Re Charles Freeman, a truly dreadful appointment, I wrote seven years ago in the British Spectator, in a piece headlined "Down With Saudi Arabia: It's time to destroy the Arab kingdom" (ah, happy days!):
By now, the 'Saudis Are Our Friends' op-ed may even have its own category in the Pulitzers. Usually this piece turns up after the Saudis have done something not terribly friendly - refused to let Washington use the US bases in Saudi Arabia, or even to meet with Tony Blair. Then the apparently vast phalanx of former US ambassadors to Saudi Arabia fans out across the New York Times, CNN, Nightline, etc., to insist that, au contraire, the Saudis have been 'enormously helpful'. At what? Recommending a decent restaurant in Mayfair?
Charles Freeman, a former ambassador to the kingdom and now president of something called the Middle East Policy Council, offered a fine example of the genre the other day when he revealed that Crown Prince Abdullah, the head honcho since King Fahd had his stroke, was 'personally anguished' by developments in the Middle East and that that was why he had proposed his 'peace plan'. If, indeed, he has proposed it - to anyone other than Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, that is. And, come to think of it, it was Friedman who proposed it to the Prince...
The advantage of this thesis to fellows like Charles Freeman is that it places a premium on their nuance-interpretation skills. Because everything the kingdom does seems to be self-evidently inimical to the West, any old four-year-old can point out that the King is in the altogether hostile mode. It takes an old Saudi hand like Mr Freeman to draw attention to the subtler shades of meaning, to explain the ancient ways of Araby, by which, say, an adamant refusal to arrest associates of the 11 September hijackers is, in fact, a clear sign of the Saudis' remarkable support for Washington. If the Saudis nuked Delaware, the massed ranks of former ambassadors would be telling Larry King that, obviously, even the best allies have their difficulties from time to time, but this is essentially a little hiccup that can be smoothed over by closer consultation.
Being on the House of Saud's payroll, directly or indirectly, should render one ineligible for subsequent government service. Matt Welch said it best a few years back: If you listen to former U.S. ambassadors to Saudi Arabia with your eyes closed, they sound like Saudis.
02/26 05:48 PM
Freeman on fundraising, here:
In brief, for reasons which many understand, namely, the conclusion by many Arabs who have been donors in the past that Americans are uneducable and that continuing to spend money on educating Americans about Arab issues and Islam is a waste of money; the concern about investigation of wire transfers and checks donations generally; the shrinkage of the American business community in the Arab world in general, in the Gulf in particular, where in Saudi Arabia it's down to about a third of what it is was; and the sudden discovery - and the concomitant, I should say — lack of interest for image reasons by American corporations in being associated with Middle-Eastern causes, plus the sudden discovery by governments in the region of public relations. As you all know, when god passed out public relations genes, he somehow overlooked the Middle East, but in the case they have finally discovered public relations and are focused on the immediate and urgent issues rather than long-term education.
For all of these reasons, the sort of existence we've had living from month to month from small donations of one sort or another is no longer viable and we are engaged in a drive to get an endowment so that we can continue our work, which I will explain in a minute.
And I'm happy to report that due to the generosity of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, we have markedly improved our position in that regard. We used to have exactly enough money to be able to drop dead. (Chuckles.) Now we have enough money to shut down in an orderly fashion. We do not have enough money to sustain this but I am encouraged by quite a number of potential donors with whom I have been in contact to believe that we may indeed achieve long-term viability.
What does the Middle East Policy Council do? We do three things. We raise politically incorrect questions for public discussion. We tend to be well ahead of the curve on raising issues. We publish views that don't find a voice elsewhere in Middle East policy, the most often-cited journal in the field. And an edited transcript of this session will appear as the lead item in the next issue of Middle East policy.
And finally, invisible in Washington, but perhaps most significantly, we train high school teachers throughout the country - trained about 18,000 - how to teach about Arab civilization and Islam
Perhaps Amb. Freeman will show off his analytical abilities by providing the curriculum he used for the teachers for a more open (and public) review?
02/26 05:19 PM
Freeman was born in Rhode Island, and lived and was educated in the Bahamas where his father was in business, returning to the United States at age 13. After studying at Yale University under a scholarship, he studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Harvard Law School.[1]
He joined the United States Foreign Service in 1965, working first in India and Taiwan before being assigned to the State Department’s China desk. There he was assigned as the principal interpreter during United States President Richard Nixon’s 1972 first visit to the People’s Republic of China. He later became the State Department Deputy Director for Republic of China (Taiwan) affairs.[1]
After various positions within the State Department he was given overseas assignments as deputy chief of mission in Beijing, China and then Bangkok, Thailand, before being selected as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1986. During these assignments he attained a working knowledge of several languages. He became United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in November 1989, serving during Operation Desert Storm, until 1992.[1]
From 1992 to 1993 he was a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies. From 1993 to 1994 he was Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs. From 1994 to 1995 he was Distinguished Fellow, United States Institute of Peace. In 1995 he became Chairman of the Board of Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based business development firm arranging international joint ventures. He is a member of the board of several diplomatic institutes, as well as of several corporate and non-profit advisory boards.
