The common reaction to the news of the attempted creation of something called, colloquially at least, “War Czar” is that Bush (“The Decider”, mind you) is attempting to create a new Fall Guy for his failures abroad.  Beyond that, we have the typical commentary for any “moving the boxes around” bureaucratic re-organization or creation — isn’t this the job of (list of officials in charge of war planning and operations), and if not what the hell are they doing?

Granted the seeming insignificance of the job duties, but I don’t understand why nobody hasn’t taken him up on the offer of “War Czar”.  It looks like a pretty good position for an industrious aspiring dictator to sidle in from to seize control.  I imagine Smedley Butler being offered such a duty.  Stalin and Saddam Hussein came in through bureaucratic manuevers.  Hitler has a relatively powerless figure-head position that he just killed the chancellor from his position as to seize control.  Heck!  Lyndon LaRouche’s designs have always been to seize control through a newly created cabinet position to oversee some emergency or other — AIDS or Asian Financial Crisis — where he levels control of all government into his hands (and quarantaine certain undesirables) because that’s necessary to solve that crisis.

War Czar as a crisis management tool is a good dictatorial stepping ground.  Or maybe I’m paranoid.  Better to accept War Czar as meaningless Fall Guy position that it is and acknowledge that the chances of a dictatorial takeover from that position are negligible.  Still… who’s controlling the military all of a sudden and what the hell is a “War Czar” supposed to do?

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