Glenn Reynolds reminds me of something I saw a few days ago, but forgot about.  I just wanted to note that while I’m flattered that DNI Dennis Blair thinks that we in the blogosphere are powerful enough - or notorious enough - to blame for the way that Chas Freeman got steamrollered:

On the Charles – on the Chas Freeman appointment, I am happy to say that looking around this room, there was pretty responsible reporting on Chas, but apparently you guys aren’t bloggers, as – (laughter) – or you guys aren’t as powerful bloggers as some that I discovered when I made the announcement. I thought he was a good pick, I still think he’s a – still think he would have made a great National Intelligence Council Chairman, but it wasn’t to be, and so we’re – lesson learned, moving on.

…I’m afraid that it’s simply not true. It wasn’t us, and it wasn’t this “Israel lobby” that so exercises the pseudo-intellectual mind. One person torpedoed Charles Freeman’s nomination… and it was Charles Freeman himself. The guy was simply far too gone an apologist for too far broad a spectrum of unpleasant regimes to be tolerable, Right or Left.

That being said, I was exceptionally happy to help.  I think that we can safely take at least some credit for helping.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t think that you’ve really learned the lesson, DNI Blair.  The lesson isn’t don’t be more proactive in getting your notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes through the nomination process: it’s supposed to be don’t appoint notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes in the first place. Just in case nobody’s mentioned.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Barack Obama’s first choice to head the National Intelligence Council has withdrawn his name for consideration. We can be thankful for his doing so.

Freeman is a member of that school of diplomacy that sees the United States as being the root of a lot of the evil in the world. He’s referred to by the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as a “briliant, iconoclastic analyst.” You and I would call him barking mad.

According to Freeman, Tibet isn’t struggling for independence they’re having a “race riot.” And naturally “Israeli violence against Palestinians” is a key barrier to Mideast peace. I searched for the quote about Palestinian violence having something to do with the mess to no avail.

You’re going to hear a lot of hooey about how the “Jewish lobby” scuttled an utter savant of diplomacy because of their slavish subservience to Israel and Israel’s interests. Don’t believe it. Chas Freeman is withdrawing because he, to the untrained observer, appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Saudi government.

In an administration that hires a guy to oversee the IRS who has blatantly filed false tax returns there is nothing particularly unusual about having a foreign agent play with our intelligence secrets. The vetting process being what it is, we really should be thankful that some noticed. But Freeman’s ties with the Saudis goes deeper than being awash in their cash.

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Here’s the thing: I’ve met Michael Barone. I know that he’s smart. Frighteningly so, in fact. And I know that he pays attention to details, in ways that usually startle the living life out of people who aren’t used to it. In other words, this is an aware guy that we’re talking about.

So why the surprise, here?

All of which brings to mind the report of a conservative blogger who watched George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural speech with a group of liberals. Every time Bush called for spreading freedom and democracy around the world, the crowd guffawed and groaned and jeered. For them, evidently, Bush was a figure of fun, and his calls for democracy and human rights laughable. The same people who decried his supposed authoritarian rule at home had nothing but contempt for his call for freedom and democracy abroad.

Beneath this stated contempt is, I think, something in the nature of secret guilt. Or rather, anger at the notion that Bush had stolen the issues of human rights and democracy from the liberals.

The desire to oppose the Iraq war root and branch, to denounce every aspect of it, imposed a duty to dismiss as laughable Bush’s stated objective — set out eloquently before the decision to take military action as well as after it — of advancing democracy in the Middle East. A duty to side with those, like the National Intelligence Council nominee, who have long held that governance in the style of Saudi Arabia or Syria is the best that can be hoped for in that region, and the best for all concerned. A duty to dismiss with contempt, or simply to ignore, the rather remarkable strides of the Iraqis themselves made after enduring decades of brutal tyranny.

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NO. REALLY.

But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than — as would have been both wise and efficacious — to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at “Tian’anmen” stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

Via Doubleplusundead, who I think is as appalled as I am. Freeman goes on to slam the Bonus Army of 1932 and endorse Hoover’s suppression of it, which is certainly an… interesting position for a Democratic politician to take.  Although not as interesting as calling the deliberate murder of almost a thousand civilians as the “dilatory tactics of appeasement.”  Where does President Obama keep finding these people?

Moe Lane

Crossposted at Moe Lane.