The Assault on Chas Freeman

I went to prep school with Chas Freeman and have watched his career with awe.

When I met him he spoke no foreign language. He started spanish at Milton and within 12 months scored an 800 SAT. He studied chinese at Yale and within a decade was Nixon’s main translator on the trip to China.

The young Chas was brilliant, kind, and reasonable. I suspect his unwillingness to play the Washington game prevented him from being a secretary of state. I have no reason to believe that he would ever compromise his positions to achieve financial or career gains.

It is also time to resume the relative balance that existed before George W. Bush gavee veto power
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Just thought you’d like to know about the typo.
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It sounds like a “team of rivals” kind of appointment.

I want to defend the broader conservative objection and suggest respectfully that Mr. Klein misses the point. The problem is not that Freeman thinks outside the box, nor of course that he is critical of Israel. The problem is that Freeman appears to side instinctively against America and with whichever dictatorship currently sponsors his lifestyle–and this gives him a simplistic and frankly deluded perspective. Read his speech on China here (http://www.mepc.org/whats/MaoZedong.asp), and comments on 9/11 here (http://sandbox.blog-city.com/chas_freeman_911_september_11.htm). Freeman lavishes praise on the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China, serves as their most devoted apologist, and seems to devote the greater part of the speeches he gives in those countries to slandering the United States in a one-sided manner.
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For instance, Freeman assures us that any concern that China’s growing military might act offensively is “delusional.” How does he know this? Because Mao instilled the Chinese people with the ideal of a “people’s war,” and this is “inherently defensive.” That’s his argument. Never mind Tibet, both in Mao’s time and recently. In fact, the fear of military aggression is just ginned up by the US in order to justify expanding the olde “military-industrial complex.” He also says Hezbollah is devoted to the “people’s war” concept. Is that why it was launching attacks against Israel? Freeman always assumes that we are lying and all other countries, even the most authoritarian regimes, are telling the truth.
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Further, “China is popular in no small measure because it now stands against us in its opposition to coercive diplomacy,” in its “rejection of the notion of humanitarian intervention, and insistence on adherence to the norms of international law.” (Nevermind international law on human rights, political rights, animal rights…never mind China’s trade with Sudan, arms sales to dictators, etc.). China is “the staunchest defender internationally of once purely European stipulations about the sovereign equality of states.” That this might be China’s effort to prevent other countries from imposing on China such petty notions as the freedom of religion is not considered. The speech has barely a critical word for China.
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Then there are his statements that 9/11 was caused by our support of Israel (even though, before 9/11, he said al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the Israel issue). Our support of Israel surely further inflames many against us, but it’s one of many causes, and not a major one, of al-Qaeda’s hatred of the US.
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So, sorry for the long post, but the problem is precisely that Freeman is *not* a contrarian, and does *not* speak with candor. He parrots the lines of, and shows the same simplistic views as, the propagandists of the state press in authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia and China.
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(And by the way, a friendly note: the adjective is “loath,” while “loathe” is the verb.)

pietr96 – thank you for your comment. One of the joys of blogs is connecting to a community of people, many of whom actually know true things.

It’s fairly obvious the neo-cons have no real “love” for Israel. The Israeli conflict is a convenient excuse to boost the military industrial complex, keep a conservative fear machine moving to generate votes, and placate the whacky-doodle Christian far right that believe all Jews will spontaneously combust into Christian donators.
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I have no concept of what the average Israeli or Palestinian on the street is thinking except that people far away are playing pinball and they’re the bumpers. No matter what deals are made in Washington, no matter what political posturing and photo-op headline sprays out, the real-time real-thing $-it hits them.
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It depresses me that we have another “expert” on this crap all lined up for reloading. Decades of folks that know everything but solve nothing because they don’t boil down the human nature factor in any of this and make it work for the long haul. Just as with the stockmarket, if people believe that tomorrow will be slightly better than today then everything changes. The whole problem with the “solutions” to the entire Israeli conflict has been the idea that the only way to feel better about your future is to make sure someone else feels worse about theirs.

ahitophel
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You have been hoodwinked by the Weekly Standard in regards to Freeman’s feelings on China. First of all it wasn’t a speech, it was an email on a private listserv which is not really something that is ever supposed to be published but Mike Goldfarb, journalist that he is, decided to post it on his blog at Bill Kristol’s NeoCon outfirt “the Weekly Standard”. I have been posting this in different places around the blogosphere to try to get the genie back in the bottle at least in places where reasonable people sojurn so I will do it again here.
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First I strongly suggest everyone read this post from Spencer Ackerman.
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http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/03/06/balancing/
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Second I want to point out that his post was published in a pretty cowardly way by the NeoCon outfit the Weekly Standard. Anytime Bill Kristol’s spot is the main source for a piece of information I would be suspicious. Apparently listservs are not normally what would be termed fair game when it comes to reporting and this was an email not some official “report” that Chas Freeman wrote up. Ackerman describes it as talking out loud. I am not familiar with listservs so I will defer to his description.
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Third allow me to post what he actually wrote about China and the Tienamen Square incident on the same listserv IN CONTEXT with my own emphasis in a couple of places.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/03/freeman_in_context_on_china_ti.asp
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Of course, the US should maintain the capacity to intervene in the Western Pacific, not just with respect to the Taiwan issue but with respect to Indonesia-Australia and other potential conflicts involving our interests as well. Do you know anyone who advocates not doing so? With our defense spending now over half that in the world, it is, in any event, pretty hard to generate a lot of worry about our capabilities in this regard.
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I have, until recently, been among those most outspoken in tolling the warning bell about the possibility of Sino-American conflict over Taiwan. All signs seemed to me to point toward a Chinese decision, faute de mieux, to use force to resolve the issue when the prospects of success seemed good and Taiwan and the US had been lulled into a mood that would facilitate surprise. More recently, I have noted a conclusion by the Chinese leadership that the use of force will not be necessary. I think that is a credible judgment on their part and that armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait is therefore now less likely than in the past and, given sensible policies on our part and some measure of self restraint in Taiwan, will become still less likely in future. Notwithstanding this judgment, however, I think we must keep our powder dry. So we have no disagreement on that score.
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But I take issue with the “facts” on which you rest your conclusions. On your facts:
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(1) I can’t imagine there was no surprise to the Chinese offensive against Vietnam. (At least, although not working on China per se at the time, I was not in the least surprised by it.) The Chinese had repeatedly warned Vietnam that continued empire-building in IndoChina would draw a forceful response. They gained the tacit support of some sections of the USG for their decision to make good on this warning. Having demonstrated that they could take Hanoi, QED, they withdrew and then quite cynically used the artillery and infantry duel on the border as live-fire training to battle-harden the remainder of their flabby post Cultural Revolution, internal security-oriented forces. This was a classic use of force for diplomatic purposes. It is very hard for me to condemn it while endorsing our uses of force in Grenada, Libya, or Panama not too much later. Great powers do what they must. There is nothing particularly insidious about the Chinese in that regard.
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(2) The attack on “unarmed students” at Tian’anmen (actually at Muxudi and Fuxingmen and other locations outside Tian’anmen) came after many weeks, even months, in which the Chinese leadership had lost control of security in their own capital. (The troops were, in fact, fired upon at Muxudi, though it is not clear by whom.) The only surprise to me (and other realists, including, I gather, you) was that the Chinese leadership did not act earlier to restore order. We would have done so, judging by the precedents set by MacArthur and our National Guard over the decades from 1920 – 1950. The main lesson those leaders who survived the affair have drawn from it, in fact, is that one should strike hard and strike fast rather than tolerate escalating self-expression by exuberantly rebellious kids. If June 4 tells us anything about the Chinese leadership it is that they are reluctant, often to the point of rashness, to resort to the use of force against their fellow citizens.
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(3) I am frankly stunned that you would argue that China has not “become more tolerant of dissent” in recent years. No one can have spent any time at all talking to ordinary people in China over the past two decades and have this view. Of course, outright opposition to rule by the Chinese Communist Party continues to draw a sharp response from the authorities. No government, including our own, is or should be asked to be prepared to tolerate efforts to overthrow it and the constitutional order it administers. (Ironically, despite our ideological predilections to believe the contrary, I am aware of no evidence that Chinese currently consider their government less “legitimate” or worthy of support than Americans do ours — but I defer to [name redacted by TWS] and other experts on this.) Certainly, China continues to fall far short of our minimal expectations for human and civil rights in many respects but it has made very significant progress on many levels. To deny this is primarily to raise questions about the extent to which one has been able to observe readily observable reality…
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Now I could also point to both the actions of the police in southern states acting as agents of the government using firehoses and dogs on people protesting for Civil Rights along with the recently released OLC memos pointing to President Bush preparing to institute some form of martial law after 9-11 including undermining the free speech of the press as well as targeting Americans without granting them their rights under the Constitution as proof positive that Freeman was pretty on point when describing what our own country would have done in the face of the Tienamen Square situation in China.
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Make no mistake about it, most of the criticism coming at Chas Freeman eminates from NeoCons and their lobby. Sometimes you just have to peel back the layers. Their opposition has absolutely nothing to do with his position on China and absolutely everything to do with his criticism of Israel.

my formatting screwed up but the paragraph starting under the Weekly Standard should start the quoting and the paragraph ending with “To deny this is primarily to raise questions…” should have been the end of the quoting.

