[Peace-discuss] Freeman & bound minds
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Tue Mar 17 01:03:36 CDT 2009
[It may be that far too much is being made of the case of Chas Freeman, a
conservative "realist" and a bit of a blowhard, from his TV interviews. The
Israel Lobby's contribution to his withdrawal is not much of a victory -- and it
surely is no evidence that partisans of Israel are able to influence USG policy
in any way contrary to the interests of US domestic power centers -- what we
call "the US national interest." (If Obama is as clever as his partisans think,
maybe he set up Freeman -- whom he obviously didn't care much about -- to make
the Lobby break cover...)* --CGE]
Published on Monday, March 16, 2009 by TomDispatch.com
Is the Israel Lobby Running Scared?
Or Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys
by Robert Dreyfuss
Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps,
running scared?
Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman affair this week, it
might seem as if the Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly,
however, the controversy over Freeman could be the Israel lobby's Waterloo.
Let's recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that
Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national
intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence
Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence
community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are
called "national intelligence estimates" on crucial topics of the day as
guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar
resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia,
and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War,
and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.
A wry, outspoken iconoclast, Freeman had, however, crossed one of Washington's
red lines by virtue of his strong criticism of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Over the years, he had, in fact, honed a critique of Israel that was both
eloquent and powerful. Hours after the Foreign Policy story was posted, Steve
Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), launched what would soon become a veritable barrage of criticism of
Freeman on his right-wing blog.
Rosen himself has already been indicted by the Department of Justice in an
espionage scandal over the transfer of classified information to outside parties
involving a colleague at AIPAC, a former official in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon,
and an official at the Israeli embassy. His blog, Obama Mideast Monitor, is
hosted by the Middle East Forum website run by Daniel Pipes, a hard-core,
pro-Israeli rightist, whose Middle East Quarterly is, in turn, edited by Michael
Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. Over approximately two weeks, Rosen
would post 19 pieces on the Freeman story.
The essence of Rosen's criticism centered on the former ambassador's strongly
worded critique of Israel. (That was no secret. Freeman had repeatedly denounced
many of Israel's policies and Washington's too-close relationship with
Jerusalem. "The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation
shows no sign of ending," said Freeman in 2007. "American identification with
Israel has become total.") But Rosen, and those who followed his lead, broadened
their attacks to make unfounded or exaggerated claims, taking quotes and emails
out of context, and accusing Freeman of being a pro-Arab "lobbyist," of being
too closely identified with Saudi Arabia, and of being cavalier about China's
treatment of dissidents. They tried to paint the sober, conservative former U.S.
official as a wild-eyed radical, an anti-Semite, and a pawn of the Saudi king.
From Rosen's blog, the anti-Freeman vitriol spread to other right-wing,
Zionist, and neoconservative blogs, then to the websites of neocons mouthpieces
like the New Republic, Commentary, National Review, and the Weekly Standard,
which referred to Freeman as a "Saudi puppet." From there, it would spread to
the Atlantic and then to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, where
Gabriel Schoenfeld called Freeman a "China-coddling Israel basher," and the
Washington Post, where Jonathan Chait of the New Republic labeled Freeman a
"fanatic."
Before long, staunch partisans for Israel on Capitol Hill were getting into the
act. These would, in the end, include Representative Steve Israel and Senator
Charles Schumer, both New York Democrats; a group of Republican House members
led by John Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, and Eric Cantor of Virginia,
the Republican Whip; seven Republican members of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence; and, finally, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who engaged in
a sharp exchange with Admiral Blair about Freeman at a Senate hearing.
Though Blair strongly defended Freeman, the two men got no support from an
anxious White House, which took (politely put) a hands-off approach. Seeing the
writing on the wall -- all over the wall, in fact -- Freeman came to the
conclusion that, even if he could withstand the storm, his ability to do the job
had, in effect, already been torpedoed. Whatever output the National
Intelligence Council might produce under his leadership, as Freeman told me in
an interview, would instantly be attacked. "Anything that it produced that was
politically controversial would immediately be attributed to me as some sort of
political deviant, and be discredited," he said.
