Not in my book. Anyone who wants to play “good soldier” in the face of certain knowledge that he is promoting a cause that directly violates every value he has publicly championed for over a decade deserves more punishment than being allowed to simply resign and go home to write memoirs.
Agreed.
Maybe he could tour the country, making speeches gratis to student groups and the like, explaining what he did, why he should have known in advance that it was wrong, and what the consequences were.
Kinda like what they sometimes have someone convicted on a DUI manslaughter charge do.
Perhaps they would have had better success in recruiting candidates for the job if they hadn’t also been in a rush to hand them the ceremonial sword that goes along with it.
The War Czar is the fall guy, the sucker who will be left holding the bag and blamed for Everything That Has Ogne Wrong, Is going Wrong, or Will Go Wrong.
Funny… I thought the President was the Commander In Cheif of the Armed Forces, and they had a Joint Chiefs of Staff and Generals and Admirals and stuff. Silly Me.
It’s interestsing how despite the strong and vitriolic SOME people were about supporting the war and attacking the opposition, NOBODY has stepped up and offered to do it.
Maybe he should get a time transplant.
Maybe we should. I’d go back to 2000 and make sure Palm Beach County, FL didn’t use a butterfly ballot.
I should probably know better than to try and explain this when it’s clear that everyone in this thread just wants to take pot-shots at Bush, but here goes anyway…
This is a very common management technique. When a CEO has a crisis to manage that involves rallying multiple departments, it’s very common to appoint a “czar” to manage that crisis. Someone whose full time job it is to focus on the crisis. Someone who isn’t going to be pulled away to do anything not related specifically to the crisis. As a former businessman, I suspect that this is where Bush is coming from. Even the SecDef can’t focus full time on the war(s). The idea that this is just a search for a fall guy is pretty facile.
Not at all sure I’d be available. My weeks are gonna be pretty full until early June.
I do, however, have some minions. Would six be enough?
Well, the problem is that it looks like the Captain of the Titanic hunting around for an Iceberg Czar.
Speaking as someone who’s unfamiliar with the rankings/management levels of our military - I would have thought that this position was already filled. Do we really, truly not have anyone who has assumed this position already?
I mean, that would be pretty stupid, right? Wouldn’t it be like a large furniture retailer, in which the web-development team is managed by the CFO (i.e., not a development manager)?
I’m asking this as a serious question.
LilShieste
This may be a common management technique, but it would be a first in U.S. history.
We already have a Constitutionally established office whose occupant “with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies” - it’s called the Presidency.
And we already have an office, not in the Constitution, whose occupant has traditionally been charged with making sure State, Defense, and any other agencies having to do with our foreign policy are on the same page. That would be our National Security Advisor, currently Stephen Hadley.
Maybe they should simply hire a new National Security Advisor, but s/he would have the same problems that Hadley has now - no real authority because the President isn’t giving him any. He doesn’t get to tell Rice or Gates at State and Defense what they’re supposed to be doing - that’s apparently Cheney’s job when he wants it, and nobody’s job when he doesn’t.
There’s already enough boxes in the org chart in the right places, and even if there weren’t, adding one more box won’t cure a dysfunctional Administration.
There are plenty of generals focusing full time on the war (I hope.) The problem is authority, and establishing a lot of new dotted line reporting relationships doesn’t help. I know, I’ve been in such a structure. It causes a tremendous amount of political infighting between the new authority and the old managers who feel their authority has been reduced.
The real problem is that none of the things that might actually help us out of this morass (if that isn’t the null set)are politically acceptable to the Administration. No czar is going to fix that, no more than the ISG did.
Anyhow, it appears that many or all qualified candidates think it is a fall guy job too, and want no part of it.
Fine.
Why now?
No, more of a rearranging the deck chairs Czar.
Yeah, it’s quite an intriguing management problem. I wonder how Marshall and his team managed during WWII without a “Czar” between them and the President. Not enough marketing?
What are subcontracting the presidency now?
Hear hear. I went to the Cabinet War Rooms recently, and went into the chambers that Winston Churchill worked and lived in, surrounded by admirals and generals, sleeping in a cell of a room, in a complex of poky offices packed with clutter and maps and string and ancient bakelite telephones, beneath a city that was being beaten all to shit by the Nazi bombs of the Blitz.
And I thought: what a fucking putz. He could have appointed a “war czar” (what an unfortunate name) instead and gone off to build therapeutic brick walls, eat beef Wellington, and drink himself stupid.
Really, Americans, is there anything that your current administration can’t fuck up? This guy’s worse than Blair, and that’s saying something. Seriously, John Mace, if the CEO admits he can’t do his job, fire his ass. If the Commander in Chief can’t do his job, fire his ass. Or at least, surely, remove the title from the role.
Unfortunately that’s true, as long as you call it dereliction, not delegation.
And that’s fine if the situation actually is a crisis. After four years, though, that term is no longer accurate. It isn’t a crisis, it’s a situation.
And the more important stuff Bush wants to do instead is, well, what?
No, I won’t get into that.
Really? 
Not to mention a straw man.
The current term in business is “outsourcing”.
My take on “as a former businessman” was that John was speaking as a former businessman, not referring to GeeDubya’s adventures in the awl bidness. Such as it were.
In fairness to John Mace now: