by emptywheel
I want to reiterate and expand on something Kevin Drum wrote. The news from today's WaPo report that no one wants to be Bush's War Czar for Afghanistan and Iraq (and, no doubt, for places in between) isn't so much that three retired Generals declined the opportunity. It's that, once again, Bush has run up against the most basic management incompetence of his Administration. And once again, he's trying to invent a new position to paper over the fact that his current National Security Advisor is unable to manage his or her job.
Look at the goal of this new War Czar:
The White House wants to appoint 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, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.
[snip]
The highest-ranking White House official responsible exclusively for the wars is deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who reports to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and does not have power to issue orders to agencies. O'Sullivan plans to step down soon, giving the White House the opportunity to rethink how it organizes the war effort.
Unlike O'Sullivan, the new czar would report directly to Bush and to Hadley and would have the title of assistant to the president, just as Hadley and the other highest-ranking White House officials have, the sources said. The new czar would also have "tasking authority," or the power to issue directions, over other agencies, they said.
To fill such a role, the White House is searching for someone with enough stature and confidence to deal directly with heavyweight administration figures such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
BushCo is struggling with the fact that it doesn't have one chain of command over the occupied territories, and as a result the competing interests of State and DOD are undermining the mission.
But this is old news.
It was the problem with Jay Garner, another General retrieved from the private sector to run the occupation. But Rummy didn't trust him--saw him as too closely aligned with State--so he undermined him by refusing him the logistical support necessary. So then they brought in Paul Bremer and the ill-fated CPA. Like the proposed "Czar," Bremer's advantage over Garner was supposed to be a direct line to Bush. But the CPA squandered on the Republicans' worst war profiteering instincts (not to mention Bremer's decision--largely influenced by Ahmad Chalabi--to dismiss the Iraqi Army). [Btw, Woodward's State of Denial is very good on this mess, no doubt at the direction of someone powerful who wanted a scapegoat for the Iraq mess.] Then there was the Iraq Czar, Robert Blackwill, who was appointed to an analogous position (though focused only on Afghanistan--this was the period, after all, when BushCO could have cared less about Afghanistan) in 2003 because Condi was completely unable to mediate relations between Bremer and DOD and State. (Colin Powell finally made Condi fire Blackwill when he proved to her that Blackwill was a real shit to some of his staffers.)
So here we are again, 3 years later, trying to appoint someone in National Security Council who can do what the National Security Advisor is supposed to do. Sure, this time it's Stephen Hadley, and not his former boss, Condi, who is not up to the task. But the reason is the same.
We taxpayers pay a National Security Advisor to make sure that someone mediates the opinions and agendas of the many strong-willed people running our foreign policy. We pay that person to make sure that our foreign policy is managed well. But once again, the person in the position is not up to the task.
At some point, we need to face the overriding management issue. Is the problem that Condi and Hadley are incompetent (yes, partly)? But this constant shuffling, this search to find someone who can put unity to our foreign policy approach, suggests another problem. It's not just that Condi and Hadley are incompetent. It's that Bush himself can't see the issue with the requisite clarity to empower his National Security Advisor to do the job well.
Who in their right mind would take this job? The President is a moron who demands absolute loyalty. He's also completely disengaged and doesn't care about details. The war was a bad idea that was badly implemented. Likewise, the escalation was a bad idea that is being badly implemented. The problem isn't middle management. The problem is that the CEO is trying to do something that's really stupid, and he can't even be bothered to tell his underlings exactly how he wants it done.
Posted by: Frank Probst | April 11, 2007 at 10:56
i have a different take... what this demonstrates to me is simply one more effort to politicize every executive branch agency and force submission to centralized political control, and meghan o'sullivan's departure was the perfect opportunity...
sounding a different note on the same theme, so many, including yourself, are very quick to put all bushco actions into the frame of incompetence and mismanagement... while some of them are undoubtedly that, a great many more, i believe, are carefully orchestrated to continue the consolidation of executive/political power and the creation of an authoritarian, one-party state... i also believe that many perceived bushco "failures" were deliberately intended to be just that - failures... nothing serves the purposes of this administration less than a goverment that is working effectively... perhaps the "war czar" move is the flailing of genuine failure and incompetence, but, my cynicism and 6+ years of observation cannot rule out the other two...
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
Posted by: profmarcus | April 11, 2007 at 11:04
My fear is the breakdown of our Messianic King, whose brittle inflexibility still seems to operate on some Bush doctrine of infallibility. He hasn't crossed over yet, but a Mushareff style
coup is possible.
Posted by: Semanticleo | April 11, 2007 at 11:06
My initial thought was this slot shouldn't be called "czar" but "designated fall guy" or "scapegoat."
Posted by: blatherskite | April 11, 2007 at 11:18
Agreed. It's also that Cheney has had too much power wrt national security issues; Hadley, in fact, is not his own person--he's a Cheney plant within the NSC. So the whole management of national security is screwed up. Plus of course GWB couldn't manage an oil company or a baseball team. Why would anyone except him to manage one of the biggest gummints in the world? Then we have the whole conservative philosophy undermining everything: less gummint is better; less effective gummint is even better; less gummint means less oversight for big bidness.
