The missing player: a 'czar' to manage the Iraq war
The White House has envisioned a coordinator role for the multibillion-dollar, multiagency effort, but is having trouble finding a willing candidate.
from the April 26, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"These are people who see the problem and the need to fix it with some major changes. But they also see that nothing has really changed in the Bush-Cheney approach to Iraq policy, so they decline the offer," says Colonel Lang.
One candidate, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Sheehan, said in a column in the Post last week that he took his name off the candidates' list after concluding "that the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically."
He was more blunt in a Post interview, saying that administration officials "don't know" where they are going, and concluding that a hawkish mind-set dominates policy.
'Drift in administration policy'
Mr. Diamond, who wrote "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq" after his Iraq experience, calls the proposal for a high-level policy coordinator "an excellent idea." But, he adds, "The fact they can't persuade someone of the appropriate stature to take on this role is a devastating commentary on the drift in administration policy."
On the other hand, Mr. Phillips of the Heritage Foundation says the difficulty in finding someone to take the job has less to do with administration policy than with the nature of the new position. "They do know where they want to go, but they all know it's going to be difficult getting there," he says. The new job would be a "thankless" task, he adds, because it would entail coordinating policy but little role in formulating it.
Despite the insistence of military leaders including General Petraeus that the battle for Iraq is now largely political, many experts say US policy continues to be dominated by a military response.
Lang says his work has shown him that "as soon as you start saying this requires a human-based solution," it "turns off" most of mid-level people in charge of operations on the ground. They want to believe there's a "technological response" for everything – like walls to divide sectarian enclaves, he says – while any use of anthropology is the "sissy" thing to do.
"They've got it all backwards, and there's little indication after four years that anyone in the administration really sees that," says Mr. Dunbar, now a professor of international relations at Boston University. "This is a political struggle, but the political dimension continues to be shortchanged."
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