How Screwed Is This Guy?
Well, President Bush had to have his "war czar" Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan Policy and Implementation, and he's finally made his decision - because he's a decider, a commander's guy. You may remember that the former point of contact for running the White House's strategy on Iraq/Afghanistan was a young woman working for Stephen Hadley in the National Security Council. So who do they get to replace this person, who's supposed to be coordinating defense and state issues against White House policy?
Meet Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, currently the J3 Operations Deputy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yeah, not a busy guy at all. Not as if he wasn't fully employed monitoring current military operations across the globe and about a dozen other missions.
The current global strategic landscape is characterized by regional conflicts, the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, emerging yet fragile and sometimes failing democracies, the transshipment of illicit drugs and the constant thre at of terrorism. These threats place heavy demands on U.S. military forces that are compounded by routine calls for humanitarian military support. The challenges of such a complex environment require the coordinated, selective use of the unique capabilit ies of the U.S. armed forces.
J-3 is the hub of this many-spoked wheel, responsible for synchronizing and monitoring worldwide military operations and activities in support of a national military strategy emphasizing flexible and selective engagement.
To that end, J-3 assists the chairman in carrying out his responsibilities as the principal military adviser to the National Command Authority by developing and providing guidance to the combatant commands and by relaying communications between the au thority and the unified commanders regarding current operations and plans. J-3 is involved in every aspect of the planning, deployment, execution and redeployment of U.S. strategic and conventional forces in response to worldwide crises.
So he's not really busy with anything else at the moment. What is really strange is how (as others have noted) there really is no lack of civilian guidance on strategy and policy for military operations in the Middle East, including Hadley, Rice, Gates, let alone the CENTCOM commander and the commander for military efforts in the two nations in question. I have this urge to do a Jon Stewart imitation of George Bush - "Yeah, that's what's so great about the military guys. I'm the commander in chief, so I can decide to order them to do anything I want! Dance, monkey boy!"
Honestly, why does this just smell like a set-up for the Army leadership to fail?
I really wonder about why he'd agree to this. Isn't it almost certainly the end of his career? I can't help but picturing the swearing-in as some equivalent to an old Japanese ship-side kamikaze ceremony.
Posted by: MB | 16 May 2007 at 09:37 AM
Ranger predicts a new 4 star billet. It's an easy way to buy loyalty. rangeragainstwar
Posted by: jim hruska | 16 May 2007 at 07:47 PM
I heard he was the 4th choice, with the first 3 turning him down flat. "Scapegoat" comes to mind.
Posted by: AFSister | 17 May 2007 at 03:30 PM
He's at least the 6th choice:
Posted by: morinao | 17 May 2007 at 06:41 PM
This war czar is a terrible and stupid idea. I was pretty sure there were already some people in charge of all this. Combatant Commanders? Joint Chiefs? Commander MNF-I? US and NATO Commanders in Afghanistan? What is this guy supposed to do...the President already has a bunch of advisors called his Cabinet, and SecDef among them. Adding more layers of bureaucracy, yeah, that'll help. One thing's for sure, this can't end well for Lute. Yeah, he's pretty screwed. As all the retired generals turned it down it looks like Bush turned to somebody who could either take it or retire. Should have retired!
Posted by: BGG | 17 May 2007 at 07:45 PM