The problem that is Paul Wolfowitz

I wrote those words in July 2003. It was clear by then that the Iraq mission had not been accomplished in the previous May

8220;Paul Wolfowitz is often mentioned as the most brilliant person in government. . . . He is the intellectual force behind a whole new way of looking at US foreign policy. But for all of that he should be fired.8221;

I wrote those words in July 2003. It was clear by then that the Iraq mission had not been accomplished in the previous May, as the president had said, and that we were in for a long, hard war made worse by Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld8217;s 8220;fatal combination of hubris and incompetence.8221;

I could have added corruption. For we soon learned the extent of the wholesale corruption of the intelligence gathering process to promote the war, generated in the Pentagon and from Vice President Dick Cheney8217;s office. Generals who said that invading Iraq would cost more in money and troops than the Pentagon hoped were swept aside, and advice from anyone who actually knew anything about Iraq was willfully ignored.

As I write these words, Wolfowitz is still head of the World Bank, the job President Bush chose for him in 2005 as a reward for failure at the Pentagon. But the time for him to be fired has again arrived.

Instead of the grand corruption of cooking the Iraq intelligence books, Wolfowitz has been caught in the squalid little impropriety of using his influence to get his World Bank girlfriend a job at the State Department, at a salary that exceeds that of the secretary of state herself. It is all the more ironic in that Wolfowitz made stamping out corruption a World Bank crusade. The real problem with Wolfowitz, however, is that he is a compulsive idealist who cannot see that the price of his ideals may be too high to pay, or that they may do more harm than good.

No one is arguing that Wolfowitz8217;s ideals are wrong. It would be very nice if Iraq were to become a democracy like the US. It would be even nicer if this could transform the entire Middle East in our image. However, the occupation of Iraq will lead to neither.

It would also be a good thing if world corruption could be weeded out8230; However, just as a wiser man might have seen that going to war in Iraq was unjustified, unless weapons of mass destruction could be found, Wolfowitz might have seen that his usual practice of riding roughshod over colleagues and board members might be counterproductive to his goals at the World Bank.

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Excerpted from a piece by H.D.S. Greenway in the 8216;Boston Globe8217;, April 17