Letter: Failures receive nice promotions

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.

Those who are horrified over the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank are focusing on the wrong target: It is the World Bank itself that should be considered horrifying.

Paul Wolfowitz has been surprisingly candid in admitting that the war in Iraq was fought for reasons other than those advertised. "For bureaucratic reasons," he told Vanity Fair magazine, "we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

If Wolfowitz is at all troubled by the fact that 1,500 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been sacrificed, he conceals his grief very well. His promotion is typical of an administration in which high-ranking officials fail upwards.

I think that Wolfowitz is following in the footsteps of Robert McNamara, the captain of the Vietnam tragedy, who left his post as secretary of defense to become president of the World Bank. So Bush is establishing a bipartisan tradition: you screw up a war, you get to run the World Bank. With this announcement, the impoverished of the world have less reason for hope, because the World Bank has been loaning enormous sums to oppressive socialist and authoritarian regimes for decades.

FRANK M. PELTESON