[Marxism] MiddleEast.Org - Just say 'no' to Wolfowitz

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

MER  EDITORIAL:


JUST SAY 'NO' 
TO  WOLFOWITZ

"Neither George W. Bush nor any American  president could 
ever say it, but we have to regard Europe now as a nursing  
home for exhausted nations. We must look kindly after them, 
visit them  occasionally and remember their birthdays but...
- Editorial supporting  Wolfowitz in Washington Times


_MIDDLEEAST.ORG_ (http://www.middleeast.org/)  - MER - Washington - 20 March: 
  You know George Bush is in trouble at home when a  majority of Americans 
still don't even find him credible in his plans for Social  Security after all 
the time and effort the Bushies have put into promoting Wall  Streets plans for 
the future.  You know Bush is in trouble at home when he  has to bring out 
wife Laura to help him out; even more so as a few days ago when  he had to 
bring 
out mother Barbara.  

That's on the homefront as  attention is continually diverted away from the 
international war front where  things aren't going very well in Iraq, or with 
Iran, or with North Korea, or  with the dollar.   Lots of fingers in the dikes 
these days; leaks  everywhere; and catastrophic consequences looming in all 
too many  places.

When it comes to  the world George Bush no doubt watched too many old 
Westerns as a kid and Titanic in recent years in the White House  Theatre.     
By all 
signs he does seem to think he is "King  of the World" as well as on a 
mission inspired by Jesus via Billy  Graham.

Well let's hope  George Bush has just taken his step too far at least when it 
comes to the world  that far more loaths and fears him than respects him -- 
and for so many good  reasons.    

Bush has in fact  given the world a chance to put him in his place and to let 
America know that  its sole superpower status has limits...and will be having 
more and more limits  in the years ahead.

Saying a loud and  vocal NO to Paul Wolfowitz -- leading Neocon, miserably 
failed Iraqi war  theoretician, architect of deception, patron of Douglas Feith 
et. al., as well  as long-time Washington Zionist operative -- will send the 
needed  message.   Hence the opportunity.

Simply said, this man Paul  Wolfowitz has no business being President of the 
'World Bank', no more than John  Bolton has of being U.N. Ambassador.   They 
have both done  considerable to shaft and undermine the very institutions they 
now want to  control.

But the Ambassador slot is one thing, it is a Presidential  appointment and 
only the supine U.N. Congress can block Bolton; something it  surely will not.

The World Bank post on the other hand is something  else.  There 24 members 
of the Board are supposed to be representing 184  member nations of the world 
in a specialized U.N. agency admittedly far too much  under U.S. control for 
far too long already.

So it's time for the World  Bank board to do its job and actually represent 
the World.  And even though  this matter of President has always been done by 
'consensus' in the past rather  than contentiousness, Bush didn't really 
consult and sprung Wolfowitz out of the  blue, preferring his dictatorial shock 
and 
awe ways to real 'international  cooperation'.   Hence the opportunity is at 
hand as rarely before to  tell him NO!

Put another way in view of this pitiful Washington Times editorial supporting 
 Wolfowitz, it's time for the nursing home crowd to show the wisdom of their  
years, put their foot down now and then, and rearrange their wills if need  
be.

Actually the nursing home metaphor is way off  base.   Rather seeing the 
Europeans as mature parents who have gone  through much growing pain and now 
have 
to deal with an obese, truant,  misbehaving, dangerous armed and self-centered 
offspring would be closer to the  mark.  

But let's move on from these simplicities for now.

Now is the right time to take a stand.   This  Bush opportunity to say NO to 
Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank may  not be so inviting for so 
many, but it is necessary and  important.



