Wednesday, March 23, 2005
WASHINGTON -- When he met with a diverse group of journalists in his Pentagon office last week after his nomination to be president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual architect of the Iraq war, spoke of moving on to another & quot;noble mission, & quot; that of reducing poverty in the world.
& quot;If you work on corruption, accountability and transparency, and advancing the economic development agenda, I think you are also helping to clear some of the obstacles to democratic institutions, & quot; he said, as reported in all the major newspapers.
For those of us who have been critical of the deputy defense secretary and his war, it is time to be fair-minded. This is indeed a new era, and Paul Wolfowitz did indeed have a distinguished early career. His work as ambassador to Indonesia, his diplomacy in the Philippines, and his tenure as dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he trained untold numbers of students to work in the developing world, make him seem a good contender for the World Bank job. His support of arming the Bosnians to fight the Serb marauders in the early '90s certainly distinguished him morally in that pitiful era.
Waxing eloquent
President Bush is crazy about his nominee, and the neocons around him are waxing eloquent on the new era. Writing in the New York Post of the nomination, for instance, John Podhoretz said with Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank and fellow right-radical John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, & quot;President Bush has made clear his intention to redefine not only American foreign policy but the American foreign-policy ESTABLISHMENT (his emphasis) as well. & quot; The & quot;ancient regime & quot; is finished, Podhoretz declares, as he argues that, for decades, American diplomacy and foreign policy have been dominated by do-nothings, conference-goers, and people desperately afraid of confrontation. But now, & quot;this fresh gust of air is blowing through the stale corridors of the Establishment like a tornado ... & quot;
Reading these words and sensing the passion behind them, one might be forgiven for thinking: Wow, what excitement! Is it possible that they're right? That those of us who believe in a more nuanced and cautious view of the world can really be wrong? Well, let's not go too far.
Paul Wolfowitz's early years may have been impressive, but think of his most recent accomplishments. It was in great part Wolfowitz, in his position next to the defense secretary at the Pentagon, who cut off State Department planning for an Iraqi occupation. But that planning was right, and Wolfowitz & amp; Co. swept us into nearly two full years of unnecessarily disastrous and arrogant decisions and upheaval in Iraq.
It was Wolfowitz, as enchanted as a 16-year-old girl in love, who pushed the Iraqi charlatan Ahmed Chalabi to be the & quot;savior & quot; of Iraq -- and paid him millions of taxpayer dollars. It was Wolfowitz, testifying repeatedly in Congress, who claimed the ridiculousness of parts of the military wanting more troops on the ground, and Wolfowitz who pushed the unworkable scheme of immediately privatizing big Iraqi state enterprises.
Indeed, measured alongside the same four concepts that he stressed last week -- dealing with & quot;corruption, accountability, transparency, and advancing the economic development agenda & quot; -- his policies in Iraq can only be said to have failed miserably.
Two Wolfowitzes
What does that tell us about the thinking he will bring to this far more expansive role? In short, there are (at least) two Paul Wolfowitzes: one, the early seeker of truth, the early civil libertarian/ & quot;bleeding heart & quot; (his words) and internationalist; and two, the man taken over by the certainty of ideology, who no longer listened to others, who came to think that believing made it so. His is almost a classic journey from the honesty of the search to the arrogance of the protector of the holy grail.
The World Bank is an odd place for such a guy. Its 24-member board in effect sets development policy for much of the developing world and operates on consensus regarding what policies will be adopted to alleviate poverty. Wolfowitz says he would not make his decisions on an ideological basis, according to which countries the Bush presidency favors. Still ...
There is little question that the Bush administration will try, as with the United Nations, to put its radical reformist stamp on the organization.
Universal Press Syndicate