Joe Klein:
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On what basis do you label Andrew Sullivan a “very reliable source“?
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This is from Andrew Sullivan’s famous piece in London’s Sunday Times:
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It is also quite clear that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East must be ramped up exponentially,its intelligence overhauled, its vigilance heightened exponentially. In some ways, Bush has already assembled the ideal team for such a task: Powell for the diplomatic dance, Rumsfeld for the deep reforms he will now have the opportunity to enact, Cheney as his most trusted aide in what has become to all intents and purposes a war cabinet. The terrorists have done the rest. The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

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It is worth noting that one could not have possibly been more wrong than this.
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Sullivan went on for years doing whatever he could to rhetorically link opposition to the invasion of Iraq with whatever traitorous image buzz-words he could, as in this representative excerpt from his blog on April 30, 2003:
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If you want further evidence that Galloway is guilty, here’s a piece by Scott Ritter, defending him. I wonder if Galloway will decide to sue the Telegraph now, after all. And I wonder if the anti-war movement could be more damaged. (The news is also retroactively embarrassing for Diane Sawyer, who cited Galloway as emblematic of British anti-war sentiment earlier this year.) When I first mentioned the possibility of a fifth column, I presumed it would be fueled by ideological fervor. I didn’t contemplate it could be fueled by the mighty dollar. You’ve got to love these Marxists, don’t you?

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The reckless, thoughtless, feverish viciousness with which Sullivan conflated even realist foreign policy-based opponents like former National Security Advisor (under George H. W. Bush) Brent Scowcroft with historically discredited Marxists can truly be said without hyperbole to have been McCarthy-esque.
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To his great credit, Andrew Sullivan did what most of the political press corps could and did not: he very publicly said that he was wrong only five years after his initial egregious commentary, and only three years into the war. He did so in a fairly (and typically) foolish way:
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Regrets? Yes. But the certainty of some today that we have failed is as dubious as the callow triumphalism of yesterday. War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will. And sometimes the darkest days are inevitable–even necessary–before the sky ultimately clears.

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, but he said publicly what many (most) could not bring themselves to fulfill their duties as journalists and Americans by saying:
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We have learned a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis and several thousand killed and injured American soldiers than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response to that is not more spin but a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me. All this is true, and it needs to be faced.

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But, necessary apologies aside, it can be reasonably said that there is nobody apart from those still hoisting the banner of neo-conservatism less reliable than Andrew Sullivan. In fact, this is such common knowledge that blogger Ezra Klein said so quite reasonably in a blog post about Sullivan’s thoroughly tarnished and discredited record on health care issues:
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It’s a peculiar quirk of Washington that repeatedly being wrong doesn’t harm your reputation for accuracy or prescience. Indeed, if you leverage your poor predictive abilities correctly, and always stay in a safe mainstream, they can even do something more important: Make you seem courageously honest.
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Sullivan hangs his hat on a reputation for honesty that comes because he constantly shifts his opinions as each, one after the other, is proven flagrantly incorrect, and the mainstream moves to reflect that. Then Sullivan spends a lot of time writing about his anguished evolution, and eventually settles in the new center. This was true of Bush, true of Iraq, true of some of the largest issues of our time. It’s telling, though, that when wrong opinions serve his career, as happened in the case of No Exit or The Bell Curve, then honesty is subsumed beneath a higher value: “Provocation.” Sometimes the truth is dull, or politically marginal. At those times, being honest and being provocative conflict. And we’ve seen which Sullivan chooses when pressed. It makes him, to be sure, a fun and interesting writer. One I rather like to read. But it doesn’t leave him in a position to throw stones at the integrity of others.

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None of this is to say that Andrew Sullivan is wrong when he writes (from your quote):
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The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner.

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It is unfortunate for Andrew Sullivan, engaged news consumers and the state of American political discourse, however, that he himself has been one of the clearest examples of that “suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment” one can find:
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But what the terrorists are also counting on is that Americans will not have the stomach for the long haul. They clearly know that the coming retaliation will not be the end but the beginning. And when the terrorists strike back again, they have let us know that the results could make the assault on the World Trade Center look puny. They are banking that Americans will then cave. They have seen a great country quarrel to the edge of constitutional crisis over a razor-close presidential election. They have seen it respond to real threats in the last few years with squeamish restraint or surgical strikes. They have seen that, as Israel has been pounded by the same murderous thugs, the United States has responded with equanimity. They have seen a great nation at the height of its power obsess for a whole summer over a missing intern and a randy Congressman. They have good reason to believe that this country is soft, that it has no appetite for the war that has now begun. They have gambled that in response to unprecedented terror, the Americans will abandon Israel to the barbarians who would annihilate every Jew on the planet, and trade away their freedom for a respite from terror in their own land.

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How can Sullivan possibly write about America’s reputation for honest brokerage of peace between third parties being harmed by a “suspension of independent judgment” with a straight face, given his enraged, absolute condemnation of a policy in which “the United States has responded with equanimity“?
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One has to wonder why you would choose to include Andrew Sullivan in a piece on the prospects for middle east peace, much less describe this person as a “very reliable source“, Joe Klein.
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One gets the idea that, at least in your lexicon, the true meaning of “very reliable source” is “one who very reliably agrees with whatever Joe Klein believes at the moment“.
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Was there really nobody more “reliable” than Andrew Sullivan that could be quoted for this piece, Joe Klein?
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Or, like much of the mainstream American press corps’ less engaged audience, are you simply never exposed to the work of those who have been truly and reliably correct about foreign policy for the past eight years?
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Thank you for reading and considering this commentary, Joe Klein.

There is quite a to do at The Washingtonnote where Mr Freeman’s son and Bush office holder entered a spirited defence of his father and undertook to punch certain detractors in the face. The comments section is a hoot. What surprised me is one commenter saying that American Jews have spent time in the Israel Army but have not served in the US Army. I read somewhere that Jeff Goldberg and Rahm the Man have also served with Isreal’s armed forces. No wonder our relations with Israel are so complex, complicated and looks to a lot of people like being one-sided in favour of Israel.

On the point about Mr Freeman’s Saudi connections: have those who take this up with vigour have a comment about the Bush-Baker connection with the Saudi Royal family via the Carlyle Group? There is a delightful picture of Bush 43 holding the hands of the Saudi King. Did they object to the tons of cash, now mostly disappeared, poured into Citigroup by Saudi princes?

The only DOW stock that has not fallen is Hypocrisy.

bitterpill
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And don’t forget Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador’s role in our run up to the war in Iraq. There are allegations that he was allowed to see top secret information specifically marked that foreign agents were not allowed to see it. And it supposedly was Rumsfield with Bush and Cheney in the room who let him see it. But nobody cares about that right? IOKIYAR rules again

Why is it all of Freeman’s advocates go to great lengths to change the subject and avoid addressing the many real issues and conflicts of interest that Freeman has which have nothing to do with his views Israel? What do Chinese dissidents or supporters of Tibet have to do with Israel or whatever? I’m not a big fan of the Washington Times, but at least the are covering this. Human Rights Watch is right (see their quote that Freeman is the wrong choice.) That’s got nothing to do with Israel.

The Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch said, however, that Mr. Freeman’s nomination sends the wrong message.

“A capacity to make moral distinctions may not be a prerequisite for being a good intelligence analyst,” Tom Malinowski said. “But for such a high-profile appointment, it would still be wise for President Obama to weigh the message sent by choosing someone who has so consistently defended and worked for the clenched fists the president so eloquently challenged in his inaugural address.”

And then the below in today’s paper.

Washington Times
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Rights advocates oppose Freeman
Eli Lak

Advocates for Chinese human rights are urging President Obama to reject the nomination of Charles W. “Chas” Freeman Jr. as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, citing Mr. Freeman’s defense of the Chinese government’s crackdown on democracy activists.

The letter challenges the narrative of many of Mr. Freeman’s defenders, who argue that pro-Israel groups have sought to torpedo the nomination because Mr. Freeman has criticized Israeli policies and chaired an educational institution that received Saudi funds.

The 87 signatories of the letter to Mr. Obama include several Chinese citizens who participated in the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananman Square, including Dan Wang, Gang Liu and Danxuan Yi.

“Mr. Freeman has a longstanding record of defending China’s authoritarian regime,” the letter says. “In his view, for example, China’s nationwide democracy movement in spring of 1989, which protested government corruption and embraced international norms of human rights, was only the ‘propaganda’ of ‘dissidents.’”

The Weekly Standard first published an e-mail from Mr. Freeman to a private list server that argued the Chinese government should have acted more swiftly to suppress the nonviolent demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 because of their threat to public order. The Washington Times has not been able to corroborate the e-mail, and Mr. Freeman has not responded to requests for comment.

