The entire history of an office - general-in-chief - has been lost, with Civil War readers generally oblivious to or misled about this post. The fallout has been a lot of ahistorical nonsense written about Scott, McClellan, Halleck, and Grant.
The complexity of the topic is putting me off, so meanwhile, I offer Civil War readers this news item to chew over. If you can't put it into an ACW context, I don't blame you. I'll try to do so here soon:
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, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.
