plans"..whatever.

Is he trying to track down "My Pet Goat". I hope so..it certainly belongs in bush's sic library.