WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- President Bush's appointment of a "war czar" to coordinate the Iraq and Afghan wars is unlikely to succeed, a U.S. expert said Wednesday.
"Every past 'czardom' since World War II -- and during the Franklin Roosevelt era for that matter -- largely failed," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a statement Wednesday.
"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.
"The most critical single priority for change in Washington is to get qualified civilians and aid personnel into the field and support the military," he said. "Departments and agencies have done a good job of resisting or delaying action in the past, and cannot force their best people to go to Iraq, even if they were willing to lose them.
"The situation is made far worse by a basic lack of core competence and integrity at the top level of key agencies in Washington. USAID and the Corps of Engineers have consistently failed to show they can develop competent plans and programs and find the personnel to implement them in the field. ... They systematically report failure as success," Cordesman said.
The White House hopes that Gen. Douglas Lute, the current chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be able to bring a coherent and more effective strategic direction and coordination to the waging of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.
