… "This is terribly unfair," the statement said, citing World Bank rules that give staff members at least five business days to respond to internal investigations. "We are extremely disheartened."
Consensus appeared to be growing yesterday that Wolfowitz can no longer effectively lead the institution and its global anti-poverty mission, as European finance ministers meeting in Brussels called for an end to the leadership crisis.
"We need a president with a good reputation and good integrity," Dutch finance minister Wouter Bos said, according to the Associated Press. He said he has "serious doubts" about Wolfowitz. "It is impossible to go around the world speaking about good governance without good governance at the World Bank," said Belgium’s finance minister, Didier Reynders.
In much of Europe, Wolfowitz is reviled as a primary architect of the Iraq war and as a symbol of a U.S. administration seen as arrogant and aloof — sentiments that have deepened as the ethics controversy has emerged. The European parliament has called for Wolfowitz to resign.
Wolfowitz claimed recently that judging him about Iraq was also unfair. He wanted to be judged for his work at the World Bank. But at another time, when admitting that his actions in behalf of Shaha Riza were wrong, he says that Bush thing. I admitted I was wrong. Isn’t that enough. The answer to his question is No, Paul. It’s not enough.
There are many criticisms of Wolfowitz tenure at the World Bank – people he has hired, supression of population control methods or initiatives that relate to climate change, imperious leadership with a style similar to his tenure with the Defense Department. But frankly, I don’t particularly find myself focusing on the World Bank, or his efforts on behalf of his girlfriend. I think his entire career is inflated, and that he should never have been placed in a position of power in the first place. A
review of his career is particularly lack-luster. He has meandered through government holding high positions, resting on academic credentials, but has had uniformly bad ideas and no particular successes. His behavior at the Department of Defense under Bush was beyond horrible. He basically set up an alternative Intelligence Agency that produced uniformly wrong information [under Douglas Feith, a fellow Zionist with good schooling but no experience and no expertise]. His testimony to Congress in the month before our invasion of Iraq is typical:
There has been a good deal of comment – some of it quite outlandish – about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army – hard to imagine.
He now feels that he shouldn’t be judged for being so wrong. Now he’s in the same boat at the World Bank. He’s walked all over the principle of not even giving the appearance of impropriety. He dived right into the middle of it when he first got there. He whines, "this is terribly unfair," and yet he has been, himself, a master of unfairness throughout his career. Like his fellows [Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Rice, etc.], he shares a sense of entitlement that underlies his entire career. So his claim that he shouldn’t be judged for his mistakes falls a little flat, since it’s really about the only thing he’s done since he started – make mistakes. Like his former student, Irving Lewis Libby, it’s time to pay the price for his sin – Arrogance in the service of Ineptitude. He was a bad choice for the job. He’s performed poorly. No one likes him there. He’s done little since he was appointed that matters. His ethics are beyond shaky. What’s to like?
So long, Paul…
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