Further Evidence Of Bush's Incompetence

Further testimony to the failures of this administration to conduct the war in Iraq competently comes from Rich Lowry in the National Review Online.

Bush has been at the mercy of events in Iraq. Perhaps that’s forgivable. Even Abraham Lincoln famously confessed, “Events have controlled me.” What’s less understandable is being controlled by other people’s advice. Bush has been presiding over the Iraq War for three years, and he really has no better ideas than might bubble up from his national-security council or from an Iraq Study Group including the likes of Sandra Day O’Connor and Vernon Jordan about how to prosecute the war?

Bush's detached management style, avoiding micromanaging at all costs, has let the war be run by Rumsfeld, Chenney and precious few others. He suffers from another comparison with Lincoln in Lowry's piece:

Bush simply has failed to run his war. Historian Eliot Cohen describes how, in contrast, the best American wartime president conducted himself: “Lincoln had not merely to select his generals, but to educate, train and guide them. To this end he believed that he had to master the details of war, from the technology to the organization and movement of armies, if only to enable himself to make informed judgments about general officers.”

Bush has taken the opposite approach and — for all his swagger and protectiveness of executive prerogatives — is becoming a disturbing study in lassitude in the executive branch.