Of "Foreign Entanglements" Past

The resignation of Intelligence Chief Chas Freeman has been creating a lot of buzz in the political blogosphere. Robert Dreyfuss has additional insight in a web exclusive posted today in Mother Jones.

In the introduction Tom Englehardt compares the "Israel Lobby" today with the "China Lobby" of the 1950s in their influence on US policy towards defending the government of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. He argues that, like then, the lobby restricts US movements towards rational policy approaches that could substantially resolve a seething divide.

I don't know a great deal about China policy during this period, but the analogy is an interesting one.

An "island" nation in the Middle East, Israel today plays a role arguably similar to that of an actual island which held formidable sway in American domestic politics decades ago. Known then as Formosa, it became "the Republic of China" after Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a fierce civil war by Mao Ze Dong's communist movement, moved what was left of his government there. From the late 1940s deep into the 1950s, that island version of China had a firm grip on what room for maneuver was available to any American government when it came to China policy. With various Nationalist Chinese representatives and their congressional and media allies, then known as the China Lobby, putting key issues and realities beyond discussion, the results were disastrous. It's a cautionary tale that shouldn't be ignored in the present debate.

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Dershowitz Responds

I received two rather interesting e-mails this morning in response to my post Bodyguard of Lies. In this post I critiqued Alan Dershowitz (left), professor of law at Harvard, for claiming that former Chief National Intelligence Council nominee Chas Freeman "was a 'zealot' and an 'ideologue' whose 'extremist views' can only be explained by claiming that he 'has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate.'" It's my view that this is a gross mischaracterization of Freeman's position and is little more than slander.

This morning I received two responses. The first was from Norman Finkelstein (right), a previous target of Dershowitz, who wrote simply:

The second e-mail was from Alan Dershowitz himself who was kind enough to let me know the following:


Which should I heed? While Finkelstein's note was sent thirteen minutes earlier (and would clearly preempt the second) Dershowitz sent his response via BlackBerry, a fitting coincidence considering his opinion is so deliciously ripe with irony.

Alan Dershowitz is the same person who took this:

As well as voicing our opposition to the illegal occupation and the consistent human rights violations of the Palestinian people, we as members of an institute of higher education see it as our moral responsibility to express our solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation.

And characterized it as this:

Several months ago, a rabidly anti-Israel group on the Hampshire College campus began a campaign to try to get the college to divest from six companies that they claim helped "the Israeli occupation of Palestine." Those who came up with this formulation regard all of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ben Gurion Airport, as "occupied Palestine." In other words, their goal is to end the existence of Israel.

I now call on all decent people - supporters and critics of Israel alike - to make no further contributions to a school that now promotes discrimination and is complicit in evil. There must be a price paid for bigotry, and the actions of Hampshire College in singling out only Israel for divestiture is bigotry plain and simple. Silence is not an option. Inaction is not an option. Fighting back against the likes of Cynthia McKinney is mandatory for all people of good will.

Yep, I think I'll go with Finkelstein on this one.

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Bodyguard of Lies

Dershowitz claims victory in withdrawal of Intelligence Chief.

U.S.-Israeli "special relationship" results in first casualty of the Obama administration.
Image: NBC News

In 1943 Winston Churchill reportedly told Joseph Stalin that "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Then the truth was being hidden from the Axis powers, now it is the American public that is being protected against. As the recent events over the nominee for Chief of the National Intelligence Council indicate, the truth is that the U.S. is locked into a dangerous alliance with a country that is set to take us along on their self-destructive mission.

While Obama has quietly promised Israel $10 billion in military aid his administration has asked their only critic of Israeli foreign policy, Charles ("Chas") Freeman, to withdraw his name from consideration. Freeman's stated reason for stepping down as the nominee for head of the NIC was the attacks on him from right-wing members of the "Israel Lobby".

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.

The obvious hypocrisy was not lost on Freeman.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel.

