For those of you dropping by chez Nadezhda from the World Bank today, welcome. Not surprisingly, there are quite a number of you! If you're interested in a discussion of today's reactions from around the globe as well as what the Wolfowitz nomination means for the Bank's future, we're following it here in a comment thread and updates. We'd be especially interested in getting some of the reactions of Bank staff, so please feel welcome to join in the discussion. {And some further discussion here and here.} nadezhda

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{original post, Oct 25 2004}

I've suspected for some time that Paul Wolfowitz is far more interesting and less ideologically rigid than he's been made out to be. This fascinating New Yorker profile and some quick googling turned up this article:

In fact, there is a woman from whom Wolfowitz does draw support and backing for his views, but she comes from a very different — and unexpected — background. His closest companion and most valued confidantes is a middle-aged Arab feminist whose own strongly held views on instilling democracy in her native West Asia have helped bolster his resolve.

Shaha Ali Riza is a senior World Bank official who was born in Tunis, grew up in Saudi Arabia and holds an international relations masters degree from St Anthony’s College, Oxford. Close acquaintances of the couple have told The Daily Telegraph that she is romantically linked with Wolfowitz, 61, a fellow divorcee with whom she has been friends for several years.

Even by the discreet standards of Washington’s powerful inner circle, it is a remarkably closely guarded secret. They rarely go out as a couple openly or demonstrate affection publicly, according to friends who are aware of the relationship. They attend low-key Washington social events and visit friends’ homes together and Riza also sometimes goes to official functions and dinners with him, but is not identified as his partner, an acquaintance said.

“Most people would never guess there was a relationship, even if they saw them together,” he said.

It is a sign of the sensitivity surrounding the relationship that the few friends willing even to acknowledge it last week did not want to be named. “Shaha Riza runs around with Wolfowitz a lot. I gather she is his current girlfriend but they are very careful about this,” said one.

As far as I know, this hasn't been denied.

I also found this strange page that asserts that Riza is under surveillance by some strange combination of the Mossad and the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

Bizarre world we live in.

Warning, this is not a thoughtful post. This is a cranky post.

In "Time for a Rethink?" praktike offers a review of positive comments and views from the liberal or "left" part of the American political universe on the encouraging signs of political change in the Middle East. Though he points out some of the continued weaknesses of the Bush Administration's policies, he calls on opponents of the neocon approach to Iraq to get behind those Bush policies we can support. Time to be constructive.

This is not a new theme for prak, and it's an approach I've consistently endorsed. I've advocated elsewhere that opponents of Bush's foreign policy nonetheless give vocal support to specific policies that are consistent with what we ourselves would be promoting if the Bush team weren't still running the show.

With those principles in mind, I have been supportive of the shifts being made gradually over the past six months by the military field commanders in both strategy and tactics. I have been supportive of the shift in approach which appears to have been adopted by the US embassy since the handover to the interim government at the end of June. My most recent endorsements of Bush policies have included supporting the Iraqi elections and the Administration's broad strategy toward Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. I have repeatedly cautioned against reproducing a domestic Vietnam-style polarization. To my way of thinking, an America polarized by foreign policy debates is a dangerous America for the rest of the world. But I have also vigorously opposed the disinformation campaigns that the Bush Administration waged as part of the presidential campaign or the gamesplaying with military budgets and force planning. So I want it understood that these comments are not an attack on prak's overall intentions which I share.

Two things have me seriously out of sorts. First -- and more on a personal level than anything I suppose -- I am quite resentful of the notion that somehow, as a vocal critic of the Bush policies regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I have something to explain or apologize for. I don't think I'm misreading the subtext, even coming from those who aren't engaging in the recent rounds of "traitors on the left" triumphantalist hyperbole. The suggestion seems to be that if as critics we "can't admit we were wrong," we're being partisan or we're somehow not for democracy and freedom. That it's our lot to accept the "olive branch" offered by the David Adesniks of a bipartisan policy based on "democracy promotion." Gracious in defeat, don't you know.

Sorry, if there is an olive branch to be offered by the victorious, it should in point of fact be extending the other direction, from those of us who have long advocated policies that the Bush Admnistration is only now begining to adopt. I am eager to be magnanimous in victory, but it appears quite unlikely that my branch will even be acknowledged by the Administration's supporters, let alone accepted by a foreign policy team that's never made a mistake.

This brings me to my closely related second source of crankiness. The so-called "left" is being diverted by the unnecessary self-justifying squawks that have been coming out of the liberal hawks. Those who opposed the first Bush Administration shouldn't be wasting time squabbling on who was more right or more wrong about the war. They should be joining together now be saying to the new Bush team, "Glad you guys have finally come to your senses. Nice to have you back on board." We should be looking forward, trying to make sense of this post-Iraq world that's starting to emerge, to see what we think about the current Administration's priorities and policies as they are starting to take shape.

As I see it, the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq adventure have represented a severe dis-continuity in American foreign policy, and we're now returning to something approaching our normal balance. This is an idea that requires a much longer and more developed essay that's still rummaging around in my brain. For purposes of this discussion, let's simply focus on the issues of political change (not other elements of global politics like NATO or environment, trade etc).   more »