My IPS colleague Jim Lobe seems to have it pretty firm that Chas Freeman, the very distinguished former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and before that Nixon-era DCM in China will be the the first Obama-era Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
As Lobe writes, this is huge– and it is very welcome indeed.
The NIC was created to try to re-professionalize the key part of intelligence analysis after the intelligence fiascos around 9/11 and the whole dreadful story of the politicization of analysis around the WMD issue in Iraq. As Ive blogged here before, the former head of the NIC, Tom Fingar, did a pretty good job putting the task of top-level “estimating” (i.e. analysis) back onto a professional basis.
Lobe gives us this great quote from a speech Freeman gave last October:
- In retrospect, Al Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape. By invading Iraq, we transformed an intervention in Afghanistan most Muslims had supported into what looks to them like a wider war against Islam. We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country.
Meanwhile, we embraced Israel’s enemies as our own; they responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies. We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible. It threatens Israelis with an unwelcome choice between a democratic society and a Jewish identity for their state. Now the United States has brought the Palestinian experience – of humiliation, dislocation, and death – to millions more in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel and the United States each have our reasons for what we are doing, but no amount of public diplomacy can persuade the victims of our policies that their suffering is justified, or spin away their anger, or assuage their desire for reprisal and revenge.
For the past few years, Freeman has been President of the Middle East Policy Council, a body on whose advisory board I sit. I had heard, in late January, that Chas was leaving to go work in some capacity for Dennis Blair, the overall Director of National intelligence. I guess I thought it would be in some senior advisory capacity. I am delighted to learn that no, he’ll be doing a real and very important hands-on job there.
His long experience of both China (and its region) and the Middle East will be an invaluable asset to the Obama administration.
… Meantime, in other intriguing news from Washington, George Mitchell yesterday held a conference-call discussion with (only partially identified) Jewish community leaders. (HT: Laura Rozen.)
The Jerusalem Post reports that,
- about half the questions asked by progressive organizations, including Brit Tzedek v’Shalom and the New Israel Fund, that have not always been included in previous administrations’ outreach.
“It’s a breath of fresh air to have a briefing with a broad spectrum of pro-Israel organizations that is on the record,” said Ori Nir, spokesman for the dovish Americans for Peace Now.
The JP also wrote that, regarding the prospect of a Fateh-Hamas reconciliation:
- Mitchell said that should Egypt bring the sides together it would be “a step forward,” and that until now divisions among the Palestinians have been a major obstacle to bringing peace to the region.
One participant in the 45-minute call, William Daroff of the Washington office of United Jewish Communities, even Twittered the call as it proceeded. Look on his Twitter site for the long series of posts (“Tweets?”) from around 3 .m. Thursday EST. Maybe to understand the call best, start with the oldest (lowest on his successive pages) Tweets and then read forward (up) from there…
Here are some of them:
- Sen. Mitchell: the Administration is fully committed to Israel’s security, including it’s qualitative military edge
Mitchell: very limited lessons learned from N. Ireland experience: circumstances in mideast are unique & in some respects more complicated
Mitchell: divisions in the Palistinian community make dialogue much more difficult
Mitchell: US govt is uniquely positioned to bring about 2 states living side by side in peace & with stability, & eventually reconciliation
… Mitchell: reviewing all aspects of the situation, incl settlements,
… Mitchell: will not pre-judge settlements; P’s & Arab leaders bring it up in every conversation; important issue – but not only issue
Fascinating window into the experience there. (I’m going to try to Twitter from the fourth anniversary anti-Wall activities Bil’in when I go down there later today. Pretty sure it won’t be as full as daroff’s Tweeting– my phone here doesn’t have an easy keyboard and I’ll have to do the whole thing over an international phone line to London.)
But my next question: When will Mitchell be holding a similar call with leaders of the Arab-American community?
It would be nice if George Mitchell was able to follow through with his thoughts. He was ignored 8 years ago, and I suspect he will be ignored now.
He’s wise, but that’s no defence against the Israeli parish council.
“But my next question: When will Mitchell be holding a similar call with leaders of the Arab-American community?”
Not very soon – none of them has yet blackmailed an American politician.
Richard, some context, please! Mitchell was largely ignored 8 years ago because, though his (and Warren Rudman’s) fact-finding commission had been established by Clinton, it made its report-back to– newly installed president GWB!
this time around, Mitchell was appointed by and will report back to, primarily Obama (but also to some extent the Hillster.)
Big diff.
Jim Lobe quotes Freeman as saying In retrospect, Al Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape.
Personnally I think that both the war in Afghanistan and in Irak were imperial wars of choice for the US. Al’Quaeda and 9/11 only provided the needed rational and eased the propaganda campaigns to justify these wrong, illegal imperial wars.
Al’Quaeda is probably not unhappy with the fact that the US let the mask fall and showed her true imperialistic goals, but JW Bush, Cheney and their clique have also instrumentalized AL’Quaeda in their propaganda, in order to draw the Americans into these wrong wars.
Unless the new US government points its finger on this and makes an autocritique of these imperial goals, it will be difficult for them to start with a new foreign policy based on a honnest multilateralism.
I believe that we had a very unusual confluence of interests in 2003. The neocons, the Israeli lobby, the oil lobby, the general business lobby, the financial lobby, the MSM and , of course the military industrial complex all aligned in a perfect storm with the “useful idiot” president, and the result was Iraq. Whether any of these interests on its own or even in smaller combination would have been sufficient is questionable. Whether any of them alone or in combination would have been sufficient to stop the idiocy is also questionable. Instead of spending time and money trying to divide the Palestinians, Iraquis, and others, progressives should be working hard to break up this alignment in hopes that some sensible voices may prevail even if only by accidental synergy. No amount of intelligent thought out of the State Dept or the think tanks has a chance without some backing from some of the big lobbies and forces.
I think it’s very disturbing that Mitchell insists that the US must back Israel militarily. This is monstrous, in the face of Israel’s abuse of the weapons we send them.
Secondly, Mitchell’s comment about not pre-judging the settlements is monstrous. Yes, it isn’t the only issue, but it is the single most important issue, and – just as importantly – Mitchell’s unwillingness to prejudge shows the usual lopsided view – clearly he prejudges other issues. For example, he insists that Hamas forswear violence, but apparently not that Israel stop stealing Palestinian land.
You can’t refuse to prejudge one side while prejudging the other.
Surely the most significant thing Mitchell said was this:
“Mitchell told the callers that he re-read his report while returning from his last trip to Israel and had been struck by how much had changed in the region since then. As an example, he cited Iran, which wasn’t included at all in the 2001 study BUT WAS NOW IN THE FIRST SENTENCE HE HEARD FROM ALL THE PLAYERS.
If that is the case, if it is Iran which is uppermost in the minds of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the PA, it is hard to see Hamas being given much breathing space – or building materials for reconstruction.