I would be remiss if I did not weigh in on Mr. Freeman, who has suddenly become the pet topic of every blogger with any interest in Israel. There's not much more to say that Larison hasn't said already -- Freeman is being recommended as an intelligence analyst, not a policy-maker; his views on Israel, although I do believe they are unfair, shouldn't disqualify him.
Awhile ago I wrote a post I never ended up publishing on 'sinat chinam,' which is Hebrew for 'baseless hatred.' Judaism doesn't have cardinal sins, but if it did sinat chinam would certainly be one of them. Rabbis teach that the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed because Jews felt sinat chinam toward one another, and the post was going to tie that in to the nasty fight between Glenn Greenwald and Jeff Goldberg, two good writers who seem to have sworn to talk past each other indefinitely, at least when it comes to Israel.
I bring it up now because Greenwald, in a lengthy tirade against neoconservatives last month, suggested that their 'smear tactics' were coming to an end. At the time, I doubted it, and I imagine Greenwald would accept the Freeman debacle as proof enough.
I differ with Larison, who suggests that the purpose of the resistance to Freeman is to force the Obama administration to tack rightward on Israel in other matters. I do believe that many of Freeman's critics truly believe (as I do) that his public remarks about Israel have been unfair and unsettling. And while I disagree with them when they say that those remarks make Freeman unfit for his assignment, I nonetheless believe that they believe that's true. But I don't extend the benefit of the doubt to everyone. When The New Republic, once (I'm told) a really excellent magazine, returns for the nth time to demolish a politician or appointee it perceives to be anti-Israel, does anyone still believe the charges? I doubt it -- and that those charges are in this case very likely accurate just makes the situation worse.
Greenwald was wrong to think that with a new administration comes the magic reformation of political discourse in the United States. (Just as, incidentally, he was wrong to think that it's only neoconservatives who engage in smear tactics.) But he was perhaps not wrong to wish for it. I think it will be a long time before Israel advocates start to feel pressure from the country at large to moderate their demands, because the country is still by-and-large pro-Israel. But Jon Chait and others may want to consider whether Freeman is worth the expenditure of so much social capital.
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3 comments:
Regardless of Freeman's substantive views, his financial connections to Saudi Arabia and China ought to disqualify him from consideration. I think having someone of his ideological persuasion on board would be genuinely beneficial for American foreign policy, but they seem to have picked the wrong realist to back.
I don't know. Did Bush ties to Saudi Arabia disqualify him from the Presidency? In all honesty, can we really disqualify people for having financial ties to our allies? Granted, China is not really an ally, but they are a huge trading partner. And Saudi Arabia is, for all intents and purposes, our most vital ally in the Middle East. Do we disqualify someone for financial ties to the UK or France? That just doesn't add up.
Freeman served on the board of a state-run Chinese oil company and his think tank receives significant financial contributions from the Saudi royal family. I think Freeman's an honorable guy and an accomplished public servant, and I think the Administration would benefit from having someone like Freeman advising them on matters related to national security. I just think Freeman himself is a bad test case.
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