WHY A “WAR CZAR”?

For more than a month, President Bush has been trying to find someone who can run the four-year-old wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror. He wants someone to take charge and report to him personally every day. Appointing a war czar is a bad idea. Whether so intended or not, it would appear like finding a scapegoat for what looks like an impending U.S. disaster.

The Associated Press reports that about six in 10 Americans now say the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq and almost as many think it’s a hopeless cause.

The fact that at least four retired four-star generals have turned the position down ought to tell the president something. One of them, retired Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan, told The Washington Post, “Rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks,'” He added: “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going.”

Normally, the task should go to Stephen J. Hadley, the quiet, little-known official who holds the job of national security adviser, where Henry Kissinger once sat with such authority and publicity. But Mr. Hadley is leading the search for what he likes to call an “implementation and execution manager” but everyone else calls a “war czar.”

Mr. Hadley supervised the review that led to the current “surge” that is putting 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq. But he also has the rest of the world on his plate. He told The Washington Post he needed someone “up close to the president” with “a lot of stature within the government who can make things happen.”

Mr. Hadley’s shop has its own problems. Many of his top people are leaving for other jobs rather than stick with a lame-duck administration in what many see as an unwinnable war.

Czars have been tried before, with mixed results. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attack, Mr. Bush appointed Tom Ridge as domestic security czar, but he proved unable to coordinate all the various law enforcement agencies. The Bush solution was to lump them all together in the Department of Homeland Security, which flunked its first big test in Hurricane Katrina.

Historically, U.S. presidents have personally run our wars. As the Boston Herald put it, Franklin D. Roosevelt directed the country’s effort in World War II without even a national security adviser. Abraham Lincoln ran the Civil War without one. And, although Lyndon B. Johnson had one, he ran the Vietnam War from the Oval Office but micromanaged it badly.

President Bush seems to have found it hard to knock heads together and fire people when necessary – if that is what it will take to bring the Iraq war to a satisfactory close.

Rather than new oversight and coordination, the wars need a new direction.