This article appeared on page E - 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Jon Carroll

Friday, May 18, 2007

It's amazing that the administration took so long to find a war czar.
You have to wonder why -- in ordinary circumstances, "czar" would be a
great job to have. You'd get your own Cossacks, for instance, and who
among us has not wanted a highly trained band of saber-wielding
horsemen to lay waste the dens of our enemies? Or their family rooms --
wherever they're hiding.

And I'm pretty sure there's pomp involved, and most of us live
pomp-deprived lives. Imagine, 50 trumpeters just to announce your
entrance into the breakfast nook. I'm almost sure precious jewels are
also involved. Plus: New drugs and treatments have really helped with
the whole hemophilia thing.

Probably the "Help Wanted" notice didn't help: "Looking for dynamic,
loyal man or woman to run unpopular regional conflict. Must be willing
to wear a monkey costume while we beat you with sticks. No fatties or
Muslims."

The whole thing was odd to begin with. As I am not the first to point
out, we already have someone whose job description involves running the
war. He's called "the president of the United States." Not only is
George Bush not interested in taking responsibility for the carnage
overseas, but he also can't find anyone among his stalwart band of
cronies to take the fall. He has had to, as they say, reach out. And
when he has reached out, he has touched only thin air.

And yet he keeps prattling on about "victory," which is something that
will happen when a series of undefined "benchmarks" have been achieved
and an as-yet-unidentified version of democracy takes hold in Iraq.
Most of all, we must not "cut and run." That would "send the wrong
message." Killing civilians and displacing families and promoting
corruption on a Saudi-like scale -- that's the right message.

I came across a quote from Hannah Arendt the other day. She was writing
about the American presence in Vietnam, a situation with parallels to
our own dilemmas. She was talking about the obsessive fear of losing
and how any policy had to be framed so that it could not be seen as
failure -- as though, she said, " 'the greatest power on earth' lacked
the inner strength to live with defeat."

And that's it, isn't it? The rest of us live with defeat regularly.
It's familiar enough that we've devised working strategies to cope with
it. It ain't fun, but none of us was issued an "all fun all the time"
card when we were born.

Generals know defeat; that's why there's a bugle call for "Retreat." At
the battle of Barren Hill during the Revolution, the Marquis de
Lafayette was praised by Washington for his deft retreat. He saved his
troops, and he protected Valley Forge. A deft retreat in Iraq would
also save our troops and protect our nation. If there's a worldwide war
on terror, as the president says there is, then Iraq is just one
battle, a badly chosen battle fought with badly chosen tactics. So,
retreat. The war goes on. No shame.

The shame lies in staying. The shame lies in continuing to participate
in what is now obviously a civil war. The shame lies in leaving
increasingly brutalized and angry soldiers on a distant battlefield to
fight a bewildering war. The shame lies in continuing hostilities only
because the policymakers have not learned how to say "oops."

So good luck to you, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. Maybe you can be the
much-needed Oops Czar.

More stupidity: Modern life being what it is, a lot of us have worked
in the same office as our significant others. Sometimes the situations
can be muddled, but one rule is clear: There has to be some sort of
bureaucratic firewall between the people involved. If one person gets
reassigned, the other person should have nothing to do with any of the
terms and conditions of the reassignment. Duh.

So Paul Wolfowitz gets appointed as president of the World Bank. His
girlfriend works there. Since he's the capo di tutti capi, it is
determined that, no matter what safeguards are in place, Wolfowitz's
girlfriend, Shaha Riza, is going to have to change jobs.

So what are the choices? (a) Wolfowitz declines the job out of great
love for his sweetie, or (b) Riza accepts reassignment quietly, because
she cares about the World Bank, or (c) Riza seeks employment elsewhere.
She speaks five languages and has a CV as long as Manute Bol's arm, so
she'll land on her feet. We're all adults here.

Here's what should not happen: Wolfowitz should not get involved in the
details of her employment. Riza should not demand that he do so. All
parties should seek transparency because what is going on is merely an
inevitable consequence of modern life. But Wolfowitz instead maneuvered
and wheedled and stormed and generally distracted everyone from, you
know, giving loans to poor countries. He negotiated a sweetheart deal
for his sweetheart. When caught, he resorted to legal arguments that
had a definite "that depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" flavor to
them. What a maroon.
Within my memory, we've had a baseball czar, a housing czar, a poverty
czar and Mike Fratello, the czar of the Telestrater.

Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day,
and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well it's
jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle

This article appeared on page E - 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Jon Carroll

Friday, May 18, 2007