On March 10th, Freeman bowed out, but not with a whimper. In a letter to friends
and colleagues, he launched a defiant, departing counterstrike that may, in
fact, have helped to change the very nature of Washington politics. "The tactics
of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include
character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the
record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth,"
wrote Freeman. "The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through
the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of
its views."
Freeman put it more metaphorically to me: "It was a nice way of, as the Chinese
say, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys." By destroying his appointment,
Freeman claimed, the Israel lobby hoped to intimidate other critics of Israel
and U.S. Middle East policy who might seek jobs in the Obama administration.
On Triumphs, Hysterias, and Mobs
It remains to be seen just how many "monkeys" are trembling. Certainly, the
Israel lobby crowed in triumph. Daniel Pipes, for instance, quickly praised
Rosen's role in bringing down Freeman:
"What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East Forum was the
person who first brought attention to the problematic nature of Freeman's
appointment," wrote Pipes. "Within hours, the word was out, and three weeks
later Freeman has conceded defeat. Only someone with Steve's stature and
credibility could have made this happen."
The Zionist Organization of America, a far-right advocacy group that supports
Israel, sent out follow-up Action Alerts to its membership, ringing further
alarm bells about Freeman as part of a campaign to mobilize public opinion and
Congress. Behind the scenes, AIPAC quietly used its considerable clout,
especially with friends and allies in the media. And Chuck Schumer, who had
trotted over to the White House to talk to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief
of staff, later said bluntly:
"Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against
Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I
repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right
thing."
Numerous reporters, including Max Blumenthal at the Daily Beast website and
Spencer Ackerman of Firedoglake, have effectively documented the role of the
Israel lobby, including AIPAC, in sabotaging Freeman's appointment. From their
accounts and others, it seems clear that the lobby left its fingerprints all
over Freeman's National Intelligence Council corpse. (Indeed, Time's Joe Klein
described the attack on Freeman as an "assassination," adding that the term
"lobby" doesn't do justice to the methods of the various lobbying groups,
individuals, and publications: "He was the victim of a mob, not a lobby. The mob
was composed primarily of Jewish neoconservatives.")
On the other hand, the Washington Post, in a near-hysterical editorial, decided
to pretend that the Israel lobby really doesn't exist, accusing Freeman instead
of sending out a "crackpot tirade." Huffed the Post, "Mr. Freeman issued a
two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a
shadowy and sinister 'Lobby'... His statement was a grotesque libel."
The Post's case might have been stronger, had it not, just one day earlier,
printed an editorial in which it called on Attorney General Eric Holder to
exonerate Steve Rosen and drop the espionage case against him. Entitled "Time to
Call It Quits," the editorial said:
"The matter involves Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former officials
for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC... A trial has been
scheduled for June in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Virginia. Mr. Holder should pull the plug on this prosecution long before then."
In his interview with me, Freeman noted the propensity members of the Israel
lobby have for denying the lobby's existence, even while taking credit for
having forced him out and simultaneously claiming that they had nothing to do
with it. "We're now at the ludicrous stage where those who boasted of having
done it and who described how they did it are now denying that they did it," he
said.
Running Scared
The Israel lobby has regularly denied its own existence even as it has long
carried on with its work, in stealth as in the bright sunlight. In retrospect,
however, l'affaire Freeman may prove a game changer. It has already sparked a
new, more intense mainstream focus on the lobby, one that far surpasses the flap
that began in March, 2006, over the publication of an essay by John Mearsheimer
and Steven Walt in the London Review of Books that was, in 2007, expanded into a
book, The Israel Lobby. In fact, one of the sins committed by Freeman, according
to his critics, is that an organization he headed, the Middle East Policy
Council, published an early version of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis -- which
argued that a powerful, pro-Israel coalition exercises undue influence over
American policymakers -- in its journal.
In his blog at Foreign Policy, Walt reacted to Freeman's decision to withdraw by
writing:
"For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful
'Israel lobby,' or who admitted that it existed but didn't think it had much
influence, or who thought that the real problem was some supposedly all-powerful
'Saudi lobby,' think again."
