Retired general: Why I don’t want to run the Iraq War

KHALED AL FIQI/AFP/Getty Images

By far, the most interesting item I’ve read today is General John J. Sheehan’s account of why he was among three retired generals who turned down the Bush administration’s offer to supervise the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a “War Czar” in the White House. In National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley’s telling, this War Czar is intended to cut through Washington’s red tape like a hot knife through butter.

But according to Sheehan, the real problem isn’t bureaucracy, but that the Bush administration has “no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region.” Ouch. In particular, Sheehan complains, “the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically.” And so the retired general turned down the job.

Sheehan is cagey about what he means exactly by “a broader view of the region,” but it’s clear that he has no truck with potentially destabilizing calls to democratize the Arab world. While it certainly looks to most Middle East watchers as if the Bush administration has abandoned its push on that front, Sheehan’s conversations with administration officials convinced him otherwise. Color me unconvinced. All the evidence suggests that it’s springtime for cooperative autocrats in the region once again. Perhaps the Bush administration just isn’t ready to admit that to itself quite yet.