Martin Sieff: We have a war czar. He's called the commander in chief.
The Bush administration looked for a 'war czar.' Instead it got a 'junior war coordinator.' But according to American history and to the U.S. Constitution, who should be 'war czar' anyway?
The whole concept of a 'czar' implies a supreme boss. The term, after all, described the all-powerful, authoritarian emperor of all the Russias for more than 400 years. At times of crisis, especially during wars, over the past century, the call has repeatedly gone up for 'czars' to be given sweeping authority over key areas of American war-making, manufacturing or other areas of American life to address some crucial crisis of the moment.
However, as Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank, noted in a statement Wednesday, 'Every past `czardom` since World War II -- and during the Franklin Roosevelt era for that matter -- largely failed.'
'Departments and agencies found too many ways to resist. Even when they were pushed into action, they often dumped their lower-grade personnel (or) coordinated action to death,' Cordesman said.
In fact, the Constitution of the United States is quite explicit about who the 'war czar' of the nation should be whenever the United States has to wage war: That czar is clearly defined in the Constitution as the president of the United States. For it is he who is expressly designated as not only the chief executive and head of state, but also as the commander in chief of the armed forces.
Different presidents have interpreted the nature of the commander in chief`s role very differently throughout U.S. history. The second president, John Adams, was the first to separate, in practice, the positions of commander in chief and president. He brought back the revered first president and author of victory in the American War of Independence, George Washington, to raise a new army at a time of heightened international tensions in the late 1790s. But Washington then died, and his power passed to the ambitious, brilliant but unstable Alexander Hamilton. There were fears that Hamilton might put together an army to topple Adams and destroy the infant Republic.
That fear passed. In the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, left no one in any doubt that he was the 'war czar.' He watched daily operations in the field, especially of the Army of Northern Virginia, with an obsessively close eye. He personally selected and fired generals, and his choice of them was for years remarkably bad....
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The whole concept of a 'czar' implies a supreme boss. The term, after all, described the all-powerful, authoritarian emperor of all the Russias for more than 400 years. At times of crisis, especially during wars, over the past century, the call has repeatedly gone up for 'czars' to be given sweeping authority over key areas of American war-making, manufacturing or other areas of American life to address some crucial crisis of the moment.
However, as Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank, noted in a statement Wednesday, 'Every past `czardom` since World War II -- and during the Franklin Roosevelt era for that matter -- largely failed.'
'Departments and agencies found too many ways to resist. Even when they were pushed into action, they often dumped their lower-grade personnel (or) coordinated action to death,' Cordesman said.
In fact, the Constitution of the United States is quite explicit about who the 'war czar' of the nation should be whenever the United States has to wage war: That czar is clearly defined in the Constitution as the president of the United States. For it is he who is expressly designated as not only the chief executive and head of state, but also as the commander in chief of the armed forces.
Different presidents have interpreted the nature of the commander in chief`s role very differently throughout U.S. history. The second president, John Adams, was the first to separate, in practice, the positions of commander in chief and president. He brought back the revered first president and author of victory in the American War of Independence, George Washington, to raise a new army at a time of heightened international tensions in the late 1790s. But Washington then died, and his power passed to the ambitious, brilliant but unstable Alexander Hamilton. There were fears that Hamilton might put together an army to topple Adams and destroy the infant Republic.
That fear passed. In the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, left no one in any doubt that he was the 'war czar.' He watched daily operations in the field, especially of the Army of Northern Virginia, with an obsessively close eye. He personally selected and fired generals, and his choice of them was for years remarkably bad....