President Bush doesn't need a " War Czar"

All of the talk about President Bush's efforts to recruit someone to be a "War Czar" to manage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a definite indicator that the president is really out of touch and has really lost it. The reality is that the "wars" are battles between the Pentagon and State Department, and battles between the Neoconservative hawks and the pragmatists.

The real problem is that there already is a "War Czar", and his name is Dick Cheney. He is a prime cause of many of the squabbles. All President Bush has to do is push Cheney aside and call Gates and Rice into his office and tell them that they both have to work together or they both go and that would be the end of the story. But, apparently President Bush doesn't have the force of will to do that. He's the kind of guy who needs a hatchet man.

The flip side of that real problem is that President Bush is still a "prisoner" of the whole Neoconservative ideology which has its roots in an unholy alliance between far-right wing Christian fanatics and far-right wing Jewish fanatics. An ongoing war against Islam and all non-Judeo-Christian elements in the Middle East is their top priority. Managing this "crusade" is everything to them.

Adding a "War Czar" as an extra level of management between President Bush and the Pentagon and State Department would simply take more of the responsibility off of everyone's shoulders and lead to a whole new level of finger pointing.

The fact that no sane person wants the job is a solid indicator that the whole concept is a non-starter.

President Bush is simply unwilling to admit the core truth that the mess originated with Dick Cheney and the whole Neoconservative ideology and that the problems with prosecuting the wars (and the whole overall so-called "Global War On Terror") will persist as long as Cheney and his staff continue to exercise veto authority over decisions of the Pentagon and the State Department.

The really mind-boggling thing is that the brain-dead Democrats in charge of Congress are completely unable to exploit the chaos over management of "the war." They have their own internal battles to keep them occupied.

-- Jack Krupansky