I just caught about 30 minutes of the Progressive Policy Institute's panel today on national security issues facing the next president. "So this is what progressives have to say," the head fred progressive said when it was done, Will Marshall. But what had I heard? A lot of talk of the Middle East, but not a word about Israel/Palestine. Kenneth Pollack spoke about a belt of anger going from Bangladesh to Marrakesh, and of the responsibility of the U.S. to deal with the underlying forces producing that anger. Then, astonishingly, he said that America must reduce its dependency on foreign oil. Let me write that down. The anger belt, and nothing about Israel/Palestine. The panelists I saw were Pollack, Tammy Schultz, Bruce Hoffman, James Goldgeier of CFR, and Harvard's Ashton Carter. Without getting into my usual Jewish-identity stuff, I'd note that the most interesting statement came when Carter said that Pakistan is loath to give up its proxy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, because it needs all the friends it has, given that India still doesn't think that Pakistan should exist. I reflected that Israel long denied the existence of the Palestinians, and vice versa; and yet somehow 3 out of 4 of these peoples won the right to self-determination in '47, and one has been denied it for 60 years; and what has been the effect on the world?
The PPI also had a talk today by Peter Beinart, who like Pollack supported the Iraq war and who gives private consults to AIPAC on how to help Israel in this election. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher spoke at lunch; she also supported the disastrous Iraq war. PPI is a Clintonite organization that the writer Jacob Heilbrunn has said has become hospitable to neocons. I note with pleasure that the camera panned to the sumptuous ballroom; more than half the chairs were empty. Progressives are meeting elsewhere.
