Outsourcing the Commander-in-Chief?

A War Czar?

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies

Maybe I'm old fashioned but it seems like bullet point number one on the presidential position description would be the Commander-in-Chief duty. Bush gives the impression he enjoys this facet of the job but we also know he likes to delegate, but who will oversee an unelected war czar?

Stories like this beg for clarity but brood speculation. Is this a Rove-inspired move to make an end-run around Congress, who recently outlawed the phrase "Global War on Terror"? Perhaps the administration is afraid the Democrats will try to isolate Iraq from Afghanistan to force a redeployment and they want a military voice to plug the gap.

Or will leftists be correct by speculating that Bush is trying to appoint a scapegoat? One of the generals approached for the position seemed to suggest that very idea in his post-interview interview with the WaPo, which turned into a nifty little hit job on Cheney. Oddly enough, his name was Sheehan.

Frankly this sounds pretty weird. There's not a lot of conversation about it around the right-side blogiverse, so if anyone has something short of a partisan screed that explains this please drop a link in the comments.

MORE 4/15/07

Christopher Alleva writing in The American Thinker provides some useful insight into what's going on with the war czar thing:

Using this story, the critics have been quick to observe that, well after all, he's the President this is what he should be doing. But SecDef Gates spoke to this in congressional testimony earlier this year. When commenting on the lack of cooperation he was getting from other agencies, he discussed the question of applying to the entire executive branch the successful the Goldwater-Nichols model that curtailed inter-service rivalry at the Pentagon. Gates testified that one of the main reasons Goldwater-Nichols worked was because the Defense Secretary has overall authority. While the President is Commander in Chief and the constitutional head of government, he is not an "action officer" like the Defense Secretary.

As long as this person only acted as a policy coordinator/facilitator there would seem to be nothing wrong with the concept. As usual, the casual reader (in this case, me) just should not accept articles at face value. Thank heavens for the internet.