Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars


Expounds a little further on your post.

-Am

By Mike Whitney

Al-Jazeerah, March 21, 2005




The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank has brought on the
widespread gnashing of teeth among America’s liberals, but there’s no real
reason for despair. The World Bank has never operated according to its
mandate, (to reduce poverty in the developing countries through financial
assistance) so it’s better to have someone like Wolfowitz at the top-spot
where the activities of the bank draw greater public scrutiny. His
appointment will serve the same purpose as a warning label on medicine vial;
cautioning needy third world states that overuse could be hazardous.
The World Bank has operated below the radar for too long. Rather than
reducing poverty, it’s strategies of readjusting economies to meet the needs
of global industrialists, have only created greater disparities between rich
and poor and a 20 year cycle of economic stagnation. Wolfowitz’s appointment
will show the public how political decision-making has contributed to this
malaise, and demonstrate how the bank functions as an extension of the US
Treasury; working tirelessly on behalf of US financial institutions and big
business. For those who think the bank should be done away with entirely,
Wolfowitz provides an identifiable “name-brand” that will connect the bank
to the egregious policies that keep most of the developing world in
perpetual debtor peonage.

Wolowitz dismal record on Human Rights

Wolfowitz’s resume is bound to draw brickbats from anti-war Europeans.
He brings with him the baggage of two unprovoked wars, 100,000 dead and a
constellation of gulags strung out across the globe; not the type of
qualifications we normally expect for leadership in the World Bank. So far,
his nomination has been greeted with either exasperation or derision, and
many believe that his personal history should preclude him from the top
position. The ACLU has condemned the nomination citing recently discovered
FBI documents that confirm that Wolfowitz “specifically authorized torture
techniques” for interrogations at Guantanamo. Such allegations would
normally be career ending if not grounds for criminal proceedings. However,
in the new Bush paradigm these actions simply indicate a readiness to move
up the political food-chain.

What Qualifications?

By any standard, Wolfowitz is unqualified for his new task. He has no
experience in finance or administration. As for his skills at managing large
reconstruction projects; his history in Iraq speaks for itself. A full year
after the initial invasion less than 2% of the $18 billion provided by
Congress for reconstruction had been spent, even though electrical power,
sewage treatment and clean water were nearly non-existent. In fact,
Wolfowitz’s performance would suggest that the administration never had any
intention of rebuilding Iraq (“We don’t do nation building”) Whatever money
couldn’t be sluiced off to Bush’s constituents (Halliburton, Bechtel etc)
simply ended up disappearing in what may be the greatest corruption scandal
of all time. (To date, an independent UN commission has acknowledged that
over $8.8 billion has gone missing from Iraqi oil receipts.) We should also
take notice of Wolfowitz unorthodox manner of awarding contracts. After the
fall of Baghdad it was Wolfowitz who said that contracts would not be issued
to any country that hadn’t participated in the illegal invasion. Saving
money for the American taxpayer was never a serious concern for the
Deputy-Secretary. Contracts were issued strictly according to a
feudal-system deigned by Wolfowitz to reward those who were loyal to the
administration. (Reconstruction in Afghanistan has been equally abysmal,
where only 1 in 5 Afghanis has access to clean water and yet, two-thirds of
reconstruction money goes towards Karzai’s security apparatus)
Despite the spurious claims that Wolfowitz’s experience with Tsunami
victims “changed his outlook”; he will continue the same debilitating
programs that are the mainstay of World Bank activity. All the talk about
poverty reduction is pure nonsense. His task will be to entice corrupt
foreign leaders to plunge their countries further into unsustainable debt so
the World Bank (and their sister organization, the IMF) can offer “bail-out”
loans and apply harsh austerity measures designed to pry-open markets,
destroy the public sector and deliver valuable natural resources to US
corporations. (These usurious policies have frequently been compared to
legalized loan-sharking) The bank has always operated this way. Moreover,
this is the process that ensures America’s continued economic hammerlock on
developing nations. The policies are devised to perpetuate poverty not
reduce it.

In his new role Wolfowitz will oversee construction and development loans
to Iraq’s fledgling government. The new Iraqi leadership will be expected to
rubber-stamp the many enormous loans that pay for the services of American
mega-corporations and security services. This way, Iraq will stay in a
permanent state “colonial dependency” (Noam Chomsky) even while its vast
natural wealth is spirited out of the country.

The Israel connection

Wolfowitz’s appointment comes at an opportune time for Israel. Now, that
Arafat is out of the picture, the World Bank is expected “to supervise the
implementation of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects in
Gaza.” (Jerusalem Post) Newly elected Mahmoud Abbas will be able pay off the
corrupt Palestinian Authority with funds from the World Bank to do the job
that Arafat always rejected; disarming the militias and cracking down on
their own people.

As one senior official said, “Wolfowitz is a no-nonsense administrator
who knows what needs to be done in terms of reform and democratization”.

“Democratization?”

Hardly. When we look at the affect of Wolfowitz’s policies in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, it’s difficult to believe that his influence
will produce better results in the world’s last sanctuary for apartheid.
Realists would expect that Wolfowitz’s involvement will only exacerbate
already-existent divisions by expressing an institutional bias in favor of
Israel. It is impossible to imagine that Wolfowitz could be even-handed
about an issue for which he has expressed virulent partiality his entire
adult life.

Preparing for War

The inserting of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank is actually part of a
global war strategy. The idea is to put Bush loyalists and ideologues
wherever they can advance the neocon agenda and undermine international
organizations. The Pentagon’s new “National Defense Strategy” released this
week makes this perfectly clear.

The document states that America’s strength will continue to be
challenged by “a strategy of the weak”.

Asked to explain the paper Douglas Feith (no. 3 at the Pentagon) said,
“There are various actors around the world that are looking to either attack
or constrain the US, and they are going to find creative ways of doing that,
that are not the obvious conventional military attacks. We need to think
broadly about diplomatic lines of attack, legal lines of attack,
technological lines of attack, all kinds of asymmetrical warfare that
various actors can use to try to constrain our behavior.”

Feith is not talking about the nebulous threat of terrorism. He’s
talking about the nations of the world that are looking for ways to deter
future American aggression. (“diplomatic, legal, and technological”) This is
an administration that sees the entire world as a potential enemy. The
amount of paranoia in this statement epitomizes the bunker-mentality that
pervades the current White House. Enemies are everywhere, trying to
constrain the US with “international forums, judicial processes and
terrorism”.

“Judicial processes?”

The administration holds itself above the law, and those who would make
it conform to the law ( Guantanamo, Iraq etc) are the de facto enemies of
the state. The Wolfowitz appointment is a part of the “asymmetrical warfare”
to which Feith alludes. The administration plans to extend its grip by
filling every available position of authority with Bush loyalists;
undermining the efforts of the international community to resolve crises
through multilateral means. It’s all a straight forward attack on the
current world order and, tragically, a prelude to even bigger and more
catastrophic confrontations.




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