The Times reported last week that the inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will begin a review of Mr. Freeman’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia. Members of Congress last week urged the inspector general to expand that probe to include Mr. Freeman’s position on the international advisory board of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair thus far has stood by the nomination, which his spokeswoman said was made by Mr. Blair without consulting the White House. The review of Mr. Freeman’s ties to foreign entities is expected to take about a month.

Mr. Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, senior envoy to China and high-level Pentagon official, has many defenders who say he is extremely well-qualified to supervise the drafting of assessments by the nation’s intelligence community.

His son, Charles Freeman, a former trade official for former President George W. Bush, wrote Saturday on the blog Washington Note that while he differed with his father on political issues at times, his father’s appointment “is being challenged these days by a small cabal of folks that believe first and foremost in the importance of allegiance to Israel as a core U.S. priority.”

He added that his father enjoys provoking controversy and is “scary smart … a curmudgeon with a stiletto for a mind. He has the capacity to force the intelligence community to begin asking the questions that need to be asked, as opposed to the questions that they think will generate the answers that best suit the political framework that may have generated the question.”

tommyvl: No problem with examining Mr Freeman’s record. My problem: when Marty Peretz, Kirchik and assorted pro-Israel people get involved and the Weekly Standard leads the charge then I know that something smells bad. We owe China tons of money and we are going to challenge them on Tibet? We have our own Bagrams and Guantanamos. The days of lecturing the Chinese about human rights are over. Those NGOs who are disappointed should know that you can’t threaten the guy who holds your promissory notes.
The only thing I know is Marty is leaning so far to the right on his pro-Israeli stance that he is going to fall into the Atlantic. May the currents ensure that he lands on Israel’s shore, eventually.

” ..At the same time, there was the rabid opposition of the professional Jewish community ..

There we go again.

JK, we can discuss USA’s foreign policy and the pursuit of our foreign policy objectives without predicating it to the whims and whines of foreigners, can’t we?

Is the USA, our USA, a colony of Israel – such that we MUST always be mindful of what Israel will condone?

[Gosh! Once upon a time, we, the world' superpower, were in some hostilities with Israel while prosecuting our AMERICAN foreign policy objectives in the Middle East. Israel willfully, and with malice, fired on Americans in the Mediterranean - and killed many. Yes, they killed Americans. Have they paid brutally for it? Apparently not - and hence this ongoing imposition ..

JK, do you suppose that the master-ally relationship would be clearer now (and the Middle East a lot quieter) if the USA, your cherished homeland, would have exerted its power more forcefully then - say by going for "regime change" and eradication of Israel's "hateful ideologies"?]

[I hate this preview in real time ..]

Never heard of the guy until now, but Klein and his links seem to cover the ground nicely. Even dispensing with that, as I loath (thanks, ahithophel) neocons and the destruction they have caused to our country and even to Isreal, there could be no higher recommendation for Freeman than that the neocons don’t like him.

Yeah that great bastion of journalism the Washington Times. I wonder if they have figured out whether President Obama is a natural born citizen yet BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH. By the way Joe Klien you can expect a lot of first time commenters today that will blast you and continue to bring up China. It has happened all over the net. Greg Sargent’s blog, Spencer Ackerman’s blog, hell even on dailykos. I have done my part, hopefully people will actually read the post and the comments and make their mind up for themselves. But somehow every time Freeman’s name comes up on a blog, here come the NeoCons who of course claim they are not neocons but concerned Americans

sgw: do you know if Israel and China have an arms sales agreement in place. I know Israel sold arms to South Africa during the apartheid years. I ask because there seems to be an outbreak of concern about China’s colonisation of Tibet (which is a sad story of pillage and incorporation); yet at the back of my mind I have this nagging feeling that Israel sells arms to China.

” .. we MUST always be mindful of what Israel will condone? ..”

Case in point – USA demographics:

Ethnicity:

German ————– 15.2%

African Americans ————- 12.9%

Jewish ———————- 2.2%

[Why aren't those who call Germany "cherished homeland" more vocal in how 'german' USA's policy should be?]
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USA, By Religion(non-Christian):

Jewish ——- 1.4%

No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic ——— 8.4%

[Hey, you "no religion" people, wake up! Don't be 'left behind']

Some of the neocons who have bankrupted this country in the name of Israel with their blind support of it – Daniel Pipes, Feith, Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Seth Lipsky, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Richard Cohen, Mortimer Zuckerman, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Goldberg, Lawrence Kaplan, Charles Krauthammer, David Horowitz, Jonah Goldberg, David Gelernter, Ruth Wisse, David Brooks, Charles Schumer and David Frum.

Confronting the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, JINSA,WINEP, ADL, PNAC , AEI, JDL matters and should be done, now.

It is unacceptable that our leaders are not free to put American interest first for fear of the political reprisals of a foreign nation’s lobbyist.

It is unacceptable for the Israel Lobby to falsify, manipulate and color our beliefs of who is our “enemy” and who is our “friend” ” by deliberate obstructionism and McCarthyism.

The Israel Lobby to subvert our foreign policy appointees in their supposed interest, at the expense of our real interests, is a clear and present danger to the United States.

We give Israel 10 million dollars a day. That money is funding apartheid and the illegal settlements when we need the money here at home.

Why don’t we put it to vote and see how many Americans and world citizens want to continue supporting the world’s biggest welfare client, Israel ?

sgwhiteinfla, I was not quoting from the listserv message. I was quoting from the speech Freeman delivered to the SAIS China Forum on October 11, 2006, as you would have seen if you had followed the first link.
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If you had followed the second link, you would have seen that a part of the problem is that Freeman appears to say whatever suits his purposes at the time. Prior to 9/11 he said that the Israel issue had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but afterward, when serving as a sort of lackey for Saudi Arabia, he blamed al-Qaeda’s hatred of us on our support for Israel. That is not “candor,” it’s opportunism.
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Or, to take the China issue, it’s pretty hilarious to read what you posted and then read the speech I cited, where he absolutely denies that China would ever take up arms over Taiwan, or really that the Chinese military would ever act aggressively. It further proves the point that he will bend over backwards to placate authoritarian regimes. You really cannot read the adulatory things he has said of the Saudi rulers and come to any other conclusion.
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And for your information, I don’t read the Weekly Standard (and I’m not Jewish, if that interests you). But as I understand it, someone who had been on the listserv sent the message to Michael Goldfarb. He posted it. A listserv is not exactly “private.” But in any case this sort of thing happens all the time; remember when liberal Congressional staffers were pulling Republican documents off of a shared computer system and feeding them to the press? And what does that have to do with whether Freeman should be appointed? As we all know, what someone says when he thinks it’s a “private” conversation is more representative of his true beliefs.
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What’s interesting to me is that many on the left seem to be supporting Freeman for no other reason than because many conservatives oppose him. That’s not a very careful thought process. Think what your reaction would be if the person who would be preparing the intelligence Bush read was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. This guy has too many alliances to too many authoritarian regimes; can’t we find someone better?
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Anyway, I invite you to compare the speech with the text you pasted.

I don’t know Freeman except for some of his written stuff. And it is perfectly reasonable to check his record – something that is bring undertaken now. But I find it strange that the fully paid up members of the pro-Israel lobby are leading the charge. Now, if it was a group which was connected to the Dalai Lama or Taiwan it would make sense. But the list of Marty Peretz look alikes who are leading the charge tells me something smells. And it ain’t roses.

ahitophel
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Well seeing as how when I clicked your link it went to a “File Not Found” page maybe you could just do us all a favor and cut and paste the text of his “speech”. Funny how a lot of “evidence” against Freeman has been disappearing all over the net. Hmmm I wonder why

ahithophel, I don’t agree with your take on Freeman but I do appreciate your reasoned evidence-based approach. And you definitely raised some good points that I haven’t heard. We need more conservatives to join us in the reality-based community here on Swampland. BTW, I think the same is true of some of the right-wing sites which don’t attract reasonable well-informed commenters on the left. The blogosphere has a tendency to segregate along ideological lines, with some sites having rational conservatives and other sites having rational progressives, and few sites attracting both.
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It’s nice to read your discussion with SG; last weekend Swampland was dominated by a vehement argument between people who are clustered in the same small area of the political spectrum. At least now there are real substantive disagreements!
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stuart, thanks for that excerpt of Ezra Klein on Sullivan. I think it’s amazing on a psychological level how Sullivan can be so wrong so many times and yet be absolutely certain that his new opinions are right.

SG, you just have to delete the ) at the end of the URL.

bitter
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No I don’t know about an Israeli/China connection.

