Bush has shown himself to be a weak wartime leader. He is putting WAY too much faith in his generals and not enough stock in letting results speak for themselves.
He is relying on too much opinion and not demanding enough of those around him. He has been surprisingly passive.
"Lincoln and Roosevelt trusted their guts when they did not get the results they were looking for. They tossed generals overboard if they didn't see facts on the ground changing.
Bush has shown himself to be a weak wartime leader. He is putting WAY too much faith in his generals and not enough stock in letting results speak for themselves."
Actually, that is a misreading of history, iMHO.
Lincoln and FDR gave authority to the military leaders and let them do their leading. WWII was won by Marshall and Eisenhower, not FDR. Lincoln made some changes, but he bit his tongue much when seeing his incompetent generals botch things. Micro-managed wars, like Vietnam - the classic case - and Korea, went much less well.
I am *glad* Bush is not an LBJ-like micro-manager. This was the right way to handle both Afghanistan and Iraq and from a military perspective, it's worked.
As for this demand for heads rolling, well, Rumsfeld is gone. I doubt it will serve much good, nor will replacing Abazaid, who is as good as it gets as a CENTCOM leader.
The real problem is that our military strategy is NOT the problem and therefore even if it were perfect, we would not win! If anything Iraq has had too much inconsistency ,due to the 1 year rotations. A serious effort to win would put the key people in country until its done. Fortunately for our troops but unfortunately for the mission, that is not how its done.
The real problem is Iraq's political fragmentation, which should have been healed via the democratic process, but which hasn't; with that has come the failure of Iraq as a whole to move away from sectarianism, corruption, militias and support for anti-Government forces.
If Iraq's democratic Government was a secure unity Government, and if the Iraq security forces had the capability, the fight would be as good as won. This has ben like nurturing a plant, but finding it trampled, eaten, and starved fo water each day. And each day trying to revive it and plant more seeds. A winning strategy and persistence is the way to go.
Baker & Co. looked in all the wrong places (Syria, Iran, etc.) for a solution. Yes, we need a regional conference and we need Iraq's neighbors to quit meddling, but more so we need to get Iraq's internal political divisions healed and the extremists bounded.