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Charles Freeman: scalped by Israel lobby for talking sense on Middle East
Freeman has been vetoed by a the Israel lobby for talking sense on the Middle East
Charles Freeman is a career diplomat who rose quickly through the ranks. Now he has been banished to the wilderness, taking with him a good few high hopes for a new regime in Washington's Middle Eastern foreign policy.
As the man who translated for President Nixon in his 'realpolitik' trip to China, in 1972, and who then rose to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman's fate has been a mere sideshow overshadowed by President Obama's struggles with the economy.
At first, nobody noticed when the new director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, nominated Freeman for chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, the man who sorts fact from fable before advising the President.
Freeman thinks both sides are to blame for the mayhem in the Middle East
It is a crucial role, particularly in US dealings with the Middle East. And Freeman's views on Israeli policy towards Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general have presented an insurmountable obstacle.
Freeman thinks that both sides are responsible for the mayhem in the Middle East. He blames Israel for seizing Palestinian land and destroying their homes, just as he blames Palestinians for provoking battles by rocketing civilians and deploying suicide bombers.
"Left to its own devices," he argued in 2006, "the Israeli establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all associated with them and enrage those who are not." And today he says: "Israel is driving itself towards a cliff, and it is irresponsible not to question Israeli policy and to decide what is best for the American people."
This might sound rational, or even self-evident, but not to a surprising number of very powerful people in Washington and New York, who stepped out from behind the curtains to "derail" Freeman with remarkable effectiveness.
It turns out that ‘precooked pablum judgements’ are just what is wanted
Their success has been seen as the first real blow to land on Obama from the scattered remains of the neo-cons who pulled Dubya Bush's strings, and were supposed to have been consigned to history by the American voter. It also exposed the nastiest spat for years between the assorted organisations which make up the Israel Lobby and anyone deemed to be opening a chink in the armour of beleaguered Israel.
Dennis Blair told the Senate that Freeman was just what the country needed because his "inventive mind" and seasoned views would produce accurate intelligence rather than "precooked pablum judgements".
However it turns out that precooked pablum judgements are just what is wanted. Senator Charles Schumer of New York, a Democrat, called the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and accused Freeman of an "irrational hatred of Israel".
New York Congressman Steve Israel, another Democrat, demanded an investigation into "possible conflicts of interest" in Freeman's diplomatic relationships with China and Saudi Arabia. Steven Rosen of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee declared that Freeman's views were "what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry". And so on, from the Zionist Organisation of America to the National Jewish Democratic Council. Eventually they got their way.
His views may be more nuanced than many in America because Freeman has lived an unusually cosmopolitan life far from both the Wild West of Dubya Bush and Dick Cheney and the intense communities of America's immigrant Jews.
Born in 1953, he spent his first 13 years in the Bahamas, where his father ran a business. At school in America, he got a scholarship to Yale, and then went to both the National University of Mexico and Harvard Law School. He joined the US Foreign Service to spend his career far from America's back yard: China, Taiwan, Thailand, the Africa desk at headquarters at Foggy Bottom, and then Saudi Arabia as George Bush the elder launched his war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.
Since retiring, Freeman has served briefly as Assistant Secretary of Defense, and he has been president of the Middle East Policy Council think tank which, the Israel lobby noted, received a $1 million donation from a Saudi prince. Neo-cons point out that from 2004 to 2008 he served on the board of the China National Offshore Corporation, which smells of treachery to them.
Unusually for a diplomat, Freeman has a habit of saying what he thinks. After 9/11 he got into hot water for suggesting that the country would benefit from asking "what might have caused the attack". In 2005, at a Washington conference on Iran, he added: "I simply want to register what I think is an obvious point: namely that what 9/11 showed us was that if we bomb people, they bomb back."
Freeman is now committing the political faux pas of identifying his attackers as the Israel lobby, and castigating them. "The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."
He once wrote for the New York Times, perhaps untactfully, that "no American politician ever lost an election by speaking too fondly of Israel or too poorly of the Palestinians".
Freeman may be underlining his own point. Unquestioning supporters of Israeli policy have been worrying about President Obama's commitment to their cause ever since he campaigned on the idea of talking to the enemy.
His White House is now reported to be relieved to have been spared disharmony. And as Freeman disappears into the Washington Negev, looking for work, Obama himself says nothing. ·
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Comments
The one qualification NOT needed to prepare Intel summaries is that of a spook. If WWI proved nothing else, it was that war is too important to be left to generals. To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To a spook, everything looks like a threat - I've never known a good agent, nor analyst, who was sane/normal but that is their forte, unblinking acuity, a form of autism.
