Anyone in Washington who cares about democracy in the Muslim world is familiar with her work, at various institutions, in supporting civil-society activists in the Palestinian territories, in Iran, in the Gulf, and elsewhere. The relationship between the two of them is none of my damn business (or yours), but it has always been very discreet, even at times when Wolfowitz, regularly caricatured as a slave of the Israeli lobby, might perhaps have benefited from a strategic leak about his Arab and Muslim companion.
It is scarcely Riza's fault that she was working in a senior position at the World Bank when Wolfowitz was gazetted as its president. And quite frankly, if I were he, or indeed she, I would have challenged anyone to make anything of it. Of very few other people working there could it so obviously be said that she held her post as of right, and on merit....
Instead of settling the matter, this disclosure and plain offer on Wolfowitz's part has become the source of all his woes. It was decided by the board of the bank and the "ethics committee" that the board established, that for no reason except a private relationship, Riza had to leave her work at the bank. Feminists and opponents of the glass ceiling should begin paying attention here.
I am no fan of Paul Wolfowitz, and would shed no tears were he to leave the World Bank, or, for that matter, public life. I have no special insight into the particulars of any conflicts of interest (real or apparent) or failures of disclosure on his part at the Bank. But it does seem that Hitchens' argument deserves a hearing, and a serious response.
2 comments:
Hitchens always seems to make sense -- until you get the facts, or review his argument. (He is
one of the great polemicists of our time.) He also likes to leave things out that may be relevant. In this case, the first relevant elision is that he's a friend of Wolfowitz.
The facts are this -- even before he was at the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz was intervening on Reza's behalf -- in April 2003, he forced a pentagon contractor to hire her to be an expert analyst on Iraq. Her credential? She was the World Bank's "Senior Gender Coordinator." (Her analysis turned out to be garbage, but that's another matter.)
When he went to the World Bank (2005) he revealed his relationship with her (and in fairness, he should be praised for this), but the resolution of the conflict of interest (directly supervising his mistress) was to second her to the Department of State.
At the Department of State, Riza was made an assistant to Elizabeth Chaney and then was made head of the "Foundation for the Future."
At this time it appears that the "Foundation for the Future" has a budget but no employees other than Riza and no operations.
Maybe Hitchens can't see the problems with this, but then again he's reputedly drunk most of the time and probably can't see his shoes either.
I posted this anonymous comment with some trepidation, and after a failed attempt to make some slight edits. So let me add a couple of editorial comments here.
First, in the original piece from which I excerpted my posting, Hitchens openly acknowledged his personal relationships with the subjects of his story, so the elision is mine, not his, and he deserves no criticism for that.
Second, I would not generally post an anonymous personal criticism (e.g., referring to someone's drunkenness), and tried (unsuccessfully) not to do so here. As it happens, however, I was present at a Madison appearance by Hitchens several years ago in which he was stuporous to the point of falling over, and virtually incoherent. That recognized, Hitchens' personal habits seem to diminish neither his prolific output nor his polemical brilliance. Who knows, maybe any associated release of inhibitions contributes to both. Whatever the case with his shoes, he finds the way to his keyboard.
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