In 1997 Ambassador Freeman succeeded George McGovern to become the president of the Middle East Policy Council[2] which “strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers.”[3] In the fall of 2006 the Council was the first American outlet to publish a (slighty revised version) of University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Professor Stephen Walt’s working paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”[4] According to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Freeman endorsed the paper’s thesis and boasted of Middle East Policy Council’s “intrepid stance” saying “No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it.”[5]
[edit] Chair of National Intelligence Council
On February 26, 2009 the Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair named Freeman chair of the National Intelligence Council,[6] which culls intelligence from sixteen US agencies and compiles them into National Intelligence Estimates. According to the notification “”Ambassador Freeman will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and other Intelligence Community analytical products, providing substantive counsel to the DNI and senior policymakers on issues of top national security importance, reaching out to nongovernmental experts in academia and the private sector to broaden the Intelligence Community’s perspective, and articulating substantive intelligence priorities and procedures to guide intelligence collection and analysis.”[7]
The appointment was made despite considerable protests.[6] Upon hearing Freeman might be the nominee, critics began lobbying against the possible nomination because of his record of hostility toward Israel and his past connections with Arab governments. The Zionist Organization of America called for rescinding “the reported appointment.”[8]The leftist magazine The Nation reported that what it calls right-wing blogs, former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Director of Foreign Policy Issues and accused spy for Israel Steve J. Rosen, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News engaged in a “thunderous, coordinated assault” against Freeman because of his criticism of Israel and neoconservatives, and of the “military-industrial complex” for painting China as a military competitor. He has criticized what he describes as US policy of trying to change Afghanistan into a centrally directed state and believes that a settlement must be reached with various factions.[9] David J. Rothkopf of Foreign Policy, a supporter of Freeman’s, stated that despite the criticism “Part of the reason he is so controversial is that he has zero fear of speaking what he perceives to be truth to power...His intellectual honesty and his appreciation for what is necessary in a functioning policy process is such that he will not stack the deck for any one position.”[10]
[edit] Publications
Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy, U.S. Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C., 1997.
The Diplomat’s Dictionary, Second Edition, revised, U.S. Institute of Peace Press, Washington, D.C. 1997
[edit] Quotes
One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.[1]
In retrospect, Al Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape. By invading Iraq, we transformed an intervention in Afghanistan most Muslims had supported into what looks to them like a wider war against Islam. We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country. Meanwhile, we embraced Israel’s enemies as our own; they responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies. We abandoned the role of Middle East peacemaker to back Israel’s efforts to pacify its captive and increasingly ghettoized Arab populations. We wring our hands while sitting on them as the Jewish state continues to seize ever more Arab land for its colonists. This has convinced most Palestinians that Israel cannot be appeased and is persuading increasing numbers of them that a two-state solution is infeasible.[11]
[edit] References
^ a b c d Richard H. Curtiss, Personality: Charles W. Freeman US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1991, 57.
^ Biography from the Middle East Policy Council.
^ Middle East Policy Council “About” page.
^ John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (Fall 2006). “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. Middle East Policy XIII (3): 29–87. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4967.2006.00260.x. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1475-4967.2006.00260.x?cookie%20Set=1.
^ Gabriel Schoenfeld, Obama’s Intelligence Choice, Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2009.
^ a b Ben Smith, Freeman’s In, Politico.com, February 26, 2009.
^ Memorandum from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 26, 2009.
^ Eric Fingerhut, ZOA wants Freeman appointment rescinded, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 25, 2009.
^ Robert Dreyfuss, Chas Freeman for NIC: Lots at Stake, The Nation, February 25, 2009.
^ David J. Rothkopf, The right choice to be analyst-in-chief, Foreign Policy, February 25, 2009.
^ Quoted from October 2007 speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy by Jim Lobe in Amazing Appointment — Chas Freeman as NIC Chairman, Antiwar.com, February 20, 2009.
[edit] External links
SourceWatch Article
Biography from the Middle East Policy Council
Background information from Washington-Report.org
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Freeman,_Jr.";
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