What the Freeman affair brought was unwanted, often front-page attention to the
lobby. Writers at countless blogs and websites -- including yours truly, at the
Dreyfuss Report -- dissected or reported on the lobby's assault on Freeman,
including Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe at Antiwar.com, Glenn Greenwald in his
Salon.com column, M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Peace Forum, and Phil Weiss at
Mondoweiss. Far more striking, however, is that for the first time in memory,
both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran page-one stories about the
Freeman controversy that specifically used the phrase "Israel lobby," while
detailing the charges and countercharges that followed upon Freeman's claim that
the lobby did him in.
This new attention to the lobby's work comes at a critical moment, which is why
the toppling of Freeman might be its Waterloo.
As a start, right-wing partisans of Israel have grown increasingly anxious about
the direction that President Obama intends to take when it comes to U.S. policy
toward Israel, the Palestinians, Iran, and the Middle East generally. Despite
the way, in the middle of the presidential campaign last June, Obama recited a
pro-Israeli catechism in a speech at AIPAC's national conference in Washington,
they remain unconvinced that he will prove reliable on their policy concerns.
Among other things, they have long been suspicious of his reputed openness to
Palestinian points of view.
No less important, while the appointments of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of
state and Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff were reassuring, other appointments
were far less so. They were, for instance, concerned by several of Obama's
campaign advisers -- and not only Robert Malley of the International Crisis
Group and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who were quietly
eased out of Obamaland early in 2008. An additional source of worry was Daniel
Shapiro and Daniel Kurtzer, both Jewish, who served as Obama's top Middle East
aides during the campaign and were seen as not sufficiently loyal to the causes
favored by hardline, right-wing types.
Since the election, many lobby members have viewed a number of Obama's top
appointments, including Shapiro, who's taken the Middle East portfolio at the
National Security Council, and Kurtzer, who's in line for a top State Department
job, with great unease. Take retired Marine general and now National Security
Advisor James L. Jones, who, like Brzezinski, is seen as too sympathetic to the
Palestinian point of view and who reputedly wrote a report last year highly
critical of Israel's occupation policies; or consider George Mitchell, the U.S.
special envoy to the Middle East, who is regarded by many pro-Israeli hawks as
far too level-headed and even-handed to be a good mediator; or, to mention one
more appointment, Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell and now a
National Security Council official who has, in the past, made comments sharply
critical of Israel.
Of all of these figures, Freeman, because of his record of blunt statements, was
the most vulnerable. His appointment looked like low-hanging fruit when it came
to launching a concerted, preemptive attack on the administration. As it
happens, however, this may prove anything but a moment of strength for the
lobby. After all, the recent three-week Israeli assault on Gaza had already
generated a barrage of headlines and television images that made Israel look
like a bully nation with little regard for Palestinian lives, including those of
women and children. According to polls taken in the wake of Gaza, growing
numbers of Americans, including many in the Jewish community, have begun to
exhibit doubts about Israel's actions, a rare moment when public opinion has
begun to tilt against Israel.
Perhaps most important of all, Israel is about to be run by an extremist, ultra
right-wing government led by Likud Party leader Bibi Netanyahu, and including
the even more extreme party of Avigdor Lieberman, as well as a host of
radical-right religious parties. It's an ugly coalition that is guaranteed to
clash with the priorities of the Obama White House.
As a result, the arrival of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is also
guaranteed to prove a crisis moment for the Israel lobby. It will present an
enormous public-relations problem, akin to the one that faced ad agency Hill &
Knowlton during the decades in which it had to defend Philip Morris, the hated
cigarette company that repeatedly denied the link between its products and
cancer. The Israel lobby knows that it will be difficult to sell cartons of
menthol smooth Netanyahu-Lieberman 100s to American consumers.
Indeed, Freeman told me:
"The only thing I regret is that in my statement I embraced the term 'Israel
lobby.' This isn't really a lobby by, for, or about Israel. It's really, well,
I've decided I'm going to call it from now on the [Avigdor] Lieberman lobby.
It's the very right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here. And
Avigdor Lieberman is really the guy that they really agree with."
So here's the reality behind the Freeman debacle: Already worried over Team
Obama, suffering the after-effects of the Gaza debacle, and about to be burdened
with the Netanyahu-Lieberman problem, the Israel lobby is undoubtedly running
scared. They succeeded in knocking off Freeman, but the true test of their
strength is yet to come.
© 2009 TomDispatch.com
Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in
Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the
author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist
Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and
Mother Jones.
[* No, I don't really believe that...]
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