Intellectual Cowboy on a World Bank Crusade

[CHIMO]

Any American who's spent more than a few days abroad in the last two years has faced the question, more often earnest than accusatory: Exactly why was it that the United States went to war in Iraq? It's an apt question on the second anniversary of the invasion -- and at a time when U.S. President George W. Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual agent behind the Iraq war, as World Bank head has set off storms of protest. "Old Europe" is deeply distressed, as are the very Third World countries the World Bank professes to serve.

There is a terrific irony in the fact that Wolfowitz, facing an unprecedented summons to explain his fitness for the job to the bank's European board members, has defended himself by proclaiming that he is no Bush yes-man. It is precisely his independence of mind -- to use a neutral phrase -- that makes the nomination most troubling.

In 1992, under President George H.W. Bush, Wolfowitz drafted the infamous Defense Planning Guidance document that asserted unlimited U.S. latitude to take pre-emptive military action on ideological grounds, using, if need be, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. He was so intent on invading Iraq that in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he argued that the United States ought to retaliate there instead of in Afghanistan. The disastrous results of Wolfowitz's ideologically blindered arguments when the United States did take on Baghdad -- such as the insistence that Iraqis would greet U.S. Marines with flowers -- have been all too evident.

What was new in Iraq was the use of unilateral military action in the name of democracy despite overwhelming worldwide opposition. There is good reason to fear that Wolfowitz's high-flying idealism could steer the World Bank on a similarly destructive course. A cynic preaching liberation can be reasoned with: Simply appeal to his self-interest. The more dangerous opponent is the one who believes what he says.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/03/22/009.html