The Jews Got Chas Freeman

This WSJ op-ed by Bret Stevens, formerly of the Jerusalem Post, is just one example of the Jewish attack on Amb. Chas Freemen, who was nominated to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council. Freeman is a good, decent man who was maliciously maligned by the Jewish lobby. He's not bigoted, but even if he were, what do the Jews fear so much? Was it just to show their power? Do they know that Israel is involved in such dastardly activities that truthful intelligence about it would be greatly damaging in the world's eyes? I don't know, but I do know that the Jews screamed for blood and they got it. Freeman has withdrawn his name.

The following is more or less the text of an email I sent to my Colorado senators and my congressman:

I have just heard on CNN that Chas Freeman has withdrawn his name to be head of the CIA National Intelligence Council.

I served with Amb. Freeman at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, before I retired from the Foreign Service. I believe that he is a good man. I think it is terrible that he has been so viciously attacked by Jewish interests because he served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and might be somewhat evenhanded in his consideration of the Arab-Jewish/Israel-Palestine-Iran-Syria-Egypt-Iraq-Jordan... issue. In essence, he was damned by the United States of America because he was not a Jew.

This is not why I fought in the Army in Vietnam or why I served almost 25 years as a Foreign Service officer. This was a witch hunt, just like the ones carried out by Sen. Joe McCarthy years ago. I am outraged!

The WSJ also earlier printed a letter from several ambassadors, one of whom I worked with, Amb. Tom Pickering. They supported the choice of Amb. Freeman.

Raise Income Tax on the Rich

Obama said that he will limit CEO salaries. It's going to be hard to do. They get money so many different ways -- straight salary, stock options, bonuses, retirement largess, golden parachutes, etc. It's not only the bank CEOs that we are worried about anyway. It's all those obscenely compensated CEOs.

Plus, America has not in the past liked hereditary, moneyed royalty like the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Hiltons, etc. So, tax them when they make obscene amounts of money. A year ago some hedge fund guy named Paulson (not the Treasury Secretary) made over a billion dollars. Nobody needs to make more than say $50 million per year. After $50 million, increase the tax rate to 75% or more. From $10 million annual income the tax rate could be 50%, which is still less than it would have been 50 years ago. If most of the income goes to Uncle Sam, maybe CEO's won't work quite as hard to soak their shareholders, customers and employees. Another test would be the difference between CEO salaries and employee salaries. If a CEO makes more than 100 times what an average worker in his company makes, tax the overage at 100%.

Richard Perle's Ineffectiveness

While the WSJ on Wednesday was publishing the op-ed bashing Amb. Chas Freeman for not being Jewish, another columnist was ridiculing Richard Perle in the WSJ for an article in The National Interest claiming that the neo-cons had no influence on George Bush. Thomas Frank says Perle claims he cannot be "held responsible for the Bush administration's failures." Perle has had few rivals within the US government as a Jew who was one of the most hawkish defenders of Israel. Perle's article and his defense of it prompted the Washington Post headline, "Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence." It's remarkable that men who were so powerful in George Bush's and previous administrations are now so thoroughly discredited. William Kristol, who was VP Dan Quayle's chief of staff, but who has now lost his column at the NYT, shares this distinction with Perle.

Richard Perle was at the pinnacle of power when he was Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan, where he and his minions were my nemeses, pursuing some kind of America-only foreign policy that abhorred any kind of treaty. There is a lot of schadenfreude felt here. Poor Richard! May you endure many more days of ridicule!

Amb. Chas Freeman Attacked for Not Being Jewish

An op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal criticizes Obama's choice of Amb. Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council because Freeman has "distincitive political views and affiliations, some of which are more than eyebrow-raising." One of these is his presidency of the Middle East Policy Council, which the op-ed calls "an influential Washington mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia," were Freeman was ambassador. One of MPEC's most egregious faults was to publish "an 'unabridged' version of 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy' by professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt." Of course the article by these well-respected professors has been published by others, such as the New York Review of Books, and expanded into a critically acclaimed book. The op-ed continues, emphasizing its core point, "Mr. Freeman has views about Middle East policy that differ rather sharply from those held by supporters of the state of Israel."

Amb. Freeman was DCM (#2) at the Embassy in Bangkok while I was there. He had zero interest in my job as embassy systems manager (head of IT), but he was completely professional and certainly not a bigot. His main qualification for the NIC job is no doubt his service as Ambassador to China, which is developing into our most important bilateral relationship. His service as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, one of our most important oil suppliers, is also a good reason to name him. I have no doubt that he will be even handed and fair in all of his dealings with Israel, which may be the reason for the WSJ attack on him. The article by Mearsheimer and Walt points out how Israel is accustomed to preferential, not even-handed, treatment.

Hooray for Obama for pursuing honesty and integrity in intelligence analysis. Maybe if we had had more of that under Bush, we wouldn't have gotten all the hyped-up intelligence claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was certainly in Israel's interest to have us invade Iraq, at least that's what Israel thought then. In fact, the US invasion of Iraq has probably unexpectedly strengthened Iran to Israel's detriment.