Wolfowitz Agonistes: The Neocon Ethos at Work - Vol. 3 Issue 53

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense and current President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, is about to be fired from his Bush appointed sinecure. Twelve hundred miles from Washington, I can almost hear the gloating satisfaction of his former political and intellectual opponents. As John Cassidy points out in this week’s New Yorker, Wolfowitz is a throwback to old style Cold War intellectuals like Dean Acheson, the Bundy brothers and Walt Rostow. See, The New Yorker. These were men whose certainty about their foreign policy prescriptions was matched only by their immense intellectual arrogance. They gave us the Vietnam War in the same manner that Wolfowitz gave us the Iraq War. The analogies are apt and the ironies intense. Just as former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, was appointed to head the World Bank by President Johnson to soften the blow of being forced out by the President, so too, Paul Wolfowitz was given the World Bank presidency as a consolation prize. No doubt, the Vulcan geniuses that led the Bush administration into the Iraq quagmire were thrilled that the architect of our disastrous invasion of Iraq was named to a position from which he could affect the entire developing world.

Yet Wolfowitz, like so many of the Bush loyalists and inner circle, is a man of abiding hypocrisy and selfishness. Shortly after having been named Deputy Secretary of Defense in 2001, Wolfowitz left his wife of 30 years for a an employee of the World Bank, Shaha Ali Riza. After Mr. Wolfowitz arrived at the World Bank in 2005, he decided it would better for appearances if Ms. Riza worked as a consultant to the State Department. So, he arranged for her to stay on as an employee of the World Bank working at the State Department. Except there was one other thing: SHE GOT A $60,000 PER YEAR RAISE! Wolfowitz told the ethics board at the World Bank about his personal relationship and employment arrangement with Ms. Riza; he simply failed to disclose the terms of compensation. (Oops!) What a prince! For more details than you probably want to know, see, Washington Post and NY Times.

From time to time I am forced to return to a discussion of the perverse result of the teachings of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago (from whence came Wolfowitz’s PhD. in political science.) The way some of the post WWII liberal intellectuals morphed into espousing virulent, aggressive and imperialistic “democratization” deserves serious scholarly attention. For now, we are left with the amazing tableau of a Neocon rogue’s gallery: Richard Perle’s corrupt practices, Conrad Black’s imminent fraud conviction, Scooter Libby’s conviction, and the non-criminal but hideous and shameful behavior of Bill Kristol, Doug Feith and many others. Like Wolfowitz, they are shameless in the face of political and moral disgrace. And there are still 18 months left of this gang’s reign!

Cheers,

Savant

<< Back to main