I remember reading an interview with Al Gore in the N Yorker about a year after the 2000 election. He basically predicted what would happen: that GWB and his cronies would destroy our country. We've got to act fast and cripple the Bushies as soon as possible, or it will take a decade to restore our country after the mess they have made.
One bit of good news: the Mormons at Brigham Young University are protesting Cheney's upcoming graduation speech.
Posted by: lemondloulou | April 11, 2007 at 11:21
This reminds me of the old corp dodge to avoid inventory tax by loading inventory onto the rails - as long as it's rolling we can't be taxed!
Note to MSM, IT'S THE POLICIES STUPID! Stop following the bouncing balls of people.
Posted by: mainsailset | April 11, 2007 at 11:26
lemond
Yeah, I was thinking of Cheney when I wrote this. When they report on the ever-new "Czar of teh day," they always describe the problem to be a conflict between Defense and State.
Who are we kidding?
It's that Cheney undermines everything that Bush buys off on that he, Cheney, doesn't like.
Posted by: emptywheel | April 11, 2007 at 11:31
to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies
I thought this was Shrub's job. Isn't that what he keeps telling us?
Posted by: P J Evans | April 11, 2007 at 11:44
Being "War Czar" used to be the job of the President, his Sec'y of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Now it's vacant? Is this Mr. Bush hiding his incompetence again, or is he just pushing more outsourcing? If so, why hasn't Erik Prince and his Hessian Blackwater Group accepted another highly paid task? Maybe I missed the memo where it said the whole purpose of outsourcing was to take the loot without taking responsibility for whatever happens next.
Posted by: earlofhuntingdon | April 11, 2007 at 11:49
You know, I keep reading this over and over, and I'm starting to think that the big issue isn't O'Sullivan and Hadley. It's Gates. Is there any chance that Junior is just trying to get someone to undermine the new babysitter that his father sent to watch him?
Posted by: Frank Probst | April 11, 2007 at 12:00
Your last comment nails it, 'wheel. The problem is Cheney. He engineered himself to be VP because he realized that with his unlikeable personality and disdain for kissing up to donors he would never be elected Prez. But then he began arrogating power to himself and began running things as if her were Prez, with his pal Rummy.
Bush can't stand up to Cheney, who undercuts him every time he disagrees with Bush. Condi couldn't. She and Gates can sometimes maneuver around him, but it must be exhausting. Hadley is really no better than Rice, and lacks her bond with Bush.
What a colossal mess. If Cheney starts WWIII over Iran maybe that will do it, but who knows. Bush is stuck with the team he chose. They have to be impeached together, if the holy blood clot doesn't come soon.
Today's paper says Pelosi and Lantos want to go to Iran, or at least talk to Ahmaninejad. Maybe that will send Cheney into a frenzy.
The gods help us all.
Posted by: Mimikatz | April 11, 2007 at 12:07
We do have a 'War Czar', he's called the commander-in-chief. But once again the solution of the Party of reducing government becomes the augmenting of government.
And, what's with this Czar imagery anyway. It is the russian word for emperor, and derives from the Gothic kaisar that comes form the latin Caesar. It is not appropriate imagery for a democracy, but in a pseudo-christian worrior state all things become possible.
Posted by: Ace Armstrong | April 11, 2007 at 12:22
It's that Bush himself can't see the issue with the requisite clarity to empower his National Security Advisor to do the job well.
This is a much smarter take than the more predictable one making the rounds in the left blogosphere, that Bush himself is supposed to be the one in the position he is looking to fill with a czar (which was my first reaction too, to be honest). You're right that the czar role should be obviated by the National Security Advisor, and the two we've had with Bush have been extraordinarily weak and inept. And you're right that Bush's specific failure is the failure to put people with requisite power and leverage, or to give it to them, in the NSA position. Nice.
Given all that, it's just so telling to me that Keane of all people has evidently turned down the job. Even he knows there's no glory and likely no success in it.
Posted by: Jeff | April 11, 2007 at 12:33
Since when is it the National Security Advisor's job to
give orderstell DOD and State and whoever else what to do in running a war or an occupation? Shouldn't that be the President's job? Isn't the advisor's job to advise?I think that the Preznit has, with this, admitted complete inability to do the job he's being well-paid to do. Impeachment time!
Posted by: P J Evans | April 11, 2007 at 13:08
My headline:
"Bush admits incompetence;
Nation responds: 'Ya think?'"
Posted by: Albert Fall | April 11, 2007 at 13:32
Today's Times has a piece about how the Republicans don't have any "exciting" candidates across the country. How much longer will the malaise that is gripping the Republican Party last before they figure out that impeaching Cheney might solve many of their (and the country's) problems? Jimmy Baker, are you reading this? It wouldn't take much more than empowering Waxman a bit; EW has shown us that Cheney is guilty of treason.
Posted by: lemondloulou | April 11, 2007 at 13:37
Speaking of people who know a little about management, how's this for buyer's remorse (or maybe seller's remorse, since he's hawking a book)
And I meant that a bit sarcastically, since some have seriously questioned his management skills.
