I’m not sure what to make of this.

During an Oval Office photo op the other day with Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, President Bush fired a verbal salvo at congressional Democrats that was either a crafty political ploy, or evidence of something real scary.

“I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job,” Bush said of the push by Senate and House Democrats to dictate a timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq.

Accusing Democrats of trying to impose their will on the military is something Bush has done a lot of recently. During an April 3 news conference he said, “Congress shouldn’t tell generals how to run the war.” At an Ohio high school on April 19 the president said, “It’s a mistake for Congress to tell the military how to do its job.”

Bush is either trying to dupe Americans into thinking that it is the generals who are in charge of this nation’s wars, or worse, he actually believes that they are. The first notion should be rebuffed, the second should be feared.

In our democracy, war policies are made by politicians. The tactics are left to the generals. The job of the generals is to do what this nation’s civilian authorities tell them to do.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln fired his top field commander, Gen. George McClellan, because he couldn’t get him to carry out his war policies. During the Korean War, Harry Truman sacked Gen. Douglas MacArthur after the five-star general publicly declared that U.S. forces should invade China. MacArthur’s statement went beyond Truman’s policy of keeping the Korean War from becoming a wider conflict.

“Full and vigorous debate on matters of national policy is a vital element in the constitutional system of our free democracy. It is fundamental, however, that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitution,” Truman said of his decision. And that’s as it should be.

It was the Bush administration, not the generals, that decided to invade Iraq. It was the president and his advisers who made the policy decision to keep U.S. troops in that country after Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled. And it is Bush who has kept American forces there after Iraq descended into a bloody civil war.

But the president isn’t the only one who gets to determine when and how this nation goes to war.

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to declare war” and “to raise and support Armies.” So the job of the generals is to fight the wars that Congress authorizes and the president – as commander in chief – commands.

Having lost the backing of most Americans for the continued presence of U.S. forces in the middle of Iraq’s civil war, Bush now wants to make this conflict the generals’ war. He wants people to think that congressional Democrats are undermining this nation’s military leaders – not putting the brakes on his war-making power – when they try to force a troop withdrawal.

Bush bamboozled this nation into war with Iraq. Now he is trying to hoodwink Americans into believing that Congress is intruding upon the prerogatives of the generals he ordered into combat.

The president can only wage the wars that Congress declares or agrees to fund. Twice, once in 2002 and again last year, Congress passed resolutions that gave Bush authority to commit U.S. forces to battle in Iraq. By setting a deadline for a cutoff of funding for this war, Congress again tried to exercise its constitutional power – this time to end the war it authorized and funded.

It was an attempt to restrain the war-making policies of Bush – not the military tactics of this nation’s generals.