Thanks, Rose, for clarifying that about the link. I was trying to figure out why it didn’t work for SG. In any case, I agree with you entirely about the division of the net into echo chambers. I came here to make a post a few weeks ago, and most of the responders seemed incensed at me, but a few appreciated having a different perspective presented in, I hope, something resembling rational argumentation. After that, I committed to coming here periodically, rather than hanging out entirely in places where everyone agrees. I think we’re duty-bound to seek out the most persuasive expressions on both sides of the issue, so I thought I should walk the walk.
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What concerns me even more is that we no longer just disagree on the interpretation of facts, but liberals and conservatives seem to be constructing entirely different visions of what the facts are–and I think the division of “news” sources into conservative and liberal is partly responsible for this. People, conservatives or liberals, should not just be given the information that agrees with their viewpoint. If we can’t agree what “reality-based” means, it’s hard to see how we can make progress on how to respond to reality.
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And yes, the conservative sites I frequent tend to draw liberals who are, I think, fairly young, and more interested in sloganeering and name-calling. It only does a disservice to their side (as immature conservatives do for us with their trollish responses on sites like this).

It’s nice to read your discussion with SG; last weekend Swampland was dominated by a vehement argument between people who are clustered in the same small area of the political spectrum.
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Said argument included Rose herself.
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And, shockingly, I somewhat agree with ahithophel here – I haven’t seen any reason yet to support Freeman’s selection. I’ll reserve judgement until I hear what kind of job he’s doing.

Cliff, oh sorry I thought that was implied! But ahithophel wasn’t hear last weekend so I probably should have made that clear…
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ahithophel, agreed. Although I’m young (as is Cliff) and I’m not sure that youth is correlated with sloganeering and name-calling.
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Maybe in the summer I’ll comment on one of the right-wing sites. Any suggestions?

[...] in Daily life, Government, Obama administration at 11:29 am by LeisureGuy Good column by Joe Klein, which begins: I’ve been loathe to join the argument about whether the veteran [...]

He sounds like a smart guy, and it’s good to have someone who knows China, since this reflects shifting global realities and our shifting strategic needs. But presumably there are plenty of intelligent people with experience in the foreign service or in intelligence-gathering. Why choose someone who seems to have so many unsavory affiliations?

We heard that Timothy Geithner was just so smart an so talented that we had to have him, even if his tax history cast some doubt on him. Well, I don’t think anyone’s blown away by Tim Geithner so far. Few people are really indispensable, and my impression is that Chas Freeman is not one of those people.

Thanks rose83. Now on to the speech
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China still, however, presents a political model that is not in the least attractive internationally, even to those countries that have become dependent on the Chinese. This will be the case as long as China does not develop a system that gives its citizens a more direct, more visible, and more credible role in selecting their leaders and in formulating and overseeing the implementation of policy. The economic advances of recent years have laid the basis for a gradual political opening that is now overdue. In its absence, China will continue to experience levels of corruption and disrespect for human rights that constantly irk its people and intermittently bring disrepute upon it abroad. Aside from limiting China’s international and regional influence, such political backwardness poses a threat to the process of opening and reform that have been the keys to its stunning advances in recent decades. All things being equal, these advances should continue. But nowhere is it written that this must be so.

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Thats a pretty good part of the speech to keep in mind but now I will delve into the allegations. I guess the first one is about Chinese military might. I among other regulars on this thread recognize how our country’s military spending dwarfs others including China and I agree just on common sense alone that China does not challenge us militarily all by themselves. But lets see how “irrationsal” Freeman was on the subject.
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China does seem determined to invest in modernizing its still relatively backward armed forces to be able to deter others from attacking it as we and many of its neighbors have in the past. Speculation that China should and will aspire to be a “peer competitor” of the US military is, however, made in the USA, not made in China. Threat analysis is, of course, the mother of all defense spending, and Americans are really good at both. Having a potentially formidable high-tech enemy is a great fund-raiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make and our armed forces love to employ. And, in all fairness to purveyors of the China threat, China may yet emulate us by developing the means to invade faraway countries and use gunboat diplomacy against them, or actually do both. But back in the real world, so far, it hasn’t; and there is no hard evidence that it plans to.

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Well well well, Freeman actually allows for the possibility that China MIGHT actually become a theat and emulate of all people the US. Sounds reasonable. What about the second charge. I guess its about the hypocrisy on international law.
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China is popular in no small measure because it now stands against us in its opposition to coercive diplomacy directed at changing the domestic policies of other nations, rejection of the notion of humanitarian intervention, and insistence on adherence to the norms of international law.
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There is, of course, a great irony in this. China, an Asian nation that long headed an explicitly hierarchical state system, is now the staunchest defender internationally of once purely European stipulations about the sovereign equality of states. The People’s Republic of China, a state created in explicit opposition to the norms on which we and other western nations built the world order we dominated, has emerged as a stalwart defender of that order against American and other western second thoughts about it. We have new ideas; China has taken up our old ones. As Beijing’s global influence continues to grow, I wouldn’t bet on Washington;’s current radicalism prevailing over China’s conservatism. The east wind may indeed prevail over the west, though with results opposite to those Chairman Mao imagined.

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If you understand classical conservatism to be founded on non interventionist policies I think you would understand what he is getting at here. Especially when he laid out in the first quote of mine exactly the problems that China still faces.
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Finally on the issue of 9-11 which is really the issue of Israel. Lets look at the totality of what he said IN CONTEXT and see if we can figure out where he was wrong in his analysis
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ISRAEL
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Finally, let me allude briefly to the issue of Israel, a country that has yet to be accepted as part of the Middle East and whose inability to find peace with the Palestinians and other Arabs is the driving factor in the region’s radicalization and anti-Americanism.
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The talented European settlers who formed the state of Israel endowed it with substantial intellectual and technological superiority over any other society in the Middle East. The dynamism of Israel’s immigrant culture and the generous help of the Jewish Diaspora rapidly gave Israel a standard of living equivalent to that of European countries. For 50 years, Israel has enjoyed military superiority in its region. Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace.
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For almost 40 years, Israel has had land beyond its previously established borders to trade for peace. It has been unable to make this exchange except when a deal was crafted for it by the United States, imposed on it by American pressure, and sustained at American taxpayer expense. For the past half decade, Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle.
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The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests as well as those of Israelis and Arabs has caused the Arabs to lose confidence in the United States as a peace partner. To their credit, they have therefore stepped forward with their own plan for a comprehensive peace. By sad contrast, the American decision to let Israel call the shots in the Middle East has revealed how frightened Israelis now are of their Arab neighbors and how reluctant this fear has made them to risk respectful coexistence with the other peoples of their region. The results of the experiment are in: left to its own devices, the Israeli establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all associated with them, and enrage those who are not.
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Tragically, despite all the advantages and opportunities Israel has had over the 59 years of its existence, it has failed to achieve concord and reconciliation with anyone in its region, still less to gain their admiration or affection. Instead, with each decade, Israel’s behavior has deviated farther from the humane ideals of its founders and the high ethical standards of the religion that most of its inhabitants profess. Israel and the Palestinians, in particular, are caught up in an endless cycle of reprisal and retaliation that guarantees the perpetuation of conflict in which levels of mutual atrocity continue to escalate. As a result, each generation of Israelis and Palestinians has accumulated new reasons to loathe the behavior of the other, and each generation of Arabs has detested Israel with more passion than its predecessor. This is not how peace is made. Here, too, a break with the past and a change in course are clearly in order.
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The framework proposed by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at Beirut in 2002 offers Israel an opportunity to accomplish both. It has the support of all Arab governments. It would exchange Arab acceptance of Israel and a secure place for the Jewish state in the region for Israeli recognition of Palestinians as human beings with equal weight in the eyes of God, entitled to the same rights of democratic self-determination and domestic tranquility within secure borders that Israelis wish to enjoy. The proposal proceeds from self-interest. It recognizes how much the Arabs would gain from normal relations with Israel if the necessary conditions for mutual respect and reconciliation could be created.
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Despite the fact that such a peace is so obviously also in Israel’s vital and moral interests, history and the Israeli response both strongly suggest that without some tough love from Americans, including especially Israel’s American coreligionists, Israel will not risk the uncertainties of peace. Instead, it will persist in the belief, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that it can gain safety through the officially sanctioned assassination of potential opponents, the terrorization of Arab civilians, and the cluster bombing of neighbors rather than negotiation with them. These policies have not worked; they will not work. But unless they are changed, the Arab peace plan will exceed its shelf life, and Arabs will revert to their previous views that Israel is an ethnomaniacal society with which it is impossible for others to coexist and that peace can be achieved only by Israel’s eventual annihilation, much as the Crusader kingdoms that once occupied Palestine were eventually destroyed.
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CONCLUSION
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Americans need to be clear about the consequences of continuing our current counterproductive approaches to security in the Middle East. We have paid heavily and often in treasure for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel’s approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago, we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home. We are now paying with the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on battlefields in several regions of the realm of Islam, with more said by our government’s neoeonsenative mentors to be in prospect. Our policies in Afghanistan and Iraq are adding to the threats to our security and well-being, not reducing them. They have added and are adding to our difficulties and those of allies and partners, including Israel. They are not advancing the resolution of these problems or making anyone more secure. They degrade our moral standing and diminish our value as an ally. They delight our enemies and dismay our friends.

