Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan famously told the Washington Post that "If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office." The Saudis have few better friends than Chas Freeman, who has been unofficially appointed to head Obama's National Intelligence Council after serving as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and later as the president of the Saudi-backed Middle East Policy Council. From Freeman's perch there, he's had nothing but praise for the Saudi regime.
In 2002, Freeman explained that "in the case of Saudi Arabia, reform has always come from the top down. It has been the ruling family that has sought to liberalize society and to open it up." Freeman goes much further in an interview with the Saudi-US Relations Information Service (wonder who funds that):
SUSRIS: What are your impressions of King Abdullah's accomplishments in reform and modernization in Saudi Arabia?
Amb. Chas Freeman: I believe King Abdullah is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great. If you look at his record over the time of his regency when he was Crown Prince, he was acting in many ways as chief of state. Since he became king I've been struck by the scope of change. It has been quite extraordinary....
Not surprisingly, Freeman's admiration for the Saudi royals comes in inverse proportion to his disdain for the democratically-elected government of Israel. In today's Journal, Gabe Schoenfeld fairly calls Freeman a "China apologist and Israel basher" (Freeman's bizarre sympathy for the Communist crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square 1989 was examined here yesterday). Schoenfeld quotes a speech Freeman gave in 2007:
While President Obama speaks of helping the people of Israel "search for credible partners with whom they can make peace," Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that "Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them." The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending."
Much of the left clearly shares Freeman's hostility to Israel -- and sensing that Israel supporters fears Freeman's appointment (after all, Freeman was the first to publish Walt and Mearsheimer's screed) they have leaped to his defense. Still, this support is not on the merits of Freeman's views, but rather almost exclusively for the sake of antagonizing the nefarious Israel Lobby. Will Talking Points Memo or the Nation offer a substantive defense of Freeman's self-professed support for running over democracy activists with tanks?
I'm not holding my breath.
