More on chas 'harem boy 'Freeman

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/10/tibet-and-chas-freeman/     










EDITORIAL: Tibet and Chas Freeman

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

   

Chas W. Freeman Jr.

Today is Tibetan Freedom Day, also marking the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibet Uprising and the Dali Lama's flight to exile. Chinese riot police are out in force on the streets of Tibet's cities to deter the kind of widespread civil disorder that broke out in the country a year ago. Beijing has imposed a news blackout, locked-down Tibetan monasteries, and even closed the northern approach to Mt. Everest to keep out random hikers.

Today is also Losar, the Tibetan New Year, traditionally a day of festivities and celebration. But this year many Tibetans are observing a day of silent reflection, to remember the thousands who have died during the Chinese occupation and to pray that one day Tibet may again be free.

Showing typical communist thoroughness, Beijing has ordered the Tibetans to make merry. State television will broadcast a four-hour extravaganza, and the foreign ministry has stated definitively, "Tibetans go ahead with celebrations." Given the clamp-down on news, we will no doubt be treated to state-controlled media reports of supposedly happy Tibetans.

We have always deplored China's ongoing, brutal occupation of Tibet. The Tibetan people have suffered three-score years of Chinese communist rule, and the chronicle of barbarities and indignities that have been visited on them is long and well documented.

Yet Chas Freeman, now undergoing vetting for the position of chair of the National Intelligence Council, thinks - rather astoundingly - that what is going on in Tibet is the fault of the United States. In remarks made last April, in which he infamously referred to the March 2008 Tibetan uprisings as "race riots," Freeman stated that "the level of patriotic indignation in China against posturing by American and European politicians over Tibet is already so high that a long-term clamp-down in Tibet seems inevitable."

Freeman is employing a classic "blame America" formula, saying the Chinese repression in Tibet is caused by the fact that concerned humanitarians in the West have drawn attention to it. He took a similar line in assessing the cause of the 9/11 attacks, as he stated in 2005: "What 9/11 showed is that if we bomb people, they bomb back." Freeman seems to have a problem with the law of cause and effect. Perhaps he believes that "American posturing" caused the invasion of Tibet 60 years ago.

In Freeman's world, those who protest against such human rights tragedies simply have over-active imaginations. In remarks made in March 2007 he noted that "those who wish America to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy can always find one worthy of our attention there. China has become a screen on which Americans can project both our reveries and our nightmares." And those who speak out in support of the rights of the Tibetan minority are wasting their time because "Chinese proponents of Tibetan independence are rarer than British advocates of discarding Wales."

We have taken a strong stand against the appointment of Chas Freeman to the post of chairman of the National Intelligence Council, in particular because of his worrisome financial ties to foreign governments, particularly China and Saudi Arabia. His persistent failure to even acknowledge the incontestable human rights calamity in Tibet reconfirms our conviction that he is the wrong man for the job. Human rights advocates, oppressed minorities and other suffering peoples around the world may well ask what other tragedies he may dismiss as irrelevant, or as the justifiable response of authoritarian regimes to Western meddling

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More on Charlie boy                       








We have written here, here and here about Barack Obama's nomination of Charles Freeman, former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to head the National Intelligence Council. Freeman's nomination should be a non-starter. He is a paid publicist for the Saudi monarchy whose views, to the extent they can be identified independent of the Saudi party line, are outside the American mainstream. As Martin Kramer has shown, he has flip-flopped on such fundamental issues as the significance of the September 11 attacks by al Qaeda.

Kramer's continuing research now adds this nugget: Freeman warned in 2002 against designating terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as enemies of the United States:

    I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel. By openly stating and taking action to make them--to declare that we are their enemy, we invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad. There's an old adage which says you should pick your friends carefully. I would add: you should be even more careful when designating your enemies, lest they act in that manner.

As Kramer points out, this "preemptive cringe" proved unjustified, as no such "operations" have been forthcoming. Further, as Thomas Joscelyn notes, Hezbollah was involved in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, just six years--not "decades"--before Freeman's 2002 presentation.

Kramer doesn't note this contribution by Freeman to the 2002 conference hosted by the Middle East Policy Council, but I think it is significant especially in light of the most recent Israeli election:

    Q My name is -- (inaudible) --. And what I would like to ask is, because of the multiple turnovers in the government in Israel and the differences of their opinions of how things should be carried out, has this hindered their ability to bring about peace and agreement in a peaceful process?

    MR. FREEMAN: You're asking whether Israeli politics are an obstacle to a decision on peace?

    Q Right. ...

    MR. FREEMAN: ... Many people suspect that if Mr. Sharon were to fall from power that he might be succeeded by Mr. Netanyahu, or some other yahoo on the right. (Laughter.)

Given that Mr. Netanyahu is about to become Israel's Prime Minister, Freeman's description of him as a "yahoo on the right" suggests that he may not be the best person to interpret Middle Eastern intelligence data for the President. However, as Jennifer Rubin points out, both the mainstream media and Senate Democrats have so far maintained a studied ignorance of the information that has come to light about Mr. Freeman since his appointment was announced. Freeman's nomination will be an interesting test of Barack Obama's intention to keep his foreign policy somewhere inside what was once a bipartisan consensus. links     

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005/11/012223.php

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

I would say something about this effeminate dhimmi-boy, but it would violate Shlomo's posted rules.