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Now that was from a speech given more than two years ago and if anything the recent military incursion by Israel into Gaza shows that Freeman is both prescient and pretty damn good in his analysis and prognostication. I don’t see anything at all wrong with it.

Cliff
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In all honestly I don’t know that I support Freeman either, but what I DO know is that phony ass arguments against him are starting to piss me off. If he has a money issue with the Saudis then lets go investigate it. If he has actually done something against our country’s best interest then lets investigate that. But lets NOT turn the guy into the boogie man just because he had the courage to criticize Israel. Thats where I am coming from.

Sorry, that should have read “None of this is to say that Andrew Sullivan is wrong when he writes in support of (from your quote):”

sg – I agree with you there, criticism of Israel shouldn’t be the issue to sink Freeman. But it sounds like there’s plenty of valid reasons to be skeptical about the guy.
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Here, specifically, is what I agree with in ahithophel’s posts:
What’s interesting to me is that many on the left seem to be supporting Freeman for no other reason than because many conservatives oppose him. That’s not a very careful thought process. Think what your reaction would be if the person who would be preparing the intelligence Bush read was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. This guy has too many alliances to too many authoritarian regimes; can’t we find someone better?

“moderates like Jeff Goldberg”

Was Judith Miller a moderate, too?

Cliff
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Find me some of those people on the left, prominent people that is, who are backing Freeman. Joe Klein I suppose comes close and so does Spencer Ackerman but mostly they are reacting to bullsh*t arguments AGAINST him not advocating FOR him. I don’t know if we have anybody else as skilled as Freeman or as willing to speak their mind as Freeman but I do know that he has an independent streak that I like. As far as authoritarian regimes we could say the same for our Secretary of State now since she has met with the leaders of China and Russia can’t we? I mean seriously the dude’s job was to be a diplomat and an ambassador, are we really to believe that any similarly qualified person WOULDN’T have some of those same ties? I don’t know if the word alliances is appropriate but there you are. Like I said I don’t see anyone supporting the guy on the Left and many on the left are more concerned with the money trail rather than China or Israel. Its a lot similar to how the left was a lot more concerned about Daschle’s ties to the health care industry instead of his tax problems.

Let’s face it: the neocon/NRO/Likudniks don’t want anyone in a position to influence US policy vis a vis Israel and Palestine who might take the view that BOTH sides have legitimate concerns about security: political and economic. Events in East Jerusalem and the building of new settlements tell us that some elements in Israel talk the talk while they condolidating and extending Israel’s control of Palestine’s space. Hamas shows us how tough it to deal with Palestinian “Likudniks”. Boy, these elements deserve each other. Why are we bothered?

sg – fine, whatever.

ahithophel:
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What’s interesting to me is that many on the left seem to be supporting Freeman for no other reason than because many conservatives oppose him.
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I hope that you realize that neither Joe Klein nor Andrew Sullivan can be accurately described by the term “the left” in any meaningful way, except perhaps in as much as they are to the left of Michael Savage or Ann Coulter.
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These are centrists, and not particularly moderate centrists, either.
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Today on Meet The Press, radical, populist rightist Newt Gingrich was paired on a supposed “economic roundtable” “opposite” US News & World Report’s Editor-in-Chief Mort Zuckerman, who is a moderate, elitist rightist:
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Conservative commentator
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In addition to his publishing and real-estate interests, Zuckerman is also a frequent commentator on world affairs, both as an editorialist and on television. He occasionally appears on The McLaughlin Group and writes columns for U.S. News & World Report and the New York Daily News, usually taking positions consistent with American conservatism on political matters. In the U.S., Mr. Zuckerman has many times stated proudly that he is a “conservative.” He supports mainstream Republicans such as Senator John Warner (to whose campaign he contributed $1,000 in 1995), and liberal Democrat but hawkish foriegn policy advocate Senator Joe Lieberman (to whose campaign he contributed $10,000 in 2006, when Lieberman was being strongly challenged by an anti-Iraq-War liberal Democrat, Ned Lamont).

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Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan are only very slightly to the left of Mort Zuckerman.
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Andrew Sullivan, like Lieberan-supporter Zuckerman, is a self-described “conservative”, having authored a book entitled “The Conservative Soul”. The reasons for his support of Barack Obama are unclear.
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Joe Klein, like Lieberman himself, is a centrist who has been quite terrified of the labels “liberal” and “left” being applied to himself for many, many years.
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I mention these facts simply to clarify that, while many on the left may, in fact, support Freeman, this post is not an example of that particular phenomenon.

ahithophel, you say that few people are indispensable. I agree and raise that proposition to nobody being indispensable. It doesn’t follow, however, that many people cause more harm than good and are better to be dispensed with. Bush had gangs of those kinds of people around him. For all your concern with China, Saudi Arabia, and other dictatorships, my concern is with my own country. It caused more harm during the Bush neocon era than all of the dictatorships you can name, added together. Little ol’ Isreal has committed genocide and countless war crimes in Gaza alone and continues to maintain a ghetto existence for those people as we blog away.
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Aside from the fact that the neocons, who have spent even the least credibility with me, don’t like him, I am also attracted to the fact that he doesn’t follow the foreign policy line to which you seem to subscribe. That is, worry and meddling with the internal affairs of other countries, and committing horrendous acts triggered by that worry.

[...] Read Klein here [...]

Joe Klein: “I think it’s absolutely necessary that the US government, finally, makes it clear when Israel is behaving badly (as Hillary Clinton did recently, when she chastised the Israelis for not allowing humanitarian supplies into Gaza).”
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Wow, that’s pretty bold Joe. “Bad country, bad!” Meanwhile, the US continues to funnel enormous sums of money and arms for the Israelis to behave, um, badly. Again, when it appears to be anything other than better PR at State, I’ll pay attn. And it won’t be to the perpetually evolving Kleins or Sullivans–it’ll be to blokes like this:
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/25/israel/index.html
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“It’s also worth noting that the Obama administration’s $900 million aid package to help re-build Gaza is itself politically risky. It’s true that there’s something simultaneously ironic, perverse and just about the aid package: Israel uses American weapons, massive amounts of American money and America’s diplomatic cover to devastate Gazan society, and then the U.S. bears the cost of repairing the damage wreaked by Israel and re-building Gaza. Nonetheless, that seems to be the least we can do (as J Street said in praising Obama’s aid package, ‘it is only a first step’).”
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Folks, who were right all along. I know this simply astonishes DC estab. centrists, but some of us out here perceive things right the first time, seeing through the patently false constructs harnessed upon the American electorate and media consumers, and get somewhat irked when our media superstars (add Friedman, please) have their Road to Damascus epiphanies, whitewashing their past sycophancy.

jcapan, the aid to rebuild Gaza would be funny if it weren’t preceeded by such tragedy. Causes me to wonder how much that amount of aid spent for humanitarian and peaceful purposes BEFORE the killing and meyhem would have helped. You point out the core of American foreign policy insanity.

Israel doesn’t have religious freedom. Like China, it persecutes people for proselytizing. Hundreds of thousands of Messianic Jews in Israel endure religious oppression everyday.

Can people please stop bringing up China’s behavior towards Taiwan and Tibet as examples of Chinese foreign agression. We may not agree but to the Chinese those places are PART OF CHINA. So from their point of view any means necessary to “bring them into the fold” have the same level of justification as the United States desire to keep the confederate states from breaking away.
(leave the slavery argument out of that example, that’s not what the war was about, not at first anyways)

SG, I’m glad that now we’re now looking at the same text, and thank you for your continued responses. If I spend 98% of a speech pressing toward one conclusion, and then in 2% of the speech allow that the other conclusion is remotely possible–apparently you’ll cite that 2% as proof that I was not claiming what I said in the 98%. I noted the portions you mentioned, but the clear sense of the speech is that no one has anything to fear from China and China is now a model citizen on the international stage (if somewhat “backward” in its method of choosing leaders). Do you know what I mean?
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Let’s look at a few of the things you highlighted. “China does seem determined to invest in modernizing its still relatively backward armed forces to be able to deter others from attacking it as we and many of its neighbors have in the past.” So he notes that China is building its military, but he only does so to dismiss any concern about it. Without any debate, he says that China has done this in order “to be able to deter others.” So he automatically takes the party line that building the military does not suggest any threat.
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Then he allows, “in fairness to the purveyors of the China threat” (whom he has just told us are “increasingly delusional” and lying in order to justify expansions of military spending), that it’s possible China may someday be a threat. “But back in the real world,” they’re not a threat and there’s no indication they will be. This is either delusional or deceptive.
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And you’ve gotta love it when Freeman breaks out the whip. This is really the one place in the speech where he comes anywhere close to criticism. China needs to give its people “a more direct, more visible, and more credible role in selecting their leaders.” Wow! That’s some hard-hitting material, isn’t it? Apparently the Chinese have an indirect role in selecting their leaders, but unfortunately it’s not highly visible.
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No mention of Tibet, of the brutal, systematic suppression of Falun Gong, of the continued persecution of Christians in house churches, of the imprisonment of political enemies, etc. I’ve spent about 6 months in China, and a good friend of mine has asylum because she spent years at a reeducation camp for speaking up against the government.
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The point is, Freeman has shown a tendency to reflexively blame America and exonerate anyone who opposes us. Either he’s gullible, too quick to believe what the spokesmen of the dictatorships tell him; or he’s saying what he thinks will please the Saudis or the Chinese or whomever. Neither option is attractive.
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This is not “a phony-ass argument.” What I find disingenuous is your attempt to pick out a few tossed-out qualifiers and claim that he’s not really saying what he clearly is.

