Dear Paul Wolfowitz:
I learned yesterday that you have in fact been forced out of your position as the head of the World Bank. This must be a very difficult time for you. The circumstances of your departure have been quite disgraceful and scandalous.
But they are nothing compared to the terrible circumstances the illegal and mass-murderous United States invasion and occupation of Iraq have created for the Iraqi people. That invasion has generated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian corpses and maimed countless men, women and children. It has killed more than 3300 U.S. soldiers.
It has displaced millions, created a vast humanitarian catastrophe and deeply exacerbated mass poverty and misery in Iraq – a nation that has been under vicious U.S. assault for decades..
Iraqi people and U.S. soldiers have died and suffered in a war that you and your White House and Pentagon cohorts launched on fraudulent pretexts. In your previous position as Deputy Secretary of Defense, you played a pivotal public role in the design, selling and execution of that brazenly criminal, racist and oil-imperialist war. The body count is still climbing.
You and your warmongering neoconservative comrades were warned repeatedly that the invasion you had craved for so long would be a disaster. Some of the warnings came from within the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Perhaps you hoped you would somehow escape the disgrace of your role in the assault on Iraq by building of a "strong record" at the World Bank, an institution that has inflicted its own share of misery on vast swaths of humanity.
If so, that hope has now been smashed to bits.
As you reflect on your options, you have perhaps thought more than once of committing suicide.
Please stay with that thought. In your case, it’s a good and appropriate idea.
You should face some cold facts. Your name is now written forever in the historical record as a leading war criminal and (at best) as an incompetent and delusional imperialist.
Now you are known as a clown who couldn’t retain his gift job at the World Bank – because (on the surface at least) of some shenanigans with your “girlfriend.”
What do you have left to make some sort of honorable mark on history? Japanese culture has long suggested an honorable way out for people in powerful positions who have failed and shamed themselves on such a grand scale.
If it’s any consolation, you are hardly the only individual who should be asked to consider suicide for playing key roles in designing, executing, advancing, and/or profiting from the invasion of Iraq. I’d suggest much the same for Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Tommy Franks, Condaleeza Rice, Lewis Libby, Doug Feith, Colin Powell, Bill Kristol, and a large number of others, including the CEO’s of leading defense and media firms like Boeing, Raytheon. Lockheed-Martin, NBC, FOX News and so on…it’s a long list.
Still, your name is very high on the roster of those who deserve to die for the crime of the Iraq invasion.
Doing the right thing here will take courage. You should move quickly.
I don’t see you following in Robert McNamara’s long-lived “Fog of War” footsteps.
That’s just not your style. You’re a man of action and bold moves.
And besides, he had a much better stretch than you at the Bank.
Sincerely,
Paul Street
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate