ABC News reports that President Bush has chosen the Pentagon’s director of operations, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, to be the new War Czar.

In the newly created position of assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation, Lute would have the power to direct the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved in the two conflicts.

Lute would report directly to the president and to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

I feel sorry for the guy. This will likely screw up the rest of his career.

Lute is a widely respected officer, but is by no means a high-profile player in Washington. Before assuming his position at the Pentagon, he was the director of operations for Central Command while Gen. John Abizaid was the commander.

A West Point graduate who holds a masters degree from Harvard University, Lute also fought in Operation Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War.

Atrios explains why this is significant:

There will eventually be confirmation hearings. There will be pressure on Democrats to confirm him. Then Tony Snow and the president will say the Democrats have no right to criticize the plans because they just voted to confirm the guy who will implement them.

In other words, reboot the F.U. machine.

I’ve just begun to read Geoffrey Perret’s new book Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to America’s Future. I’ve not gotten far enough into it to endorse the whole book, but I must say I loved the introduction. After encountering the genius who said “The Islamo Fascists have failed to bring on the quagmire” in Iraq yesterday, I feel compelled to quote a chunk of it (emphasis added).

Three wars — Korea, Vietnam, Iraq — all launched at moments of national crisis, all of them unwinnable.

They were unwinnable for many reasons, but the place to begin is this: in North Korea, North Vietnam, and Iraq, the enemy always held the strategic initiative. The most powerful country in the world found itself dancing to its enemy’s tune, not its own. At times it was possible to seize the tactical initiative — crossing the 38th parallel, launching an aerial blitz against North Vietnam, flattening Fallujah. But the loss of the strategic initiative rules out the path to victory implicit in the military paradigm; namely, that one country imposes its will on another. Instead, the country that has chosen to wage the war finds itself wrestling with an insoluble challenge: a political victory requires a military victory first, because there can be no effective government without security and stability. But a military victory requires a political victory first, in the form of a government strong enough to establish a state monopoly on violence.

That’s precisely where we are in Iraq, and that’s precisely what a quagmire looks like.

As commanders in chief seek military success, only to fail, then lurch off in search of political gains and fail again, time is used up. And time is not neutral. It strengthens the enemy. Knowing that, the enemy is never in a hurry. The longer the struggle lasts, the better their prospects. …

… These modern wars are managed rather than won. It is possible to lose them, yet impossible to achieve victory. …

… in Iraq, the United States is facing an insurgency that has widespread popular support. More than 250,000 young Iraqi males turn eighteen each year, and beyond Iraq, there is an aggrieved Sunni community of more than a billion people. The Iraq insurgency will never run short of manpower, money, or munitions; nor will terrorist groups across the Middle East.

There is a limit to the number of people that the United States can kill, capture, or incapacitate. In Iraq, it can kill tens of thousands, possibly more than a hundred thousand, but not millions, not in the name of liberation, not in the presence of television and camcorders. There are limits to what even a superpower can do without turning the entire civilized world against it. [Geoffrey Perret, Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power into a Threat to America’s Future (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), pp. 5-7]

I go on a rant from time to time — most recently here and here — about how our invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden’s fondest hopes, and how the longer we stay there the better for al Qaeda. I like the way Perret puts it — Time is not neutral. Time is on the enemy’s side. The more time they get, the stronger they will be.

The ever oblivious Max Boot argues that we must give “give Gen. Petraeus and his troops more time–at least another year–to try to change the dynamics on the ground.”

The reality is that Iraq has been experiencing a fairly low-grade civil war until now–one that has been contained by the presence of U.S. troops. While the troop surge in Baghdad hasn’t yet decreased the overall level of violence–suicide bombings, which are notoriously difficult to stop, remain undiminished–the presence of more Iraqi and American troops on the streets has managed to reduce sectarian murders by two-thirds since January. Sunni fanatics are still able to set off their car bombs, but Shiite fanatics are not able to respond in kind by torturing to death 100 Sunnis a night. In other words, the surge is containing the results of the suicide bombings, slowing the cycle of violence that last year was leading Iraq to the brink of the abyss.

The real reality is that Shiites are playing us, according to Peter Harling and Joost Hiltermann, writing for Le Monde diplomatique:

Baghdad’s relative calm is mostly the result of the ability of violent players to preempt the plan and neutralise much of its sting. This is true of both Sunni insurgent groups and Shia militias tied to the government. Followers of Shia militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr have gone to ground, waiting for the storm to pass and allowing US forces to go after Sunni insurgents.

Sunni insurgents responded in two ways, depending on their affiliation. Key commanders of patriotic groups (as they call themselves) withdrew from Baghdad with their heavy weaponry in anticipation of large-scale cordon-and-search operations. They left nominal forces in place to avoid giving the impression of retreat and defeat. Residents in some Sunni districts report that insurgents still roam at will, untouched (indeed, unnoticed) by US military operations, issuing permits and claiming protection money. They melt away when their district’s turn comes.

Even as the Bush administration unveiled its plan, jihadists linked to al-Qaida in Iraq opted to intensify their trademark suicide attacks, announcing a martyr campaign to create a bloodbath in Baghdad. True to its word, the group took credit in February for the largest number of car bombs ever, and the pace has hardly slackened since. Part of al-Qaida’s plan, besides foiling any US sense of progress, is to draw the Sadrist Mahdi Army out into the open and expose it to US attack. Both sides would like US forces to do their dirty work for them.

(Joost Hiltermann is deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group in Amman; Peter Harling is the organization’s senior analyst based in Damascus.)