Could Obama do more to prod Israel into attacking Iran?

For someone that YAPS a ton about peace, he’s about to inaugurate the greatest air bombardment since Dresden, when (not if) Israel decides they’ve had enough of the threats from Tehran and the lack of support from the Young Communists.

The left has elected teetering FOOLS — and many will die as a direct result.

= KENNEDY ACCOMPLISHED =

“…No mention of Tibet, of the brutal, systematic suppression of Falun Gong, of the continued persecution of Christians in house churches, of the imprisonment of political enemies, etc. I’ve spent about 6 months in China, and a good friend of mine has asylum because she spent years at a reeducation camp for speaking up against the government.
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The point is, Freeman has shown a tendency to reflexively blame America and exonerate anyone who opposes us. Either he’s gullible, too quick to believe what the spokesmen of the dictatorships tell him; or he’s saying what he thinks will please the Saudis or the Chinese or whomever. Neither option is attractive.”

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Obama’s quickly putting our security, and the world’s free future, at enormous risk.

Can the valid calls for his IMPEACHMENT be far behind?

Can the Hamas and Hezbollah thugs be anything but buoyed, by their apologists Freeman and Klein?

“I hope that you realize that neither Joe Klein nor Andrew Sullivan can be accurately described by the term “the left” in any meaningful way…”

Sweet Allah are we fudging tonight!

A few other responses. To stuartzechman, I only said that many liberals seem to be supporting Freeman because conservatives oppose him. I didn’t say that only those on the left are supporting Freeman–although the vast majority of his supporters are, I think, on the left.
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Besides, I would place Klein on the left. He’s a thoughtful liberal; he’s not extreme, but he is on the left. Sullivan will stand on the left whenever it allows him to oppose the dreaded “neocons.” He was once conservative. He may still (I don’t know) refer to himself as conservative, but not other conservative agrees with him.
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WisconsinLiberal, the original conquest of Tibet was not an internal affair; I could see that argument for the recent suppression, but not the original one. And I could even see the argument for Taiwan originally; Mao certainly felt that way. But a long time has passed, and the reason they want Taiwan now has much more to do with expanding their economic power and not wanting a US-supported Democracy right across the water.
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My general belief–call me crazy–is that when people are asking for political and religious freedom, human rights and the ability to vote for their leaders and hold them accountable, they should not be gunned down. Comparing this to the US Civil War is rather strained. If the South had been suffering violent oppression from the North, and was standing up for high ideals, then the analogy would be stronger.

A-Hit,
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Here’s a research project: Develop a comparison-contrast of the foreign conflicts China has been involved in since 1949 vis a vis the US. Further, look into the arms trade of the two regimes.
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No progressive is blind to China’s mixed (at best) record in Africa or their repressive policies against their own ethnic minorities, not to mention what I perceive to be the darkest chapter in human history (the cultural revolution)–nevertheless, there is a reason why most of the world sees the US as the single biggest threat to peace.
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Was it the dying prof in the Barbarian Invasions who said it best regarding American hypocrisy (think of this next time you venture to the singular “Holocaust Museum”:
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Rémy: Contrary to belief, the 20th century wasn’t that bloody. It’s agreed that wars caused 100 million deaths. Add 10 million for the Russian gulags. The Chinese camps, we’ll never know, but say 20 million. So 130, 145 million dead. Not all that impressive. In the 16th century, the Spanish and Portuguese managed, without gas chambers or bombs, to slaughter 150 million Indians in Latin America. With axes! That’s a lot of work, sister. Even if they had church support, it was an achievement. So much so tha the Dutch, English, French, and later Americans followed their lead and butchered another 50 million. 200 million dead in all! The greatest massacre in history took place right here. And not the tiniest holocaust museum. The history of mankind is a history of horrors.

Not to mention that it always seems that conservatives selectively choose human rights’ targets: China, Saddam, the Ayatollahs etc.
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Is there a pattern, perhaps strategically placed competitors in the great game? The bloody tyrants in Africa, those we coup(ed) into power throughout Latin America once upon a time. Oh, those pesky Persian theocrats–they lack rights. And god knows the Shah and his Savak, backed to the nails by US/big oil, were models of democracy and human rights.
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Bottom line, until America starts prosecuting their own war criminals, from Kissinger to W., they are in no position to lecture China or anyone else about human rights. Amnesty International can do it, but the moment Condy Rice or Hillary starts speaking up for the rights of man is the the moment the world starts laughing.

jcapan, I am highly, highly skeptical of the 200 million figure from Remy. But let me get this straight. You’re saying that America can’t advocate human rights because *in the 16th century* various European nations killed millions of natives of the Americas? Are you serious? This is before the Enlightenment, before the very concept of human rights had taken shape in the modern mind. That’s quite a reach, my friend. And then, yes, it is one of the great sins of America that its establishment of colonies and then its expansion westward was accomplished with blood. But that really has nothing to do with the question of what we, as a nation, should do now on the international stage. Pretty much every people has done violence against other peoples. If every country was required constantly to apologize for mistakes made centuries ago, well, that would just be ridiculous.
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I understand that you think that various American military actions were illegitimate and therefore they amount to war crimes. We could talk about that in detail some other time–it takes us pretty far afield. The question was about Chas Freeman and whether his devotion to certain countries gives him a blinkered view of things, or at least suggests that he has too many unsavory associations for us to trust him as the chief of our intelligence apparatus.
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You say “the world starts laughing” whenever an American figure “starts speaking up for the rights of man.” That’s quite an exaggeration. But, do we have a right to tell China that they should honor human rights? Yes, of course we do. Do we have a right to try to use diplomatic means to press China in that direction? Yes, of course we do. The bottom line: in the US you’re free to write the sort of things you’ve written, but if you wrote comparable things in China, you would be shipped off for five years in subsistence on a re-education farm. That’s no joke. That’s not just a rhetorical move on my part. It’s the reality.
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Or how about this? I dare you to watch it. I assume you believe in the humane treatment of animals, as I do. Check out what happens at Chinese fur farms, which have no standards of humane treatment as we do. We fail to enforce those standards universally, but at least we have those standards and mechanisms to hold people accountable. This is what China has: http://www.peta.org/feat/chineseFurFarms/index.asp
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Really, I dare you. Man up and watch it. Then ask yourself: do we have a right to tell the Chinese that they should stop this? Remember: even though we have standards of humane treatment, sometimes some Americans fail to fulfill them. Does that mean we can’t say anything? Of course not. We are *duty-bound*, given our ethical commitments to animals, to stop this sort of thing.
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So, given our ethical commitments to other human beings, aren’t we even *more* duty-bound to say something when they are being oppressed by an authoritarian government?

SG:
” .. Freeman is both prescient and pretty damn good in his analysis and prognostication. I don’t see anything at all wrong with it. ..”

Agreed. Pretty good weekend reading too.

” .. Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; ..”

Instead of “Israel” that should read “USA/Israel”.
The over $10,000,000 A DAY that the beleaguered American taxpayer throws away at Israel, indirectly funds Israel’s war machine. The funds enable that belligerent third world country to divert equivalent funds from providing health/ education/ agriculture/ commerce and other essential services into warmongering.
Case in point: If the USA imposes (comprehensive and determined) sanctions on Israel and cut off the flow of funds into that belligerent state, then for how much longer would Israel continue excelling at war?
OR
Suppose the USA – the neutral mediator – decided to be even-handed by remitting funds and shipping war materiel equal in value to what Israel gets from the USA into other belligerent states in the region …
[Consider the "MAD" principle. It worked, somehow. Of course, Israel will issue threats upon threats after plea after PLEA to christian gentiles in USA fail. Let them ...]

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” ..The suspension of the independent exercise of American judgment about what best serves our interests ….”
” .. the American decision to let Israel call the shots in the Middle East ..”

Did we say that CHANGE is coming to Washington?
So far, we are disappointed: The Obama administration seems to be walking the usual, failed, age-old subordinated walk as dictated by Israel. For instance: When faced with Israel’s in-your-face actions that compromise USA’s mediation efforts in the Middle East, the USA (through its Secretary of State) still issues wimpy, well-worn, cop-out statements like “more new settlements are unhelpful”.
And when faced with Israel’s objections over USA’s participation in the international conference on racism, the USA hurriedly disowns the conference.
REALLY? Israel determines what conferences our USA can participate in – including a conference on RACISM!
(Believe it: It is that USA, that lone superpower and leader of the free world which is out to paint (American) democracy and American values all over the barbarian world)
[What does Israel think about our president?]