 
____________________________________







Washington  Times Backs Wolfowitz Defames Europe, France, U.N.  
____________________________________
  
_The  nursing home for tired nations_ 
(http://insider.washtimes.com/articles/normal.php?storyid=20050317-112955-9067r)
 
By Wesley  Pruden
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published  March 18, 2005
 
____________________________________

George W. Bush's message to our European friends is strong and  consistent: 
You didn't like the choice America made in November, but you  have to get over 
it. The farmer and the cowboy should be friends, but the  cowboy ain't going 
anywhere. 
The nomination of  Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank, 
following the choice of  John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 
is more 
proof that  George W. is determined to govern as if he were a tough-guy 
Democrat. He's  confident that he knows what he's doing and how to do it.  
Modern Republican presidents, governors and  senators have usually governed 
with a wary eye cast backward, over their  shoulders to see if anyone is 
applauding, and if so, who, always eager to  reassure critics that "Republicans 
aren't really as bad as you think we  are." Ronald Reagan was entitled to his 
caution because he presided over a  fragile moment in the American resurgence, 
but 
sometimes it was difficult  to tell whether Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon 
and even George H.W. Bush  really wanted to put the match to a revolution.  
George W., on the other hand, understands that  if history hangs him for 
stealing a goat, he might as well take a sheep.  Backlash from Democrats, timid 
Republicans and frightened Europeans does  not deter him from pressing on with 
his campaign to export democracy --  "egalité, fraternité and liberté," as a 
lot of dead Frenchmen called it.  
The president describes Mr. Wolfowitz, an  architect of the Iraq expedition, 
as "a compassionate, decent man" with  wide experience in managing large 
corporations. Indeed, the Pentagon is  one of the biggest. Not Wal-Mart, maybe, 
but 
bigger than Renault.  
By tradition, the United States chooses the  president of the World Bank, and 
the Europeans nominate the head of the  International Monetary Fund. (The 
beauty part, for the Europeans, is that  everyone gets to move to Washington 
and 
live the sweet life on bloated  salaries and no taxes.) Nevertheless, the 
French foreign minister, right  on cue, snarls. "It's a proposal," he says, 
dismissing the Wolfowitz  nomination. "We shall examine it in the context of 
the 
personality of the  person you mention and perhaps in view of other 
candidates." 
(This is how  prissy French foreign ministers, unaccustomed to speaking in 
popular  languages, actually talk.) Reuters, the British news agency that 
deeply  
opposes both George W. and the war in Iraq, reports that "[Mr.] Wolfowitz  is 
a deeply controversial figure in Europe because of his role in  designing and 
promoting the Iraq war." At the United Nations,  Secretary-General Kofi 
Annan's top "poverty adviser" sniffs that Mr.  Wolfowitz has no experience in 
helping poor folks, and invites other  candidates to step forward. 
These worthies  have no real experience with poor folks, either, or any 
discernible  interest in them, except as totems to build bureaucracies around. 
Paul 
 Wolfowitz scares them for another reason. He's a symbol of George W.'s  
campaign to export equality, fraternity and liberty to the miserable  
neighborhoods where such values have been permanent hostages to privilege,  
brutality and 
oppression. 
"Old Europe," as  Donald Rumsfeld puts it, was the source of the American 
dream, and that's  why we continue to romanticize our own European origins. But 
"Old Europe,"  which has traded ambition and aspiration for calcification and 
security,  no longer thrills to the notion of governments "of the people, by 
the  people, and for the people." Security can only be guaranteed by  
bureaucratic fiat; wise men in Brussels know best how Frenchmen, Germans  and 
Italians 
should live their lives. 
"That is  why Jacques Chirac -- the very embodiment of corrupt European 
political  cynicism -- and George Bush can never, ever find true common 
ground,"  
observes Janet Daley in London's Daily Telegraph. "When the President  tries to 
give credit where it is due -- to the European authorship of  democratic 
revolution -- it sounds faintly sarcastic."  
Neither George W. Bush nor any American  president could ever say it, but we 
have to regard Europe now as a nursing  home for exhausted nations. We must 
look kindly after them, visit them  occasionally and remember their birthdays, 
but spare them scary talk of  visions of a future that does not include them. 
America remains the land  of dreams, of hard work, innovation and the 
cultivation of "the better  angels of our nature." The world beyond the nursing 
home 
understands this,  and hungers to participate. America, as always, must be 
eager 
to share the  dream. 
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of  The Times.   

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