Goodbye, but not good riddance

For some people, the humiliation of Paul Wolfowitz, who atthe end of this month will step down as president of theWorld Bank after allegedly showing favoritism for his femalecompanion, Shaha Ali Reza, was his second defeat at thehands of the Middle East. The interpretation is tendentious,but it’s true that Wolfowitz paid the price in Washingtonfor his involvement in the Iraq war. And that was theproblem. Wolfowitz’s legacy will long be debated by historians, muchlike that of Robert McNamara, who was defense secretaryduring the Vietnam war, before being named as head of theWorld Bank. Yet where McNamara spent decades ploddingthrough personal atonement for the war he had played a keyrole in sustaining, Wolfowitz has never doubted himself, orallowed anguish to push him to the edge of mental collapse. That is what seemed to irritate so many employees at theBank, after the Bush administration named Wolfowitz toreplace James Wolfensohn. Here was a