This One Has Me Pissed

TW: And in a bi-partisan way, while the Republicans certainly did not help the Dems were right there skunking it. Perhaps you had seen something (probably not) on Obama's nominee to head up the obscure National Intelligence Council, Chas Freeman. Freeman's sin, he is not an unabashed proponent of the U.S. Israeli lobby (he also made comments about Tiannamen Square but that was mere fluff to legitimize the "pro-Arab" charges). For the sake of argument lets assume he was biased in favor of "Arabs" that would make the score one for them and one hundred on the biased pro-Israeli side. This stuff is un-American to me.

If we cannot accept non-lockstep pro-Israelis in our government then much of the criticism of the U.S. as an unreliable broker in the Middle East gains credence. We have accused spies for Israel participating in the debate in the U.S. for chrissakes, they are a foreign nation. No other country (not the UK, not France, not Mexico) could get away with these kind of acts.

We are not talking about a person who was going to be the boss and decision-maker, he was merely going to be a voice at the table. We cannot apparently even have that amidst our monolithic intelligence staff. Disgraceful.

From Economist:
"...The swift fall of Mr Freeman was proof, if more was needed, of the power that stateside allies of Israel still wield. The drumbeat began, at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with a blog post written by Steve Rosen—a former staffer for the American-Israeli Political Action Committee who is accused of espionage...To some, Mr Freeman was seen as a poor candidate for the job. But it seems that everyone who knew him, as opposed to those who simply claimed to know his views (and biases), regarded him as an astute individual with a sharp, analytical mind. One former profiler described him as a "one-man destroyer of groupthink". What more could you want out of an intelligence official? Ah, right, that question has been answered: a "conventional" (read pro-Israel) view of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

From Andrew Sullivan:
"What Real Power In Washington Means:
You get to dictate to a president who he can and cannot appoint to his own intelligence staff. This was not a Senate-confirmation issue. And it was not because of some financial or tax issue. It was because of what he believed. And a president is simply not allowed to have that kind of diversity of view in his administration. And he knows this is a battle he shouldn't fight."

And:
"...Obama may bring change in many areas, but there is no possibility of change on the Israel-Palestine question. Having the kind of debate in America that they have in Israel, let alone Europe, on the way ahead in the Middle East is simply forbidden. Even if a president wants to have differing sources of advice on many questions, the Congress will prevent any actual, genuinely open debate on Israel. More to the point: the Obama peeps never defended Freeman. They were too scared. The fact that Obama blinked means no one else in Washington will ever dare to go through the hazing that Freeman endured. And so the chilling effect is as real as it is deliberate.

When Obama told us that the resistance to change would not end at the election but continue every day after, he was right. But he never fought this one. He's shrewder than I am."