Bush picks Wolfowitz for president of World Bank

turtles

in the sea
Jesus. Is Bush fucking insane? Or just pure evil?

Coupled with making Bolton ambassador to the UN, seems like Bush is sending a pretty clear message about any sort of multilateralism or cooperation with the rest of the world he might be planning for the next four years, despite what lip service he might be giving the concept. And that message is: "Hey world, fuck you!"


uhg.
 

gff

Active member
i guess i wonder why he's leaving defense rather than why he's being named to the wb.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
ye, the WORLD bank could just do with a highly ideologically driven 'pax-americana' lunatic in control.
the world really will become a better place.

Paul Wolfowitz has an “enthusiasm for changing governments.” (the Economist, February 9, 2002).

so the world bank may well be used in conjunction w/ military power to forward american interests.

hurrah.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Smug how ?
Let's pull just one example from last night's Daily Show ...

* PW testifying that the Iraq war would pay for itself out of oil $ 'at practically no cost to us at all'
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I would call that glib rather than smug and the last time I heard him say that was when trying to get the go-ahead for the invasion. Also, had post-war planning etc actually been implemented with any degree of competence and seriousness then he would have been right.

Any other examples?
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
oliver craner said:
had post-war planning etc actually been implemented with any degree of competence and seriousness then he would have been right.

presumably the blame for poor implementation rests on paul bremer's shoulders???

it's hard to tell (1) how much of the chaos in iraq was inevitable, i.e., the unavoidable toll to be paid for invading the country (in which case bush/cheney/rumsfeld/wolfowitz deserve the blame for launching the invasion in the first place); and (2) how much was due to the failure of the military to keep order in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the iraqi state (in which case blame goes to rumsfeld for not providing enough troops & to the generals in charge of the situation on the ground); and (3) how much was due to the actions of paul bremer and the civilian administrators in iraq . . . .

supposedly wolfowitz's interest in development issues goes back to his tenure as ambassador to indonesia (but still i'm surprised that he's leaving the defense dept, as he has always seemed such a hawk)
 

turtles

in the sea
oliver craner said:
Seems like a good appointment to me. He deserves it, too.
Ha! I knew I could count on you for some levity Oliver! My Craner bating was successful...

Anyway, we could argue untill we were blue in the face on whether Wolfowitz is an idiot or not (yeah the Daily Show last night had a nice recap of his impressive ability to predict the exact OPPOSITE of what ends up happening (download a torrent here )), but the thing that gets me is the fact that Bush seems either unwilling or completely unaware of the idea of making consessions to the rest of the world. He just keeps appointing these massive idealogues to various important positions, people that seem to perfectly embody the arrogant, unilateral face of American foreign policy that people around the world hate so much.

So my question is, does Bush really not care at all about the rest of the world's opinion of the US? Or is he just blinded by his own ideology? I mean he did just apoint Karen Hughes to try and "market" the US in the mid east, but at every step he's seems to be trying to undermine any credibility that the US might have abroad.

I don't get it.
 
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polystyle

Well-known member
As smug as his boss

bipedaldave said:
So my question is, does Bush really not care at all about the rest of the world's opinion of the US? Or is he just blinded by his own ideology? I mean he did just apoint Karen Hughes to try and "market" the US in the mid east, but at every step he's seems to be trying to undermine any credibility that the US might have abroad.
I don't get it.

No, he doesn't care - here's a guy who wouldn't have ever left the ranch unless he HAD too.
Blinded - yea , like many who feel they are god right and cushioned by those who grok war as a 'slam dunk'.
Bringing Karen Hughes back from pasture - was she even good at what she did before pasture ?

The one appointment I've seen talk any sense is the new head of Homeland Security who i rd today is
not going to use the color 'terror' alerts to jerk us around whenever poll numbers drop

No need to give more examples or argue about Wolfie,
Bush is throwing his buddies as far up as he can - before his time is up
 

craner

Beast of Burden
and, for what it's worth, I'm with that Jim Rockford feller on the Cooper thread (apart from the bit about Bono being a "great man"):

"
"Bolton is probably what the UN desperately needs ... a huge wakeup call to get it's act together. Kirkpatrick and the Dem Senator from New York (sorry brain spazz) together spiked a lot of nonsense that would have made the UN even less relevant.

Fact is, the UN is in crisis. They cannot run refugee camps without seuxal predators running into the refugee effort. This is not just Congo, it's Cambodia and the Balkans as well. They function as the money-washer of choice for every brutal dicatator from Hugo Chavez, Pinochet, Saddam, and Assad. They preside over anti-American and anti-Israeli fests like the Durban Racismm conference, failing to tackle the real issues of racism in Darfur or elsewhere. The UN consistently has no answer for misrule of failed states that lead to genocide, terrorism, and horrible lives for people all over the globe that threaten to errupt into peaceful, modern societies threatening everyone.