However, too many time serving Jobsworths infest all bureaucracies and will write and believe (like DA's Electric Monk) anything necessary to further their careers and pander to their political masters - of any hue, shameless in their meretricious mediocrity.
that is precisely why the Convener/Overseer of Intel needs to have both feet in the real world, not that of reflecting mirrors and partisan politics.
Freeman served, with distinction, Nixon, Raygun, Bush I, Clinton and no doubt would have done sterling work for Shrub, had he not been a creature of morally myopic neo-cons and the raving right Xtian Armageddonists.
In your rush to defend Freeman, and not at all coincidentally, to demonize Israel, you overlooked the one real issue that killed his nomination. Freeman has zero experience in the intelligence service. He was a career diplomat, not a spy. The One Big Lesson learned from the intelligence failures of 9-11 is that the intelligence services must be de-politicized. Appointing a partisan careerist from Foggy Bottom with no background in intelligence gathering or analysis was precisely the wrong thing to do. Given Freeman's cozy financial relationships with both China and Saudi Arabia, it would be a leap of faith to assume he would provide objective analysis. The US needs an unbiased professional in this crucial job, not a man known for his outspoken views.
Interesting article and posts. Don't know this guy Freeman, but if what the article said is true, then he sounds like a reasonable guy. What always baffles me though, is those people who confuse criticism of Israel with AntiSemitism. Its a hollow cry. Israel has done a lot that it should not be proud of, indeed that it should be ashamed of. Two wrongs don't make a right. In any case the bloody period that created Israel was also when modern day terrorism was invented. Not many want to shout that out to the world.
Yet another moral equivalancist bites the dust. When will people learn that anti-semitism leads to Nazi regimes, and that the Arab States have a long, bitter, history of anti-semitism. Can anybody remember Nazi Germany and the Mufti of Jerusalem (the guy who raised an anti-Jewish brigade from Bosnia in the second world war? The main purpose, and the written purpose of the Hamas in Gaza and Arabs everywhere is to push Israel into the sea and massacre the Jews.
If President Obama does not lead Mr Freeman out of the Negev, he will have shown very early on that he is a lame duck president just like his predecessor.
There can be no peace in the middle east unless firmness and even handedness is shown to both sides.
In particular the moderate element of the Iranian state cannot join up with us in supressing global extreemists like the wabbists, without somesort of open agreement.
In the world of Washington politics, Israel is king. No one dare question the policies of Israel and truth be told, if done so, your career is ruined and done with.
I am part Jewish, I am not a self-loathing Jew, I honour the part of me that is Jewish, yet I question the political and foreign policy of America towards Israel.
The blind backing of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is not
conducive to continued relations with the Middle East and will only cause more heartache for a people that have been shunted aside for political reasons.
Ambassador Freeman, more than most understood the need for
a balanced and equitable policy towards the Palestinians, he was and is today one of the few sane voices in Washington.
To disparage a man, like him, who has given his life for our country, is to disparage the idea that one can rise above one's station and serve honourably and with dignity.
The actions of AIPAC and all the rest of the Zionist groups, are not honourable and they are certainly not going to cause equitable treatment of the Palestinian cause by America's foreign political service. This should not and should never again
happen that a president caves into the Israeli lobby in the manner which has just happened.
My praise goes to Ambassador Freeman for his forthright and honourable service to America and to the cause of freedom and democracy in the world. Even in Israel, where today they are fast becoming an authoritarian state that squelches any dissent form their views, even in places as far flung as America.
So kind of all of you to be expecting that the black man would, like countless before, be willing to sacrifice himself for "Massa"
Sorry, it does not work like that anymore. There is absolutely NO need for Barack Obama to say or do anything- the process of appointment took place, Freeman was denied a place.
The same is true of countless others. In this case, the reason was a claimed "anti-semitism". Some other nominees to positions were denied because they did not pay tax! All of maybe US$500 worth, 10 years ago!. Where was your outrage then? Shouldn't the President have stood up for those nominees too? Do you think he was cowardly or mean to not do so?
Of course, Barack is supposed to stand up MORE for Freeman than he did for any other Nominee...WHY? Because you are waiting for him to PROVE that he is worthy by FIGHTING THE DRAGONS of Jewish hysteria or Palestinian Fanaticism?
