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| Obama Disillusionment Watch #11: Marty Peretz is shocked! |
| 2009-02-26 |
| Marty Peretz, "The Spine" blog @ TNR Here is the most stunning prospective appointment of the Obama administration as yet. Not stunning as in "spectacular" or "distinguished" but stunning as in bigoted and completely out of synch with the deepest convictions of the American people. What's more, Charles "Chas" Freeman is a bought man, having been ambassador to Saudi Arabia and then having supped at its tables for almost two decades, supped quite literally . . . That Chas, as he is so artfully called, also made himself a client of China and China a client of himself, is evidence that he has no humane or humanitarian scruples that underlay well, his unscrupulous political views, viz, his remonstrance to Beijing that it should have smashed the democracy protests as soon as they emerged on the streets...or before. I do not reproach Hillary Clinton for talking economics with China this time. But Freeman is predisposed also not to see the urgency of insurrectionary politics cropping up all over the vast Chinese empire. Chas Freeman is actually a new psychological type for a Democratic administration. He has never displayed a liberal instinct and wants the United States to kow-tow to authoritarians and tyrants, in some measure just because they may seem able to keep the streets quiet. And frankly, Chas brings a bitter rancor to how he looks at Israel. No Arab country and no Arab movement--basically including Hezbollah and Hamas--poses a challenge to the kind of world order we Americans want to see. He is now very big on Hamas as the key to bringing peace to Gaza, when in fact it is the key to uproar and bloodletting, not just against Israel but against the Palestinian Authority that is the only group of Palestinians that has even given lip-service (and, to be fair, a bit more) to a settlement with Israel. . . . But Freeman's real offense (and the president's if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with panegyric and hysteria. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth he can't be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can't believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included. One is very tempted to open up on Mr. Peretz with a full 72-gun time-on-target barrage of 155mm snark. Far from being a "new psychological type for a Democratic administration," Chas Freeman is firmly in the tradition of Jimmy Carter and Chris Dodd and John Kerry and Bill Clinton and Madeline I don't want to kick him too hard, though--just administer a few gentle tough-love taps with the clue-by-four. He's starting to get it. We should encourage him in his efforts to get it. If you know someone who, like Mr. Peretz, is starting to get it, be a friend to them. Welcome them as you would any ally. Apply Luke 15:7 by analogy. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 I think what Peretz means is that previous Democratic "types" were leftist goo-goo sorts who were more generally of the Maoist-lite "the third world is more authentic, oh horrors the wages of colonialism!" mindset, whereas he's characterizing this Freeman boggart as being more in the paleoconservative Arabist tradition, a reactionary enthusiast for absolutist monarchy and neanderthalic social & cultural attitudes. Well, that and the English breed of genteel anti-Semitism, which is distinct from the coarse American-style anti-Semitism of a Nixon or Carter. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2009-02-26 09:44 |