Even though National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair expressed determination to support his hand-picked nominee before a Senate hearing, just hours later word from the top apparently overruled this decision. Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer reportedly spoke with Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel soon before Freeman announced his withdrawal, a conversation that apparently clinched the deal. Schumer is a firm supporter of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has shown a consistent record of bending over backwards to accommodate their wishes.

The assault against Freeman's nomination began in early February with former AIPAC official Steve Rosen. Rosen, who has been indicted for espionage in leaking classified documents to Israel, wrote on his blog that Freeman was "a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism" with views that were "what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry." A few days later Rosen attacked Freeman as someone who "regularly fulminates vitriolic anti-Israel diatribes" and claimed that he had "received funds from Saudi Arabia to engage in systematic Israel-bashing." This is patent nonsense and was easily debunked as mere libel. But that didn't stop the ridiculous claims from being picked up and amplified by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (both owned by Rupert Murdoch). Now that Freeman has stepped down other supporters are claiming victory and repeating these lies in justification.

Writing today in The Huffington Post Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz claimed that Freeman was a "zealot" and an "ideologue" whose "extremist views" can only be explained by claiming that he "has been bought and paid for by lobbies that he does not wish to alienate."

He has a long history of playing the tunes selected for him by those who have paid him. He is an ideological zealot when it comes to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Paul Tiller, former National Intelligence Officer and Executive Assistant to the CIA Director had a remarkably different assessment of Freeman's abilities.

I would trust that Mr. Freeman would exhibit integrity in addressing issues on the Middle East as they may pertain to Israel or any other Middle Eastern country . . . The kind of 'anti-Israeli' perspective getting criticized is of course not new criticism or by no means unique to this particular target.

I think what is being missed [in this commentary] is the whole concept that a public servant ... and foreign affairs professional with a long career under different administrations ... can do his job in the best and most objective way he thinks is possible and isn't necessarily going to be working one policy slant vs. another policy slant.

Tillar is now a professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and his 2003 book, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, was praised by Philip Zelikow (a high level intelligence officer in both Bush administrations, so clearly no dove where Israel is concerned) which clearly suggests that Freeman is well within the Beltway on intelligence issues. To have Dershowitz and company react as if Bandar bin Sultan had been nominated is beyond absurd, in fact it's downright loony toons.


Opposition to Israeli policy in any form results in harsh measures.
Image: K. Bendib

Alan Dershowitz is well known for his zealous attacks on any criticism of Israel. He has accused both Presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party of "anti-semitism", claimed that Harvard's Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer plagiarized from "anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and radical Islamic hate sites" in their article "The Israel Lobby" (published in the London Review of Books) and has even accused Jimmy Carter of being "complicit in evil" following his tepid criticism of Israeli policy. Last year Dershowitz spearheaded an effort to have Israeli critic Norman Finkelstein denied tenure at DePaul University, calling him "an evil man" and "an overt anti-Semite with two Jewish parents." Most recently, Dershowitz intervened in the student effort to divest Hampshire College from companies supporting Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In the press he repeatedly accused the students of "bigotry" (despite their explicit statements and trainings focused on separating Jewish culture from Israeli policy), he personally threatened the members of Students for Justice in Palestine and offered a "contribution" to Hampshire President Ralph Hexter if he reversed the college's divestment agreement.

So, in other words, an ideologue with close political and economic ties to a powerful lobby is accusing someone of being beholden to special interests? A few years ago Dershowitz wrote a book entitled Chutzpah. Clearly, he knows what he's talking about. However, in this case, he takes the concept far beyond the pale to the point of abject hypocrisy. What's most unfortunate in this whole affair is that the stalwart pro-Israel hawks have prevented any meaningful change in U.S.-Israeli policy for the occupied territories.

As Israel marches ever onwards towards the abyss it comes upon ordinary citizens (both here and in the Middle East) to reign in the destructive aspects of this so-called "special relationship" and bring a just end to more than thirty years of humiliation, war and exile for the Palestinian people. While the official "truth" may require bodyguards, justice requires nothing more than exposure.

