Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Wolfowitz gossip!

The governments of Europe must have taken a deep sigh of relief this past weekend upon finally receiving the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank. Apparently Wolfowitz tendered his resignation on the condition that the Bank would “acknowledge” that any mistakes made had been made under “good faith”. It’s clear that the Bank didn’t have to do this, that they could have continued their investigation into his behavior and eventually forcibly removed Wolfowitz, thereby endangering the delicate balance of appointments between that World Bank and the IMF. And it’s abundantly clear that the Bush administration would have been happy to see this happen, since hubris isn’t something they lack. But Europe (being full of Europeans) was able to cut their losses with a shrug, if not a pronounced sneer, and give Wolfowitz what he so childishly wanted. Nobody actually thinks that Wolfowitz acted with “good faith”, whether it was promoting his girlfriend, or unilaterally altering Bank programs that he had no authority (or support) to alter (condoms in India). He was the president and should have been a leader in enforcing and establishing World Bank policy, not creating policy based on a view of the world that isn't even held by a majority of Americans, not too mention the rest of Europe. We shouldn’t be surprised that Wolfowitz behaved in such a manner. John Bolton, a former ambassador to another international organization (the United Nations), said so himself on The Daily Show when he said it was the presidents “duty” act in the interests of the people who put him into office. According to Bolton, as opposed to being president for everybody, Bush is “constitutionally obligated”, to act in the interests of those people. So it all becomes clear: Wolfowitz wasn’t supposed to be president of the World Bank, an organization, supposedly, created to better the developing world, but instead be president for those people who put him in his position: the Bush Administration. It’s all so clear now.

But I’m doing this post for the gossip, not to beat a dead horse. I have it on good authority from a source who has worked within the World Bank for over twenty years that Wolfowitz, in an effort to keep his job, offered to cut lose every single manager/person of significance he himself had hired and replace them with managers recommended by the Board. The fact that Wolfowitz wasn’t loyal to his people (his generals, per say), isn’t much of a stretch, but to think that he lacks so much integrity as to be so quick to abandon the people who put him into power in the first place (Bush Administration) in order to become a straw-man for largely European interests makes him a new kind of slug I can’t even wrap my mind around. It was debatable before how bad of an American Wolfowitz was. Now we all know just how bad.

Tomorrow: Fun with Zombies!

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