Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Post has a great editorial on just how bad a nomination Freeman was, and showed himself to be: Blame the 'Lobby': The Obama administration's latest failed nominee peddles a conspiracy theory
FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration's National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask -- as numerous members of Congress had begun to do -- whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.
It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel -- and his statement was a grotesque libel.
For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn't bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- was incensed by his position on dissent in China.
But let's consider the ambassador's broader charge: He describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.
What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that "it is not permitted for anyone in the United States" to describe Israel's nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges -- and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.
Not surprisingly, the 'Zionist owned' New York Times takes the exact opposite tack: Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post. They can't choke fast enough.
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, p.39
Amazing. One gets the impression NYT never bothered to read what Freeman actually said let alone investigate his background.
But then they apparently do not consider Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah outre either.
What has happened to this once great paper?
On the other hand the WaPo piece was brilliant.
The editors of NYT actually saw fit to highlight this bit of antisemitic tripe:
.EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?) March 12, 2009 12:10 pm
Link
The United States is chock full of lobbies and special interest groups, from the NRA to the Sierra Club, from the American Medical Association to Citizens for Science in the Public Interest. Everyone is free to express their opinion, to petition the government, and to participate in the political process.
Everyone except, apparently, American supporters of Israel. Their activism is, according to most of the posters here, somehow illegitimate. Further, when the so-called Israel Lobby is successful, that is not evidence of the validity of their arguments, but a shameful consequence of their money and power.
No, no anti-Semitism here, just ordinary, decent Americans who resent how the Jews secretly control the country and subvert the public good to their own selfish ends.
— Mark, Philadelphia
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/12/washington/12lobby.html
Good lord - no antisemitism indeed - "Jews secretly control the control and subvert the public good to their own selfish ends" - nah - that isn't antisemitic -
Nah. Couldn't be - a comment like THAT recommended by the editors of the New York Times?
Surely this was intended as satire, right?
OK, I'm incorrect - it is intended as a rebuke to the many comments which sincerely make those claims.
It's getting hard to tell these days.
The NYT bears some responsibility for this.
Sophia,
The NYT has always been against things Jewish in one form or another ever since the owners attempt at garnering acceptance from those disliking Jews by "integrating" and converting.
Read Ed Lasky's articles:
The New York Times and the Jews
The New York Times and the Jews (2)
The Times story is purely a conscious editorial decision: "Hey, do a story on Chas Freeman and play up the Lobby angle."
The Times is angling to be the print version of Counterpunch.
Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper
Karl Pfeifer in a comment at Z-word:
"Antisemitic Propaganda played an important role in Nazi anti-American propaganda in 1941. Roosevelt’s “senseless” path of intervention was explicable only by reference to “a very powerful clique of political and financial power holders” who wanted to “save Jewish Anglo-Saxon democracy.” Theodor Seibert, Das amerikanische Rätsel: Die Kriegspolitik in der Ära Roosevelt (The American Riddle: The War Policy of the USA in the Roosevelt Era) Berlin, 1941 p. 63
"The same author attributed Churchill’s opposition to Nazi Germany to his “intimate personal” links to Rothschild in London. Churchill had “used his Jewish connections across the Atlantic to threaten the English people with Washington’s anger” if they refused to support war against Germany. He wrote that it was “no longer necessary to offer proof” that Roosevelt’s policies were not in the American interest but instead supported “purely Jewish interests.”"
An exact parallel? No. Though an analog, indicative of similar personal and social psychologies, rationalizations, reductions, etc.; a tell-tale indicator of note.
Well I wrote (another) long letter to the Public Editor at the crack of dawn so it's probably inarticulate and full of spelling errors - but I mentioned my dismay at the incomplete coverage of this matter and also their attempts to shade certain repressive regimes and militias as "not terrorists" because some of them were (sort of) elected and/or because they do some charitable work besides attacking civilians with rockets and/or because they aren't actually Nazi concentration camps (cf Roger Cohen).
This seems to be the new European idea, which is an old European idea where Jews are involved (check out the 1930's but also the Bevin government postwar).
I don't understand why an American newspaper would think it's edgy or cool let alone objective to adopt such an editorial stance.
It isn't objective or neutral - in fact it's clear they've chosen a side and it isn't the side of democratic values, equal rights for women and minorities and gay people as well as freedom of religion and secular, open government.
Israel in this context is actually a side issue - it's the broader context of human rights which somehow is being colored using Israel's struggle as a straw man.
Nevertheless real Israelis and real Jews and of course real people around the world - including Palestinians - Lebanese - Iranians - Saudis - Africans - Asians - suffer and die because of such "neutrality".
Indeed giving cover to despotic regimes, with whom we're frequently in business alas, is part of the "realist" philosophy and it isn't one of our finer qualities as a nation. Certainly a newspaper, charged with at least trying to be troothy, should step back a bit and look at the bigger picture.
Indeed a series on the impact of the oil lobby on American politics would make good reading, would it not? And so would an investigation into the scary rise of antisemitism since 9/11. That in itself is counterintuitive - so who or what is driving the conspiracy theories?
When liberal institutions like newspapers or universities apologize for fascism - whether political, economic or religious - it means a society has gone bottoms up, has been corrupted from within.
And - such a stance can hardly be said to reflect "neutrality" - it actually helps perpetrate the violence. Thus giving credence to regimes which repeatedly threaten to "wipe Israel off the map" or "drive the Jews into the sea" and start wars and launch rockets at children - and simultaneously describe counterattacks designed to stop the terror in terms more suitable to descriptions of WWII - to the point of turning the Shoah inside out - that creates more violence because of the publicity value of terror.
Certainly - when a person connected to regimes which routinely violate human rights can blame Israel for the terrorism and wars against it (and us) and simultaneously describes a demonstration in Tibet as a "race riot" - when such a person is suggested for a high intelligence position within an administration supposedly dedicated to "change" - that story deserves thorough and honest coverage and we sure didn't get it from the NYT.
Finally - whatever happened to values? Don't we have some core values as a society? Don't institutions which make a living based on the fact that freedom of the press is a pillar of that society have some responsibility toward those pillars, our open and priceless democracy and others like it?