All Apologies

Gabriel Schoenfeld takes to the pages of the W$J to fulminate against Barack Obama's Pick to Head the National Intelligence Council, Charles 'Chas' Freeman Jr. He would be the guy ultimately responsible for the National Intelligence Estimate. Some of the quotable quotes Schoenfeld picks out are unbelievable.

First, Freeman was the president of the Middle East Policy Council, which received the funds for its endowment from the Saudi King Abddullah with predictable results:

Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that "Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them."

He also published the "unabridged" version of Mearsheimer and Walt's "Israel Lobby"

"No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it."

That's right! Look out for The Lobby! It might lobby you!

And, of course,

The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending."

Which explains why there were so many Palestinians in on the 9/11 plot. But, Freeman's real talent is as an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party:

The specter of a Chinese threat, he remarked during a China forum at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in October 2006, is nothing more than "a great fund-raiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make and our armed forces love to employ.

Oooooo. It's that darn military-industrial complex. So much better if we could leave the nation's defense to the diplomacy-intelligence service complex.

I really hope Schoenfeld is simply wrong about this next one:

"The truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities," he wrote there in 2006, "was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud." Moreover, "the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tiananmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action." Indeed, continued Mr. Freeman, "I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be."

Are you kidding me?

This is the Owen Lattimore/Ramsey Clark view of the world. It goes against the instinctive foreign policy views of most Americans who (1) support Israel and (2) are repulsed by the Chinese state.

Leftists are often accused of being little more than naive pacificts. Untrue! They have very well developed views as to who our allies should or should not be. These views are sinister and unsavory to be sure, but it's important to have views to go along with their goals and opinions! Freeman, at least, is candid about his views, even if many of his colleagues are studiously circumspect in stating theirs.