Who's steering the Iraq bus?

A friend writes:

Who's Steering the Bus?

In May of 2007 a group of "moderate" Congressional Republicans went to the White House and demanded that Gen. Petraeus become the lead spokesman on Iraq since in the White House there was "no longer any credibility." That raises a lot of legitimate questions in and of itself, but it's gone well beyond that. Ever since, President Bush has abdicated his role as Commander and Chief and simply said whenever asked that he would do whatever General Petraeus recommended. Even in regard to the most recent drawdown decisions, President Bush said to General Petraeus, "'If you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you."

Now here's the problem – as General Petraeus has rightly admitted, he does not have responsibility for the direction of Iraq policy, much less the larger questions of national security such as balancing deployments in Afghanistan, or setting dwell times and ensuring America's readiness for other conflicts. This was revealed most poignantly when Petraeus conceded in the September hearings that he didn't even know if "victory" in Iraq, whatever that means and however remote it might be, would actually make us safer. But President Bush says that his decisions on Iraq are based entirely on what Gen. Petraeus says. So who's responsible for these other questions? Admiral Fallon and the Joint Chiefs are technically charged with that responsibility, but Fallon recently resigned after it became clear that his concerns were viewed as mere nuisances and the situation of having Gen. Petraeus with a direct line to President Bush, cutting Fallon out of the loop, was untenable.

A clumsy analogy: we are on a runaway bus, going down the highway. President Bush says he's not driving the bus, he trusts "his man" Gen. Petraeus to do that. But Petraeus says he's just supposed to press the gas peddle. Admiral Fallon just resigned after having his hand slapped every time he reached for the steering wheel. We're still losing an American a day, every day five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves, every day PTSD sets in on thousands more and dozens more are horribly wounded, and yet the bus just keeps barreling down the road, passing by every exit as if sooner and later we'll magically just come to end of the road. Who's steering the bus?

Someone just sent me this.