They’re playing us, people. The Shia are playing us to kill Sunnis for them, and al Qaeda is playing us to kill Shia for them, and the Sunni are probably playing us too. And here is the great unvarnished idiot Max Boot explaining to us that what’s going on in Iraq is “just a low-grade civil war,” and if we keep slogging away we’ll win eventually.

But time is not neutral. Time is on the enemy’s side. The more time we give them, the stronger they are and the weaker we are. And yes, this is a quagmire. In fact, it’s going beyond quagmire stage and turning into a sinkhole.

J. Bacevich is a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran with 23 years of service in the U.S. Army. Today he is a professor of international relations at Boston University. Bachevich saw from the beginning that the Iraq War is a sham and an atrocity, and he has spoken out against it in books and newspaper articles. I’ve quoted him from time to time.

Andrew J. Bacevich’s son was killed in Iraq.

There must be nothing sadder than a parent who must drag himself through the long years of the rest of his life after the death of a child. As of this morning we have lost 3,401 of our children. Fifty U.S. troops have died this month. This is an ocean of sorrow.

Jules Crittendon writes,

A beloved son who followed in his father’s footsteps and gave his life for his country, as his father had put himself in harm’s way in another war four decades before. So Andy Bacevich begins the terrible journey of a father who has to bury a son, and decide for himself what it means.

And Steve Clemons writes,

Now we must add to the count of this tragic conflict another American son — and of course, more Iraqi sons and daughters and American daughters.

I had the pleasure of meeting Andy Bacevich at the home of former Congressman Dave McCurdy this last holiday season. We spoke for a bit about the Iraq war as well as the absence of American strategy and dearth of strategists in government today. I had no idea his son was serving until now.

But this young man did serve his nation — but his death is so incredibly tragic, like the others — but his even more because his well-respected father has been working hard to end this horrible, self-damaging crusade. It’s incredibly sad.

To answer my own question above. Andrew Bacevich’s son’s life was precious — and his life and his untimely death matter greatly for just waking up and realizing we are achieving nothing in Iraq today and that responsibility must be borne by the perpetrators of this mess.

My sincere condolences to the Bacevich family.

Whereupon the rightie blogger — I started to call him the “worthless scumbag rightie blogger,” but I’ll try to contain myself — of Riehl World View blasted Steve C. for using the death of 1st Lt Bacevich for “anti-war propaganda.” Referring to “Andrew Bacevich’s son’s life was precious” the rightie wrote, “So precious, apparently, Clemmons simply couldn’t wait to dash that off, I guess. What a disgrace.”

Disgrace, yes, but the disgrace is not Clemmons’s. Riehl is one of the Bush Bitter Enders who maintains the fiction that to criticize the war is denouncing the troops. But it is no disgrace to be honest, and to say frankly that when our children die in Iraq their lives were wasted. The disgrace would be to hold our tongues and acquiesce to the obscene fiction that killed them. The disgrace is to be one of the brain-dead lackeys who supports Bush’s war.

Josh Marshall speaks to this —

There’s a shameless game of moral chicken that war supporters play in which they dare opponents to say the war is a mistake because, they claim, saying so would then dishonor all the men and women who’ve already died in its cause. So to spare the dead that ignominy, kill many more of our children. All to avoid swallowing that bitter pill. But I think there’s a converse to Bates’ argument that I agree with, though I disagree with his claim about the moral reckoning. And that is that the service and the sacrifice wash the death clean of the folly of the leaders who ordered them into the battle.

Josh refers to the scene in Henry V that takes place the night before the Battle of Agincourt, when Harry meets some common soldiers and tells them that he is only “a gentleman of a company.” Ol’ Bill Shakespeare wrote this bit of dialog:

BATES

Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

George W. Bush and all who support his war have betrayed our country and the troops. And when a beloved son dies, they expect us to accept his murder and keep silent about the crime. They think it is a “disgrace” when we give voice to our outrage and shake our fists at the criminals.

If I believed in hell, I’d want a special place set aside there for all good Bushies.

By invading Iraq the Bushies carried out Osama bin Laden’s plans so perfectly you’d think al Qaeda had taken over the Department of Defense. Now al Qaeda’s number 2 guy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is repeating Republican talking points, according to Brian Ross at ABC News.

In a new video posted today on the Internet, al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, mocks the bill passed by Congress setting a timetable for the pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq.

“This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap,” Zawahiri says in answer to a question posed to him an interviewer.

Continuing in the same tone, Zawahiri says, “We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson.”

Let’s see how the alliances line up — al Qaeda and the Bush Administration, and their various enablers, want to keep slugging it out in Iraq. Everyone else on the planet wants the U.S. out of Iraq. Tells you something.

Righties are thumping their chests and vowing to keep fighting, proving what a pack of stupid dupes they are. They’re playing the part of one of the oldest stock characters in fiction — the fool whose pride, vanity, or greed makes him easy prey for a trickster. Al Qaeda cannot defeat America, but it can trick America into defeating itself. The “historic trap” is not military; it’s psychological. All al Qaeda has to do is issue another video, mocking the U.S., and the entire American Right jumps up and dances to al Qaeda’s tune.

As Cernig at Newshoggers says, snarkily, “So Bush did exactly what the terrorists wanted him to? Say it ain’t so!”

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars:

Boy, al-Zawahiri couldn’t have served up Republican talking points better if he was on Grover Norquist’s fax distribution list, could he? And the timing…isn’t it amazing how al Qaeda videos seem to come out just when Republican backs are against the wall?

Amazing, yes. But not surprising.