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What does the Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel think about our president? What unique skills, experience or authority dictated to BHO that Rahm is the man for a top gate-keeper job – a perch from which Rahm, and not BHO, trashes the good Americans he does not like, such as Howard Dean?

Maybe real CHANGE starts with jettisoning Rahm Emmanuel.
For a man who grew up in a household filled with hate – and a father, a role model, linked over the years to terrorist acts that killed many – Rahm sure has gone far without close scrutiny of his answers (if he had any) on the seven-page, 63-item questionnaire that is mandatory for those who would join the Obama Administration ..
Or can we say that the yardstick of ‘equal opportunity’ was NOT observed in Rahm’s case by the vetting teams nor by the confirmation committees in congress?

ahithophel:
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Thanks so much for your response.
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As for describing Joe Klein as a “thoughtful liberal”, if you aren’t simply doing the old conservative rhetorical trick of moving the Overton Window to the right, I would ask that you read my piece Joe Klein is not Your Friend in lieu of reprinting it here for the billionth time.
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Remember, there aren’t two ideologies in Washington DC, there are three: conservatism, centrism and liberalism.
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Ask Joe Klein if he’s a liberal in public, and he won’t answer the question. Often he uses the term “moderate” synonymously with “centrist”, but this is a red herring –and typically disingenuous of his ideology, as they believe conservatives and liberals are immoderate by definition (as opposed to themselves). Centrists like Joe Klein often deny their ideology, because they believe (wrongly) centrism’s biggest selling point is a (nonexistent) lack of ideological emphasis in favor of their supposed “pragmatic outlook”, which in practice means that centrists will find common cause with whoever is in power until they can get it for themselves.
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I offer you this thought experiment when you’re done reading “Joe’s not your friend”:
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Try thinking about how the Beltway operates, and how the debate in the political press corps is structured, and substitute the word “centrist” for “liberal” in your movement conservatives’ term “The Liberal Media”. Then honestly ask yourself why, on this Sunday’s Meet The Press, were the round table guests composed of a movement conservative politician (Newt Gingrich), a fiscal conservative financial network host (Erin Burnett), a self-described conservative head of a center-rightist news magazine (Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Reports) and a conservative investment banker (Liaquat Ahamed) who happens to agree with Paul Krugman at the moment that monetarist policy has run its course in terms of solutions to the current crisis, and a Keynesian-style (Obama multiplied by 80) stimulus plan is necessary.
There are countless other examples of this odd phenomenon.
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The “Liberal Media”, as exemplified by Meet The Press, is actually “The Centrist Media”. The framework in which conservatives are forced to argue their premises “The Media” is a primarily centrist framework, and not liberal at all. That’s why the term “liberal” has been such a universal badge of shame within that framework –and why attacking the centrist media framework by repeatedly yelling “Liberal Media” at them has worked to move these institutions ever closer to fully including conservative premises within their framework.

[...] here for the need for contrarian thinkers in general, of which Freeman is certainly one. Joe Klein reviews the issue here, arguing that it’s not the time to be enforcing groupthink on Israel or other [...]

@ ahithophel
To Americans 50 years might seem like a long time but to most countries in the world it really isn’t. I agree with the way you view china from our point of view but what i was trying to get at was their point of view, obviously most of us would not agree with it but then again most of us are not the Chinese government.
Thank you for your well thought out response.

I understand you were trying to get to their point of view, WisconsinLiberal. I was basing my response in part on conversations with Chinese in China and the US. But I could be wrong.
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Stuart, I’ll check out that link. I don’t know much about Erin Burnett or Liaquat Ahamed. The guests on any particular day on the Sunday talkies varies, of course, due to availability and the subjects under discussion that week. I doubt it would be difficult to find MTP sessions where the conservative viewpoint is not represented. I don’t watch MTP much, but I know I’ve been frustrated with other shows for having “debates” where the only question seemed to be who hated Bush the most.
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My impression has been that Klein was more of a centrist in the past, but has become, increasingly, a liberal over the past five years. He’s not a liberal in the same way that, say, a Berkeley activist is, or a LaRouche follower, or a 9/11 “Truther.” If that’s what we mean by the left, then, sure, he’s not on the left. But in any case, I don’t have too much invested in where Klein is on the spectrum, and I don’t read every one of his columns. So I’ll read your post and see what I think.

One more thought for WisconsinLiberal. Before the Japanese surrender in WW2, it was stipulated that every part of China that Japan had conquered (they had possessed the island since 1895, and greatly modernized it) would be returned to the Republic of China (the KMT government, led by Chiang Kai-Shek). It was in 1949 that the KMT, in their civil war against Mao, fled to the island and the Republic of China became limited to Taiwan. The PRC, Mao’s government, never possessed Taiwan, and in fact Taiwan had passed through many hands over the centuries, including a period as a Dutch colony.
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I know that Mao put out that notion that Taiwan was rightly his; while the KMT thought that the mainland was rightly theirs. Mao’s argument for places like Hong Kong, in some ways, is more understandable. Hong Kong was a colony of a foreign power, and the Chinese, understandably, were fiercely determined to expel foreign powers. But Taiwan was not a foreign power. Mao put out the argument that the island belonged to China (his China) and China would not be whole until it was restored.
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One has to wonder, though, how much of this was really about the bad blood between Mao and the Kuomintang. It’s hard to believe that ordinary Chinese could have cared much whether they had this little island. Mao build it up into a sort of stain on China, a wound to its pride. But he cannot have liked that he had, just across the water, government leaders that many Chinese still supported, including generals and diplomats and intellectuals and much of the elite of the old capital.
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60 years is a long time, when measured in relation to human lifetimes. Do older Chinese these days care very much whether Taiwan casts its lot with the PRC? Perhaps they do, or at least some of them. Most of the young Chinese I’ve met couldn’t care a lick, except inasmuch as Taiwan is rich and they all want to become rich. 60 years is “longer” today than it was 500 years ago. 500 years ago, after an event like WW2, there probably would have been animosity toward Japan and Germany for many generations.
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Anyway, just a few thoughts. I wonder how much of Mao’s wish to capture Taiwan really had to do with the fact that he hated and despised the people there and regarded their existence as a potentially destabilizing threat to the PRC. Not to mention their pro-western outlook and eventual ties with the US.

[...] difference between leading an intelligence body and serving as a U.S. diplomat.  As Joe Klein has noted, an unconvential thinker is exactly what you want as Chair of the National Intelligence Council [...]

ahithophel:
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I doubt it would be difficult to find MTP sessions where the conservative viewpoint is not represented.
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I doubt it would be even more difficult to find MTP sessions where the centrist viewpoint is not represented. I propose that it would be impossible, actually.
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I don’t watch MTP much, but I know I’ve been frustrated with other shows for having “debates” where the only question seemed to be who hated Bush the most.
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The centrists are primarily concerned with power staying out of the hands of populists, be they right or left. Secondarily, they’re motivated by a desire for establishment, technocratic leadership over centrist policy implementation, with which (obviously) they have much in common with the right.
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They were ecstatic about Bush for the first few years of his term, primarily because they had not fully comprehended exactly how rightist his gang’s policies were to be. Bush placated the centrist political/media class in the beginning with a great deal of symbolism, helped by the centrists’ natural tendency to turn to authoritarian discipline for sentimental strength in times of crisis. Once it became more clear to them that they were not at Bush’s table setting the political agenda with him –that they had been betrayed for supporting his war– support waned. When key establishment players perceived perception shifting within the electorate in spite of their own alliances, and the belief arose that the Bushists might lose power, support collapsed.
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I wouldn’t deny that Bush hatred, ridicule, etc. is rife within the establishment press corps today –when it matters least– even to the extent of surpassing their loathing for Al Gore in 2000, because that would be foolish and dishonest. The public destruction of Bush’s character, however, was the result of the tsunami of conventional wisdom via the crass political other-directedness of the political press corps, and a function of the elite class in the Beltway’s efforts at perpetuity.

