Read Fred Kaplan on the Bush administration's fruitless search for a war czar. Turns out that no one actually wants the job, as they neither know how to fix Iraq nor believe Cheney and other administration hardliners will give up enough control to allow the implementation of alternative visions. Which is all to the good.
There's little that's more frustrating in the coverage of the Iraq War than the continual attempts to peg its resuscitation on a charismatic leader. We saw the glowing profiles of Paul Bremer and Jay Garner, we remember the gushing coverage of defense-secretary-come-political-pin-up model Donald Rumsfeld, and in the latest incarnation, we're constantly subjected to media encomiums on the brilliance of General Petraeus.
But even if Petraeus does go to market every morning, he not only doesn't know how to create an enduring civil/political solution in Iraq; it's not his job. And even if a brand new, mega-charismatic war czar was installed, he wouldn't supercede the domestic leaders running this conflict into the ground, nor change the fundamental tensions and ethnic conflicts that are tearing the country apart. The media likes to cover conflicts through people, and so when better people are installed, the coverage gets better, too. But the War in Iraq isn't particularly about people anymore -- at least not American people -- and so cycling through a couple more generals won't do much save futilely keep media hope alive, even as more of our soldiers die.