UPDATE I: Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein responded to this post here.

UPDATE II: For more on Freeman and his withdrawal see Foreign Policy's The Cable and Foreign Policy In Focus' Commentary.

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The Nature of Partisan Politics-Part I

Yuval Levin justifies partisan bickering based on false assumptions about human nature.

Conservatives and liberals conflict over their basic views on human nature.
Image: Artist Unknown

As an evolutionary anthropologist and student of history, I am always fascinated to learn what politically motivated figures have to say about human nature. It’s one area of life where people require zero expertise about the subject they claim such authority in.

In the Feb. 23 issue of Newsweek, Yuval Levin, Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, continues in this fine tradition where he claims that "Partisanship is Good" because it is based on conflicting assumptions about human nature.

Our deepest disagreements coalesce into two broad views of human nature that define the public life of every free society. In a crude and general way our political parties give expression to these views, and allow the roughly like-minded to pool their voices and their votes in order to turn beliefs into action.

Levin builds his case about these two schools of thought based on the overarching connections between different policy positions. Conservatives want traditional values and a strong military because "both views express an underlying premise about the intractability of human nature" while liberals apparently want "a large welfare state" and favor diplomacy in global conflicts because "both views express an underlying sense that most problems are functions of an imperfect distribution of resources."

There are several things wrong with this argument, which I will address. But Levin then uses this appeal about separate but equal views on human nature to justify his point that Obama shouldn't complain about Republican stonewalling on his economic recovery plan. Never mind that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the tax cuts in Obama's stimulus bill (at $282 billion or 36% of the entire package) will be the largest immediate tax relief in US history. Never mind that the last three conservative administrations are responsible for 75% of our national debt (or $8.3 of the current $10.85 trillion according to the 2009 Budget Historical Tables, 7.1). And never mind that deregulation of the financial services industry, backed by conservative policies, is what led to our current crisis. Never mind all of that. Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus and we need to value both views of human nature equally.

To ridicule these disagreements and assert as our new president also did in his inaugural that 'the time has come to set aside childish things' is to demean as insignificant the great debates that have formed our republic over more than two centuries.

Of course, one has to question his sincerity about respecting different points of view considering this is the same person who wrote, “By her husbands logic, Michelle Obama must be a heavily armed xenophobic religious zealot, because boy is she bitter." This after her speech about families struggling to make ends meet that she gave on May 2, 2008, just four months before the economic crisis made front-page news.

But I won't demean Levin's argument as insignificant; to do so would not be in keeping with the great debates of our republic. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that, where it comes to the conservative view of human nature, Levin is generally correct. The range of issues bundled under "right wing" ideology include such seemingly disconnected policies as a strong religious devotion, the rejection of public assistance programs as well as a firm support for increased police and military funding. I would suggest (and I think Levin would agree) that all of these issues are based on the assumption that human nature is fundamentally flawed and that to deviate from tradition is to invite social disintegration.


Conservatives view human nature as a delicate balance between order and social chaos.
Image: Sadegh Tirafkan,"Temptation"
At first glance it’s difficult to understand why those people who are most willing to bow their heads to the prince of peace would also be interested in funding weapons of war – let alone to ignore his call to help the least among us. Likewise, it's curious that the logic of cutting our already underfunded social programs because we need to be "fiscally responsible" doesn't also apply to the $711 billion price tag for military spending in 2008-2009 (about 25% of our national budget and nearly as large as the rest of the world's military spending combined). Even in the conservative stalwart position on states' rights there is some cognitive dissonance. States should have the right to restrict abortion despite the Supreme Court's ruling, but there should also be a constitutional amendment to keep Massachusetts and Connecticut from allowing gay marriage. It's difficult to understand any justification that would allow someone to hold two opposing and contradictory views simultaneously on a single issue. But, rest assured, cartwheels of logic aside, there is a connection.