The UN can and should have a role, but Mr. Nice Guy isn't going to get it done. Bolton needs to bust heads and threaten to get the UN lifetime job beurocrats to take action to clean up the institution. It's essentially the Stygian stables.

The World Bank? Who was the LAT pushing? BONO? A truly great musician and a good man, but I couldn't think of anyone more unsuited. They also pushed a failed Mexican President. Well, I guess he'd be worse (Echevarria I think).

Ask yourself what is the problem with the World Bank? It pushes massive development projects that just don't work, but provide enourmous opportunities for graft by both local kleptocrats and foreign businesses, makes middle class and poor people in rich countries bear the risk of bailing out these investments when they (ALWAYS) go sour, and imposes another round of "fiscal sanity" that ends up hurting the poor and middle class in these countries and leads inevitably to the next gigantic boondoggle that screws up the country even more.

Status quo and Mr. Nice Guy won't get it done there either. Wolfie is probably better than most because the chief problem of the World bank is not finance but political.

We already know that the political choices of relatively clean government and investment in education, clean drinking water, health care, public health, in short the PEOPLE not gigantic "things" yields enourmous dividends. It is the only proven way to develop out of poverty. The World Bank needs a political leader who is not afraid to tear down the temple in order to make a political decision to promote this investment.

Mr. Hewson is a good man, but fundamentally he does not understand that simply throwing money at Africa will change nothing, only make the Kleptocrats richer. Instead of building Alcoa a subsidized Aluminum smelter in say, Accra, it's far better to make modest investments that are closely supervised in clean drinking water for the Ghanese people. THAT ALONE would so massively improve the lives of Ghanaian citizens that you'd see a huge outburst of economic improvement. The same goes with roads, schools, and basic health care such as childhood immunizations. In other words, the public goods that ONLY a government can make, and that the current governments who are strapped for resources cannot fund.

It is also in America's enlightened self interest to do this. Imagine a whole Africa, largely free of conflict and with spare cash to actually BUY things. An Africa no longer chained in poverty. Or South America. America and the World need economic growth and to help people in the third world to lift themselves out of this.

The World Bank can play a part of this, but only if it's blown up in current form and refocused on financing lots of small, focused, public goods in (relatively) clean governments. Let the big rich private investors bear their own risk if things go south.

So yeah, Wolfowitz is not a bad choice at all. Regardless of how many people he pisses off..."
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Those are some very good points you've found there Oliver, and I hope Wolfowitz is the man for the job. (Couldn't agree more about the points made re. the UN too.) BUT, aren't the two biggest issues facing the African economy debt and trade subsidies? All the clean water in the world isn't going to help that; what do you think Wolfowitz's intentions would be on this score?
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
oliver craner said:
So yeah, Wolfowitz is not a bad choice at all

for who? that's the point surely? for bush and US business interests he's going to be fantastic, for those countries that have to deal with world bank reconstruction it will continue to be a nightmare.


(incidently the world bank policy on H2O is currently to privatise it and profit, not give the people clean water)
 

Jamie S

Member
I can't believe someone just equated Chevez to Pinochet and no-one objected.

As I understand it, Oliver's take on Wolfowitz is that he's the bit of the American administration that actually believes it's own propaganda about spreading democracy. And I don't agree with that, but you know, fair enough.

However what this has to do with economic ideology, I don't know. I just presume that, as a Republican, Wolfowitz takes a standard neo-liberal position, which has been utterly disastrous for developing countries in Africa.

The problem with the HIPC debt relief programme is not that it didn't have enough ties - this 'throwing money at dictators won't help' kind of attitude. It was tied to structural adjustment programmes that mean cutting spending on education, healthcare, clean water etc. The patronising drivel about 'supervising' the way that the few miserly pennies the rich north are willing to stop extorting out of Africa couldn't be more off the mark. Yes, give money to NGOs doing good work, yes, fight for democracy and transparency, but also stop forcing governments to hand over many times the sums they were originally lent in never-ending interest payments.

If you don't want them to spend it on arms, control your own arms trade.
If you don't want kleptocrats to steal the money, have a word with the Swiss govt and their banking regulations.
If you don't want multinationals bribing corrupt officials, then pass laws in the countries where ther headquarters are and jail their executives.



Now Wolfowitz probably won't be any worse than anyone else Bush would nominate, but he's, on his record, probably a bit more driven ideologically, which is the last thing we need.

If anyone knows that Wolfowitz is actually an internationalist Keynesian type then apologies and let the good times roll!
 
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