Chas Freeman on Trump’s China Visit

Chas Freeman’s vast experience as a diplomat and a China expert in particular makes his opinion uniquely valuable. He seems to be our last living diplomat, and he has been retired since 2009, when he was nominated by Obama to head the National Intelligence Council. How did we lose our finest diplomat? Here is how, as recounted in the Wikipedia article about his career:

“Freeman issued a statement on his reasons for withdrawal, stating, “I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country,” and he identified the country as Israel. He wrote that the “outrageous agitation” following the leak of his pending appointment initially to Politico would raise questions about whether the Obama administration would be able to make independent decisions “about the Middle East and related issues.” He cited especially interference by Israel supporters, writing:

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired. The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. … The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.[35][36]

After his withdrawal Freeman gave an interview to Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation saying he regretted he did not identify his attackers as “right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here” — what he called the “(Avigdor) Lieberman lobby.”[37] He also said that President Obama may have been able to deflect the attacks from Democrats if he had stepped in sooner, but acknowledged that he and the National Intelligence Council still “would have been subjected to a slanderous attack”, making the job near impossible. He said that these attacks were meant to dissuade other critics of Israel from accepting government positions, but he had received messages from a number of Jews who also disagreed with Israel’s policies.[37]

In an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN he repeated many of the same points, adding a defense of past comments about the September 11 attacks, saying that the United States’ past actions had “catalyzed, perhaps not caused, but catalyzed, a radicalization of Arab and Muslim politics that facilitates the activities of terrorists with global reach.”[38] He stated he was “deeply insulted” by those charging antisemitism and that he had a “great respect for Judaism and its adherents”. He also said Saudi Arabia has “definitely been successfully vilified in our politics”, despite efforts by the current Saudi king to reform his country and promote peace with Israel. He ended by expressing optimism about President Obama saying he has a “strategic mind” and that what America needs is a “strategic review of the policies that have brought us to this sorry pass in which we now find ourselves, not just in the Middle East, but in many other places, as well.”[38][39] Freeman was also interviewed by Riz Khan.[40]

In an interview quoted in the New York Times, Freeman said “Israel is driving itself toward a cliff, and it is irresponsible not to question Israeli policy and to decide what is best for the American people.”[41] In the same article Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper echoed Freeman’s accusations: “The lobbying campaign against Mr. Freeman included telephone calls to the White House from prominent lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat. It appears to have been kicked off three weeks ago in a blog post by Steve J. Rosen, a former top official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.”[41] While some members of Congress denied that the Israel lobby played a significant role,[42][43] The Forward said “Many of the lawmakers demanding an investigation into Freeman’s qualifications for the intelligence post are known as strong supporters of Israel”.[44]

On March 11, the Washington Post printed an anonymous editorial describing Freeman and those with similar opinions as “conspiracy theorists” issuing “crackpot tirades.”[45] The same day, the Post also published a column by David Broder stating that the Obama administration had “just suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the lobbyists [that] the president vowed to keep in their place, and their friends on Capitol Hill.”[46] The same edition of the Washington Post carried a front-page article detailing various Jewish organizations’ lobbying efforts to derail Freeman’s appointment.

All this happened in 2009, when only John Mearsheimer was talking about the power of the Israel lobby. So now we have no diplomats to look out for real American interests and to build constructive and stable relationships with other countries. All we have is Pete Hegseth: “We negotiate with bombs”. But only diplomacy, not bombs, can get Hormuz unblocked.