Stuart, I think you’re right that there is a certain ideology of elitist centrism. We might disagree about who falls into that category, but it’s a pretty good point. When conservatives refer to “beltway elites,” for instance, I think they’re pointing to a similar target as you are. Many Republicans felt that McCain was more of a centrist than a conservative, and I think they were right.
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Not surprisingly, I have a different view of the history of the relationship between Bush and the press, and Gore, for that matter. Bush himself, in my view, was genuinely a center-right figure who hoped to be a “uniter,” and had in fact some history to back up that claim in Texas. In his early months he did nothing particularly extreme. I think some of the people around him were not centrists, however, and sometimes, especially in the first 4 years, they seemed to be the ones shaping the agenda (Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.). Bush had most of the country with him up through the Afghanistan war. My view is that the press was mostly against the Iraq war even before it launched, but some of their criticism was muted by the fact that the American public seemed to be for it–as long as it was not going to prove too costly. But remember all the talk of a “quagmire” two weeks in? The press were waiting with that word, because they wanted to tie this to Vietnam. The fact they viewed it that way…well, to me it was perfectly clear that they opposed it from the start (in spite of their talk afterward about how they “didn’t do enough”).
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In my reading, Bush did what he felt was right, and it was largely the difficulties of the Iraq war, and the politicization of those difficulties by media liberals, that led to Bush becoming such a polarizing figure. I know you’d disagree with that, so it’s not really worth your time.
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I don’t see the ecstasy you see at the beginning with Bush. There was a cultural hatred of Bush from the start (much like there is for Sarah Palin; no matter what you think of Palin’s bona fides, the vehemence of the reaction to her was driven by a cultural hatred, a revulsion against “trailer trash” conservatives, whom she was taken to represent). The northeastern elites (I live in Cambridge) absolutely despised Bush from the get-go, mostly for his Texas swagger, his boots, his malapropisms, his populist vocabulary, and only secondarily for his policies. I thought the press was in love with Gore; they seemed to think he was incredibly intelligent and the most well-prepared Presidential candidate in ages; they loved the environmental stuff. The image of him as “stiff” arose, and perhaps a little bit know-it-all, but I thought they were all pulling for him.
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But in any case, though we would surely set the lines in different places, I believe you have a good point about there being an elitist center. I would have put the Joe Klein of 1995 (from whence you drew your quotation) there, but not the Joe Klein of today. Now I would put him in the “elitist liberal” category.
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I’m gonna wrap up this thread, or at least my participation in it. Thanks all.

A-hit,
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Sorry for the v. delayed response. Different hemispheres and all that. I was merely using the Remy quote as the most vivid of highlights of American hypocrisy–and anyone who’s spent time on reservations can attest to the continued tragedy of the American Indian. History doesn’t just die, as much as we might hope. But agreed, in isolation, if the US had a sane foreign policy for any length of time in recent history, though it would not exactly wipe that slate clean, it would free them up to lecture other nations about their behavior.
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“You say ‘the world starts laughing’ whenever an American figure ‘starts speaking up for the rights of man.’ That’s quite an exaggeration.” Sadly, I’d say it’s not. My colleagues (name the English-speaking country) relish the opp. to remind me of this fact daily. Nothing like living abroad to make a unrepentant progressive start defending his country.
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“But, do we have a right to tell China that they should honor human rights?” A-hit, you do, no doubt, but our gov’t or the State Dept., the propaganda arm of the MIC, the illegal wars, rendition, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib–no, they don’t. Individual citizens, as long as they’re not blind to the US regime’s own violations, can say whatever they like.
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And you need not document current realities or the history of China–I spent my uni days studying such, not to mention years of toil in Mandarin. And I’m in China frequently.

[...] days, Chas Freeman's liberal defenders have been arguing that it would be valuable to have a contrarian voice in the administration. Jon Chait responded by noting that Freeman seemed less like a [...]

I only had two and a half years in Mandarin as an undergrad, so perhaps you have me there. My wife is Chinese-American, and I’ve spent a few summers there. You may know China better than I do, for all I know. I find your moral equivalence absurd–we have stains on our national record, but we’re still bound as a nation to fight for our ideals (good luck as an individual citizen getting the Chinese to change their animal-rights laws)–but I suspect that’s too large a subject.
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So I take it you didn’t watch the video? I thought you wouldn’t. My point was that you would feel (if you watched) a sense of righteous indignation, and in all likelihood you would want to pressure your congressman to use the diplomatic power of the US government to seek change. China presents a Potemkin village for foreigners, but if we had video of what they do to political prisoners, religious activists, etc., then we should feel even more righteous indignation, and absolutely we should petition the IS government to do something about it.
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And of course your “world” comment is an exaggeration. If you only travel to certain countries, and only hang out with a certain stratum of people, you might not see it. But the world is more nuanced than that. “The world” very rarely thinks any one thing. “The country” very rarely thinks any one thing, either, or “the city” for that matter. I don’t want to turn this into an international experience pissing contest (for all I know you would win, I don’t really care), so please don’t take it that way. But of the countries I’ve visited recently, Australia and Czechoslovakia were the most pro-American. I find many young professionals and university students in China who are too sophisticated to accept the “Party” line are not only fascinated by American entertainment but tend to think pretty well of America generally, whatever they might think of the Bush administration. Then some in the older generation, and people outside the cities in the country, when they start looking to the windows and talk in a low tone, are quite skeptical of the Party and wish that we would be more successful in getting China to be more democratic (the younger professionals tend to care more about money and fashion, and don’t care to rock the boat). Also I found people in the country were pretty skeptical of the Party and Certainly the friend of mine who spent time at a reeducation camp didn’t come to the US because she despised us. Even in Iceland and Denmark I found a variety of views, which is the sort of nuance you expect of the real world.
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Anyway, I’m going to try harder this time to resist checking back here. I’ve already spent too much time on this. We have quite different worldviews, we’d probably be better off addressing more specific issues.

[...] writing at Swampland frames the debate well in his own colorful way – please read the whole post here and Joe, forgive me for quoting you so liberally in this blog [...]

Just because Blair and Freeman have differing views than the Republican party does not mean that they are the wrong views. We do need to be focusing on our foreign policy, especially in Asia and the Middle East. There are 963 million people, throughout the world, that go to sleep hungry every night. The Borgen Project (www.borgenproject.org) has some great ideas to help not only feed these people, but to give them tools to grow food and become a prosperous nation. If this is accomplished it would help us to reach the Millennium Goals that were established by 191 countries.

The overwhelming majority of American’s support a strong US-Israel relationship because they understand that Israel is a reliable strong ally in the region, is a democracy, and is committed to the cause of peace in the region.

Its is vicious hateful lie that Israel is right wing or left wing cause. It is a universal cause, the right of the world oldest nation to have a place to call home. Israel has sacrificed hundreds of her citizens to the cause of peace, the equivalent of 50,000 dead and thousands more wounded.

Most Americans understand that Hamas and Hezbollah are the real problem, accountable to no one and open advocates of finishing Hitler’s work. You can support them, most Americans who google Hamas’ charter read it and wonder why Israel doesn’t nuke Gaza. In the long term, Israel wants to live safely in the region and has agreed in principle and action to the two state solution. Some Palestinians think they can win a war against Israel and keep trying. The current plan is to paint the US as a stooge of Israel and hope they can cut US support.

Anyone paying attention to the war in Gaza two months ago would have witnessed an amazing thing- Saudi Arabia and Egypt blaming Hamas for the war. Why? Because unlike the uninformed Mr. Klein and some of the less informed other posters here they know the deal- Iran is the problem. Pure and simple they are funding terror, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranian threat is so dire to the mainline Arab nations that, and hopefully it won’t come to it, if Israel has to attack Iran, they may fly over Saudi airspace with the Kingdom’s tacit blessing. The Saudis are pure despots but they know Israel is a critical part of their plans to survive.

[...] > Ask This > Watchdogs, meet a gadfly [3] Saudi Arabia – Chas Freeman – Rediscovering Diplomacy [4] The Assault on Chas Freeman :: Swampland – TIME.com [5] Biography of MEPC President Amb. Chas. W. Freeman, [...]

[...] Joe Klein: So, in sum, a guarded vote for Chas Freeman–not that any votes will be necessary for this appointive position. It’s time we had some candor and intellectual noncomformity, some abrasiveness in the too-smooth collegiality of the intelligence bunker. It is also time to resume the relative balance that existed before George W. Bush gave veto power to Israel’s neoconservative supporters over US government policy and appointees in the region. [...]

US foreign policy is not so much dictated by Israel as coincides with it. Israel is the US’s watchdog in the Middle East, keeping the uppity oil-rich Arabs in check, with the help of some local dictators.

http://gazasolidarity.blogspot.com/2009/03/freeman-affair-commentators-ask-how.html

Zionism has not created a haven for Jewish people in Israel but rather something more akin to a recurring nightmare of perpetual war, and the so-called ‘Israel lobby’ is losing the argument big time:

http://gazasolidarity.blogspot.com/search?q=a+tale+of+two+grandads

[...] from a few dissident intellectuals and policy types. Nothing to get too exercised about. Having felled Charles “Chas” Freeman, smitten Gen. Zinni, and sidelined those in the Obama [...]

[...] from a few dissident intellectuals and policy types. Nothing to get too exercised about. Having felled Charles “Chas” Freeman, smitten Gen. Zinni, and sidelined those in the Obama [...]

[...] from a few dissident intellectuals and policy types. Nothing to get too exercised about. Having felled Charles “Chas” Freeman, smitten Gen. Zinni, and sidelined those in the Obama [...]

[...] from a few dissident intellectuals and policy types. Nothing to get too exercised about. Having felled Charles “Chas” Freeman,smitten Gen. Zinni, and sidelined those in the Obama [...]