Well, he just showed YOU! He is President, not the Messiah- and since you did not expect much of him any way "I for one had few illusions about this latest great whitish hope" what are you waiting for? He will not save you from your own muck...go wallow in it.
Well Phillips would wouldn't she, rather a mark that someone is a decent, fair, honest person if the Toxic Hater attacks them. But it's said to be anti-semitic to criticise Israel or even talk about the power of the Jewish lobby in the US, so the First Post is probably due for some attacks now. Will it publish Phillips' over the top misanthropic opinions again I wonder.
Freeman sounds like a reasonable man, pity Obama doesn't have the courage to put his actions where his mouth is, but that's usually true of politicians, and I for one had few illusions about this latest great whitish hope.
It's getting crowded under that bus where President
Obama throws the discards no longer useful to him. Fortunately, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is there to offer the last rites, this time for Charles W. Freeman Jr., may peace
be on him.
Mr. Freeman is the well-paid shill for the Saudis and the Chinese who was stopped just before he was to assume the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, where he would have directed the preparation of intelligence briefings for the president and other high government officials - an official largely responsible for what the president should know and when he should know it. The appointment does not require Senate endorsement and the White House apparently figured it
could slip him past whoever was not looking.
Mr. Freeman, to put a fine point on it, does not like the Israelis very much. He comes out of the State Department, where bagels and lox are not a big breakfast favorite in the cafeteria, and was once a mediumhigh official at Foggy Bottom, a "principal deputy assistant secretary" to somebody who rides to the office in one of the longer limousines. (The State Department is fond of titles too long to fit on a calling card.) Mr.
Freeman doesn't like anybody who makes trouble for China very much, either, particularly if they're demonstrating for democracy at Tiananmen Square or Tibetans struggling to get their country back.
Fortunately, it occurred to a few key Republicans and several Democrats that he was a very odd choice for the job. The Republicans were mostly Christians, the Democrats were mostly Jewish, and it's a shame this is important but Mr. Freeman's friends on the left are trying to make this a religious issue. It's time to blame the Jews again, this time for ruining poor Mr. Freeman's new career as the chef in charge of cooking the
intelligence served in the Oval Office.
Mr. Freeman has had a long if not distinguished career in berating the Israelis for struggling for survival and
apologizing for Chinese repression of dissidents struggling only to breathe free. In a speech in 2005 he described Israel as the aggressor in the Middle East, and two years later accused the United States of "embracing Israel's enemies as our own." He apparently "forgot" that Israel's enemies had on terrible
occasion made themselves enemies of the United States, with their suicide-bomber attacks on targets in the Middle East and finally on the Twin Towers on September 11. But blame the Jews, anyway.
When Mr. Freeman surrendered to the inevitable and withdrew his name from consideration he distributed a two-page rant casting himself as a martyr to Jewish perfidy and treachery, done in by a Jewish lobby whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and decency." These Jews are "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government."
Blaming "lobbyists," whether Jewish, Catholic or Presbyterian, is an odd excuse for Mr. Freeman, who is himself a lobbyist. He runs a think tank, the Middle East Policy Council, with money supplied by Saudi Arabia, which he lovingly describes as a kingdom ruled by the beneficent "Abdullah the Great," and serves on the board of a Chinese government-owned oil company. He may regard his description of Chinese
repression of Tibetan demonstrators as a "race riot" as noble advocacy, but anyone else can recognize it as
lobbying. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Mr. Freeman has his defenders. Nearly all on the left, naturally. The Nation magazine decries "a thunderous coordinated assault" on him; Professor Stephen Walt, the dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and author of an earlier screed against "the Israeli lobby," called the citations (all accurate) of Mr. Freeman's work "a despicable smear campaign" for "some rather mild public criticisms of Israeli policy." Mr. Freeman's critics, the professor says, intended to force him out of the job. Hmmmmm. Well, yes, that was
the idea.
What really bugs Mr. Freeman and his friends is that he was recognized for who he is. "I think their goal is not to stop me but to keep others from speaking out," he said on the way out, just as the door was about to bang him on the butt. Nobody has tried to shut up Mr. Freeman, his defenders or his detractors; it's the public noise, the noise that the elites no longer control, that did him in.
Elsewhere, occasional First Post opinionista, Melanie Phillips is crowing about Freeman's withdrawal in her usual unpleasant/unhinged ad hominem way, calling him "..scum floating on a sea of sewage."