Underlying all of these issues lay a basic belief in traditional gender roles and an assumption that human nature is essentially base, self-indulgent and unchanging. We therefore need a strong authority to keep our rapacious vices at bay and a firm hand to guide our moral character. We should appeal to Christ for the salvation of our own wickedness, but keep a large arsenal at the ready to protect against the wickedness of others. Furthermore, governments shouldn't coddle those who make the wrong moral choices but should encourage strength and independence so they can stand on their own two feet – after all, people will only take advantage of government assistance. From this basic assumption, conservatives transform what looks like economic lunacy from one perspective into their argument for fiscal responsibility. As for the "wedge" issues of gay marriage and abortion, it is simply that allowing behavior that deviates from traditional norms could upset the balance of heterosexual monogamy. By doing so we would be flinging open the gates for a whole range of deviant behaviors and desires that would assail our carefully balanced civilization. It's not simply about sex; it's about stability. For a conservative, then, human nature has us tiptoeing precariously along the ledge between right and wrong, with temptation always grappling at our feet.

Click here for The Nature of Partisan Politics - Part II

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Talking Turkey: or, Kurds and Ways

Kurdish language and identity is under attack by our closest ally in the Middle East.
Image: Kurdish Film Festival
The Turkish government is in an uproar over a lawmaker's choice to speak Kurdish before his country's parliament today. His comments were in honor of International Mother Language Day, a UN designated holiday to celebrate the diversity of languages. Ahmed Turk had diplomatic immunity from arrest even though speaking Kurdish is against the law. A previous activist was not so lucky.

In 1991, Leyla Zana spoke her native language when she was sworn in as a deputy. She had immunity as a lawmaker, but it was later stripped and she served 10 years in prison on other Kurdish-related charges.

The US support for Turkish repression against the Kurds has been an ugly stain on our government's claim to promote democracy and freedom in the Middle East. The think tank, Foreign Policy in Focus, has an excellent "Brief History" highlighting this bipartisan support for human rights abuses throughout the last three decades.

I found the following phrase in Kurdish: Yek ziman her bes nabê. It translates to "One language is never enough."

Please feel free to e-mail it to the US Ambassador to Turkey, James F. Jeffery, at: webmaster_ankara@state.gov. You can also contact the Turkish Ministry of Tourism in Washington, D.C. at: info.dc@tourismturkey.org.

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Clinton: Human Rights? Show Me the Yuan!

Protestors in China beaten and arrested during pro-Tibet demonstration.
Image: Associated Press
Clinton today tells reporters that human rights in China will not be a concern for Obama's State Department, citing the economic crisis as paramount.

From the Washington Post:

But human rights groups say those goals do not negate the gravity of the abuse allegations they have lodged against Beijing in the past year. Among them: branding those who believe the western region of Xinjiang should be independent as terrorists, as an excuse to detain and silence them; introducing repressive martial law-type curfews, military patrols and questioning in Tibet; and trying to bully or buy off parents angry about the shoddy schools that led to the deaths of thousands of children during last year's earthquake in Sichuan Province.

Over the past two months, Chinese police have been aggressively questioning several hundred of the more than 8000 people who have signed a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08 that has been circulated on the Internet. At least one man who is thought to have helped write the document--Liu Xiaobo--has been detained, prompting an international cry for his release.

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering that Clinton's husband pushed for China's entry into the World Trade Organization despite their atrocious human rights abuses throughout the 1990s. Their now favored status as our primary source of lead flavored children's toys and poison dog food (available now at Wal-Mart) has allowed this "acceptable" totalitarian regime to become an economic powerhouse. Now that China holds our economic future by the short and curlies -- owning $1 out of every $10 in US public debt -- they're not taking orders from anyone.

Ironically, this month marks the 37th anniversary of the US economic embargo against Cuba. It will be amusing to watch the State Department claim that Cuba's human rights record is the reason they won't lift the sanctions.

Also see: Human Rights Watch profiles Liu Xiaobo and many of the other heroic defenders of liberty in China.

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