Steve Walt, who is giving lectures on the Israel lobby, here describes a McCarthyite smear campaign against longtime public servant Chas Freeman, the new head of the National Intelligence Council, and singles out: Jonathan Chait, Michael Goldfarb of Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Goldberg, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Jonah Goldberg of National Review, Marty Peretz, and Steve Rosen, formerly of AIPAC.
dared to utter some rather mild public criticisms of Israeli policy.
That's the litmus test that Chait, Goldberg, Goldfarb, Peretz,
Schoenfeld et al want to apply to all public servants: thou shalt not
criticize Israeli policy nor question America's "special relationship"
with Israel. Never mind that this policy of unconditional support has
been bad for the United States and unintentionally harmful to Israel as
well. If these pundits and lobbyists had their way, anyone who pointed
that fact out would be automatically disqualified from public service…
The significance of these smashmouth tactics:
people in the foreign policy community from speaking out on these
matters. Freeman might be too smart, too senior, and too well-qualified
to stop, but there are plenty of younger people eager to rise in the
foreign policy establishment and they need to be reminded that their
careers could be jeopardized be if they followed in Freeman’s footsteps
and said what they thought. Raising a stink about Freeman reminds
others that it pays to back Israel to the hilt, or at least remain
silent, even when it is pursuing policies — like building settlements
on the West Bank — that are not in America's national interest.
If the issue didn’t have such harmful consequences for the United States, the ironies of this situation would be funny. A group of amateur strategists who loudly supported the invasion of
Iraq are now questioning the strategic judgment of a man who knew that
war would be a catastrophic blunder. A long-time lobbyist for Israel [Rosen] who is now under indictment for espionage is trying to convince us that
Freeman — a true patriot — is a bad appointment for an intelligence
position. A journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg) whose idea of "public
service" was to enlist in the Israeli army is challenging the
credentials of a man who devoted decades of his life to service in the
U.S. government.
Good crack at Goldberg. Let's talk about who's serving in the U.S. military. Tom Ricks has begun talking about it. Where are the neocons and liberal interventionists? Camus said this was the true test for those asserting a just war–would you volunteer for it?
And yes, all 7 of Freeman's smearers are Jewish; Zionism is producing a crisis in American Jewish identity.
