Even Tony Snow can’t explain the ‘war czar’

The White House has finally found its “war czar” — Bush reportedly offered Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute the job, which Lute accepted. As a matter of policy, it’s not at all clear what the “czar” is going to do — or even be able to do — especially given that Lute appears to disagree with the policy he’s going to help oversee.

But even if we put all of that aside, it’s clear the Bush gang hasn’t thought through the politics of this little endeavor. From the moment this search for a war czar was leaked, this has been an embarrassment for the White House. It reinforces the perception that the president and his team are hopelessly incompetent, indicates that the current leadership is inept, and suggests that the administration believes one more layer of upper-management is what stands between them and success.

What’s more, it leads to questions the White House simply can’t answer.

A reporter asked White House press secretary Tony Snow today why it has “taken so long to come up with someone” of Lute’s “seniority and stature.”

The truthful answer, of course, is that at least five other generals with more seniority and more stature turned down the job before the White House offered it to Lute.

But that’s not the answer Snow gave today. What Snow said is this:

“I don’t know. I mean, I think what happened is — again, as you’re taking a review, it became clear to us that this — as you develop — as you move into a new phase of the war, keep in mind we are still in the process of deploying people in this ‘new way forward,’ as the president called it. And therefore it seems proper at a time like this also to task somebody with the job of keeping an eye on all the different players who are involved in it.

This, of course, led to an obvious follow-up: “Do you think this is a new need and that you did not need someone to do this for the previous four years?” Snow said, “I’m not going to try to — I don’t know. It’s — I don’t have an answer for you.”

What a surprise.

Look, let’s not forget the context here. News broke about the search for a war czar five weeks ago. The White House saw these questions coming from a mile away and had ample time to come up with a coherent explanation.

But pressed on basic points — why bring in a war czar now, what took so long to find someone — the White House is completely stumped. They simply have no idea how to explain this.

Usually the vaunted White House Communications Office can come up with something better than, “I don’t have an answer for you.”

I suppose I should feel some sympathy for Snow on these questions. If he says, “Yes, the need for a war czar is now high,” he’s effectively conceding that the wars are going badly and getting worse. If he says, “No, the need for a czar is the same as it’s always been,” he’s effectively conceding that the White House needed someone to tackle this job more than four years ago, but they didn’t get around to it. So, we’re left with, “I don’t know.”

This is a cringe-worthy embarrassment for the entire administration. This isn’t to pick on Snow, per se, but rather to marvel at the breathtaking incompetence of this whole endeavor.

Via TP, Iraq veteran and national security analyst Phillip Carter writes, “How broken is the U.S. national security apparatus that we need a ‘czar’ to run it? Is the NSC that f***ed up that it needs a 3-star with some juice in the Pentagon to make things work? (This is a rhetorical question; the only possible answer is yes.) Or are the agencies that stubborn? (Again, yes.) … Could it be that we have the greatest military in the world, capped by the most ineffective and bloated bureaucracy ever created?”

I think we know the answer to that one.