Soccer Dad

Crying wolfie yet again

What happens when you make a bad investment and lose a large amount of your hard-earned money? You go to a columnist and give him your sob story in the hope that it will make others look worse than you do.

That what James Wolfensohn did when he complained about the Bush administration to James Hoagland.

Wolfensohn's version says he had to fight his way into key meetings over the opposition of Rice and National Security Council staff member Elliott Abrams. That led to Wolfensohn's staff of 18 being fired without his being consulted and in apparent retaliation. "I was stupid for not reading the small print," Wolfensohn said. "I was never given the mandate to negotiate the peace." He assumed -- wrongly -- that contributions toward that end would be welcomed.

Never given a mandate? Is the man deluded? Here's what I wrote about him in the past:

Wolfensohn is treated as some sort of expert about the Palestinian economy. He, of course, donated a substantial sum of his own money to the PA, only to see it go for naught. At another point he said that Israel wasn't doing enough to promote the PA even after withdrawing from Gaza. Israel eventuall opened the Rafah crossing only to see terrorists enter Gaza from Egypt and Wolfensohn said nothing.

Wolfensohn showed a lot of misplace optimism about how ready the Palestinians were ready to develop a civil society and make peace with Israel. He even bet his own money on the project. And he was proved wrong. Maybe he was fired and undermined because he still believed in the tooth fairy. His record shows that he wasn't exactly the most realistic player in assessing the Middle East.

It's too bad he lost his money but that's a reason not to take his whining at face value. I would have told him it was a bad investment, but no one's listening to me.

Technorati tags: James Wolfensohn, Hamas, Israel.