President Bush’s top national security adviser said Thursday that there is an urgent need to name a high-powered White House official to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s something I would like to have done yesterday and if yesterday wasn’t available, the day before,” National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters during a briefing at the White House. A day earlier, the White House had said the idea for a so-called war czar was still in its infancy. ~MSNBC

This continued preoccupation with finding the war ‘czar'(which I will insist on spelling tsar in all cases from now on) is hard to understand.  What, exactly, will the tsar be doing that the old War President himself is actually unable to do?  Of course, this would normally be the time for remarks about someone’s incompetence, intelligence (or lack thereof) and often willful resistance to acknowledging changing circumstances, but let’s step away from the usual Bush-mocking for a moment and think about this in another way. 

Structurally, the war tsar would be doing what the President theoretically already does.  The war tsar would oversee both theatres, Iraq and Afghanistan, and would somehow “break through” the bureaucratic barriers and entrenched policy positions that are supposedly hamstrining both efforts, right?  In terms of government structure, the President is the only person in the modern executive branch who has the authority and resources to even attempt to do this.  Hiring some flunkey, whose main function will be to serve as a P.R. man and eventual fall guy when things get worse, will not make that flunkey into a substitute President, were such a thing even desirable.  

The National Security Advisor, again theoretically, is supposed to be the President’s point man in helping him to manage the bureaucrats and make sure that policy is carried out effectively.  Since NSAs of the Rice-Hadley school seem incapable of performing even their most basic functions, we might want to start thinking about whether there needs to be some reorganisation of the National Security Council to remedy what appears to be a real weakness in the system: its reliance on appointing reasonably competent people to the position of NSA.  We cannot expect that future Presidents will not choose underqualified loyalists for key positions–in fact, we have to assume that this will happen–so there would need to be some stronger institutional safeguards to make sure that the execution of foreign and military policies does not hinge on whether the NSA actually knows how to do his job.  (Better still, we might dismantle large portions of the national security state and the empire and make the NSA job a good deal more manageable even for the Rices and Hadleys of the world.) 

Come to think of it, where are the presidential cultists and unitary executive theorists now?  Shouldn’t they be the ones most disgusted and horrified at the thought of Mr. Bush delegating all those supposedly “inherent powers” that he allegedly possesses as “Commander-in-Chief”?  Does the war tsar participate in the “inherent powers” of the Commander-in-Chief through some kind of Neoplatonic experience of emanation and return through the various hierarchies of bureaucratic being, or will the President alone retain the mystical power to annul the Constitution on a whim?  Besides, we don’t want to fight a war by committee, do we?

One basic reason why a war tsar is an unwelcome addition to this sorry administration is a simple one of accountability.  Mr. Bush has managed to use his subordinates as shields to absorb much of the criticism that ought to be aimed mainly at him.  He does not deserve to have yet another shield to protect what remains of his reputation.

The story concludes:

Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon defense strategist, expressed skepticism about the new post, saying it sounded like a “bureaucratic fix” to a larger problem. “I think a war czar is a desperate attempt to inject new energy into what is a vacuum of leadership,” she said in a conference call with reporters.

Quite.