Posted by: Mimikatz | April 11, 2007 at 13:55
This has been a fascinating article. Look at why Marine General Jack Sheehan turned the "War Czar" job down:
They want a Czar to pull things together, but they don't know what they want him to do, and Cheney is always in the background to sabotage any effort he deems insufficiently hawkish.In the triumverate of Bush/Cheney/Rove, we have Bush who is an incompetent but passive figurehead and speechmaker, Cheney who is a nasty bureaucratic politician running war and intelligence without any clue regarding what he wants or how to do it, and Rove who is a very competent political strategist and little else. None of them understands themselves or each other, there is no one to coordinate them, and none of them listen to criticism, disagreement or even to reasonable alternative courses of action.
This "War Czar" thing is just a microcosm of the entire administration. They can't decide what to do, they wouldn't know how to get government to do something if they could decide, and then Cheney will sabotage anything they try. Oh, and they hold their positions thanks to the Fundamentalist Christian Dominionist movement that wants to destroy American democracy and replace it with a theocracy in a manner much like the Islamic fundamentalists who want to erase the last thousand years of history and return to a militant theocracy.
It's sort of a three-way "Odd couple" with guns and aircraft carrier groups and totally absent any humor. Historians studying the Bush administration will need a good grounding in abnormal psychology as well as social psychology before they begin to understand what is happening.
Posted by: Rick B | April 11, 2007 at 14:10
RickB, how about we bring the tropps home and leave those three with no war to mismanage. Better yet, bring the troops home and send those three to the Hague. That way they won't be able to mismanage anything (except their own defenses in court).
Posted by: P J Evans | April 11, 2007 at 15:59
P J,
What's involved for the U.S. to ratify an international treaty that has already been signed by a president? Would it take a 2/3 majority in the Senate to ratify the Rome Statute?
Posted by: Ken Muldrew | April 11, 2007 at 16:52
I imagine that the spouses/family of our leaders are feeling like they could be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if they wanted to say something, how can they? they know far better than us what those people are really capable of.
Which is what I was thinking when I read this.
According to NPR (they had a blurb about the author) the book that Laura Bush chose to read to the children at the Easter Egg thingy was the story of a duck who thought he would like to be president. The duck won the election after a recount, but he found the job much harder than he thought it would be. He decided it wasn't really fun being president and it gave him headaches, so he handed everything over to his VP and went back to his farm.
Posted by: jackie | April 11, 2007 at 18:30
I'm seeing another issue here.
Decades ago, I stepped down from a management position at a certain company. I was supervising 19 drafters, training them, scheduling millions and millions of dollars worth of projects, checking the jobs, etc.. The extremely old-fashioned company wouldn't give me the title or the pay to go with the responsibilities. They replaced me with 2 men, giving one of them the title. He stepped down a few weeks later, and they divided my duties among THREE men, paying all 3 of them more than they had paid me. I quit the company soon after.
This woman will be replaced by a man who gets the title and authority, and probably the money, which goes with the responsibilities. The fact that nobody is willing to step into the job means that they will probably have to divide it up to make it palatable.
FWIW, I don't see how anybody sane would want to take the albatross from Bush's neck. He's "The Deciderer-in-Chief". Why would anybody want to bloody their hands with his wars?
Posted by: hauksdottir | April 11, 2007 at 21:25
P.J.,
I totally agree that we should bring the troops home in as short a time as possible. Even as that is being done, both Bush and Cheney should be impeached and removed from office - except that the Republican true-believers (and Lieberman) in the Senate will save their asses.
In the meantime, as a student of management I have over the years seen a number of badly mismanaged organizations, but never anything on this scale. It is like watching a slow, endless train wreck. There is, of course, the horror that it is happening at all, but for some reason I cannot look away. It just keeps on happening, with (figurative) train car after train car piling up on each other to be crushed and bent by those following it, with no end in sight.
I'm afraid that my comment above is rather in the vein of a statement like "Oh, my God! Look at the strange pretzel THAT set of cars is becoming!" I am from Texas. I knew in 1994 that even for the strange characters thrown up by the Texas Republican Party, Bush was in a class by himself. I am also a pessimist in terms of politics, again perhaps because I have watched Texas politics for so long. I expect Republicans and conservatives to be political disasters, and they don't fail me. But the Bush administration has performed well beyond and below all reasonable and most unreasonable expectations. And they continue to delve the depths in their twisted, sick efforts to remake America in the model they want.
So I try to analyze how they have gone so far off the rails. The alternative would be just to keep saying "Oh, my God, no. Not that too." over and over again.
You know, like the report that came out today that the RNC has 'accidently' mishandled the emails they were processing for Karl Rove and the other top White House aides outside the archivable records of the official White House email. Gee, how sad, an unknown number of the emails have been lost. (AP (via TPM)) I'm sure no one here is surprised that these records have been 'lost.' The only real element of surprise here was in when the report of their loss would be made public.
[And another rail car appears over the hill and smashes into the wreck already on the tracks. The train in this wreck seems quite endless.]
Posted by: Rick B | April 11, 2007 at 21:28