George Bush has finally found a military officer sufficiently hungry for advancement to become his “war czar.” After five more senior generals turned him down, Bush today appointed Lieutenant General Douglas Lute to coordinate the two failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new czar, who is not even a full four-star general, will have all the trappings of responsibility but little authority, since Bush has promised to press on to victory, whatever the cost. Bush is czar of czars, and Lute will follow his whimsical orders until the president decides it’s time to unveil another new “strategy.” Then he’ll fire Lute, who will have come to represent the old, failed “strategy.” Full story »

Everyone’s looking for someone to blame for Iraq. Republican warmakers are especially desperate: their latest scapegoat is those bad Iraqis and the incompetent government they foolishly chose after George Bush granted them the wonders of democracy. Ungrateful wretches! We may have to give up on them!

The odious Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, trotted out this new line yesterday on CNN:

The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment.…

So far, they’ve not been able to do anything they promised on the political side. The oil revenue bill, not passed. Local elections, not passed. The de-Baathification effort, not passed. It’s a growing frustration. Full story »

If the warring clans of Northern Ireland can make peace and share power, if Serbians and Bosnians are no longer at each other’s throats, if the French and the Germans are partners in something they call a Union, why not Iraq?

Don’t talk to me of age-old conflicts, of blood vendettas, of irreconcilable religious differences. When enemies conclude that peace is more important than history, that life is more important than unilateral power, they bury their differences and create a new reality. There they are, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, grinning from ear to ear at the previously unthinkable prospect of belonging to the same government.

What would it take for that scene to happen in Baghdad? US troops must leave, without a doubt. Years must pass, almost certainly. Perhaps some non-American force must enter Iraq and begin to establish security—conceivably under UN auspices. But finally, the combatants must simply decide the carnage is not worth it. That’s when the process will really begin. Smiles all round.

[Cross-posted at Rubicon]

All statistics are created equal, but some are more equal than others. Nevertheless, whatever numbers you consult, the rapid erosion in Republican power is undeniable.

Take that Newsweek poll to the right. Now that George Bush’s approval rating has fallen to 28 percent, we may calculate, as Mark Kleiman does, that the Bush swoon has been at a steady rate of 12 percent per year ever since we all went nuts with fear in September 2001. There was one significant uptick when Iraq was invaded, but then the drip-drip-drip of recognition resumed, as an average of one percent of voters each month saw the truth. Extrapolating from that trend, we may confidently predict that by January 2009 only 8 percent of Americans will approve of the outgoing president. Full story »

Dan Bartlett is counselor to George Bush. George Tenet was CIA director during the preparations for the Iraq War.

In his new book, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet writes, “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.” In response, Bartlett says, “The president did wrestle with those very serious questions.”

The counselor is being parsimonious with the truth. Or, in the more direct words of James Fallows:

I say plainly: that is a lie. Full story »

Sam’s wonderfully comprehensive list of the Bush administration’s scandals and disasters makes one wonder where this crew got their ideas. The mind boggles. How could the Republicans be so wretched at governing? Governing was something they wanted to do, wasn’t it? It’s not easy to understand their motivating principles.

We could simply dismiss them all as corrupt thieves, of course, but that’s unfair to the idealistic if misguided neocons who flocked to Bush’s side. They had principles, didn’t they? They were not in it merely for the main chance.

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Karl Rove is a bit testy these days, as Sheryl Crow and Laurie David discovered on Saturday. They ran into him at the White House press dinner and tried to initiate a friendly little conversation about global warming. It was not a success. When Rove tried to escape, Crow touched his arm to continue the discussion.

Rove: “Don’t touch me.”

Crow: “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us.”

Rove: “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.”

Crow: “We are the American people.”

And then he skittered away. Full story »

National Poetry Month is slipping away, and no poetry yet here at Scholars & Rogues. So here’s a choice bit by George Gordon, Lord Byron, our banner rogue. [Actually, I'm reminded that there's more good poetry here and here.]

The background: Byron’s publisher, John Murray, had received an execrable play by Dr J. W. Polidori, a would-be author (who today would have been able to circumvent critical publishers by creating his own blog). Murray asked Byron for assistance in letting Polidori down softly. Byron had a more acerbic idea. Full story »

The murders at Virginia Tech are sad beyond words. The hostile outsider, the missed chances to stop him, the readily available weapons, the innocent victims gunned down methodically in cold blood. We all mourn the horrific loss and try to think of ways to keep it from ever happening again.

In Iraq, many people die every day, far more (day after day) than died on Monday in Blacksburg.

When George Bush spoke in Blacksburg on Tuesday, he allowed us a rare glimpse of his human feelings. He almost sounded as though he meant the words he said, and that’s unusual lately, as he retreats more and more into an impermeable bubble.

When Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam yesterday, Bush bristled as though he had never heard the comparison. And he promised that nothing would change.

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An angry person with a knife can kill one or two people. An angry person with a gun can kill 32.

The carnage in Blacksburg yesterday was avoidable. Guns are dangerous technology, and if they were carefully regulated in Virginia—as other dangerous technologies are regulated—the death toll would likely have been one or two, not 32. But we Americans, in the course of our violent history, have developed an obsession with guns, transforming them into hollow symbols of political freedom and personal independence. We are taught in school that flintlock-wielding farmers won the Revolutionary War, that the six-shooter cleared the West of Indians and rustlers and all manner of other troublesome varmints, and that the only thing standing between us and a totalitarian government today is a brace of guns in every citizen’s closet.

Full story »