Boo.

Glenn Reynolds reminds me of something I saw a few days ago, but forgot about. I just wanted to note that while I’m flattered that DNI Dennis Blair thinks that we in the blogosphere are powerful enough – or notorious enough – to blame for the way that Chas Freeman got steamrollered:

On the Charles – on the Chas Freeman appointment, I am happy to say that looking around this room, there was pretty responsible reporting on Chas, but apparently you guys aren’t bloggers, as – (laughter) – or you guys aren’t as powerful bloggers as some that I discovered when I made the announcement. I thought he was a good pick, I still think he’s a – still think he would have made a great National Intelligence Council Chairman, but it wasn’t to be, and so we’re – lesson learned, moving on.

…I’m afraid that it’s simply not true. It wasn’t us, and it wasn’t this “Israel lobby” that so exercises the pseudo-intellectual mind. One person torpedoed Charles Freeman’s nomination… and it was Charles Freeman himself. The guy was simply far too gone an apologist for too far broad a spectrum of unpleasant regimes to be tolerable, Right or Left.

That being said, I was exceptionally happy to help. I think that we can safely take at least some credit for helping.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t think that you’ve really learned the lesson, DNI Blair. The lesson isn’t don’t be more proactive in getting your notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes through the nomination process: it’s supposed to be don’t appoint notorious apologists for unpleasant regimes in the first place. Just in case nobody’s mentioned.

Crossposted to RedState.

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. 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. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

Speaking as one of the aforementioned unscrupulous, passionate people, I offer this response to Freeman – and, indeed, everybody who shares in his, ah, particular ethical stance:

Geh kak afen yam. When I want moral judgments on my motivations I’ll get them from somebody who doesn’t think that the Chinese government should have stepped down on its dissidents harder, thanks.

Moe Lane

PS: Ed’s right, Gray Lady: you mucked up the reporting on this one something fierce. Didn’t want to admit that the President had a catastrophic error on this one, huh?

Crossposted to RedState.

Here’s the thing: I’ve met Michael Barone. I know that he’s smart. Frighteningly so, in fact. And I know that he pays attention to details, in ways that usually startle the living life out of people who aren’t used to it. In other words, this is an aware guy that we’re talking about.

So why the surprise, here?

All of which brings to mind the report of a conservative blogger who watched George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural speech with a group of liberals. Every time Bush called for spreading freedom and democracy around the world, the crowd guffawed and groaned and jeered. For them, evidently, Bush was a figure of fun, and his calls for democracy and human rights laughable. The same people who decried his supposed authoritarian rule at home had nothing but contempt for his call for freedom and democracy abroad.

Beneath this stated contempt is, I think, something in the nature of secret guilt. Or rather, anger at the notion that Bush had stolen the issues of human rights and democracy from the liberals.

The desire to oppose the Iraq war root and branch, to denounce every aspect of it, imposed a duty to dismiss as laughable Bush’s stated objective — set out eloquently before the decision to take military action as well as after it — of advancing democracy in the Middle East. A duty to side with those, like the National Intelligence Council nominee, who have long held that governance in the style of Saudi Arabia or Syria is the best that can be hoped for in that region, and the best for all concerned. A duty to dismiss with contempt, or simply to ignore, the rather remarkable strides of the Iraqis themselves made after enduring decades of brutal tyranny.

Perhaps I’m reading into it something that isn’t there. The article itself discusses the way that the Obama administration has demonstrated an absolute indifference to humans rights issues abroad since the Inauguration: Barone mentions China (and I’ll name names: picking Chas Freeman for NIC Chair is appalling) and our tepid official reaction to the Iraqi elections. I’ll add to that list our sudden decision to bring back rendition as a counter-terrorism measure, not to mention our willingness to embrace again pro-torture regimes. There will probably be more examples, alas: all in all it’s jarring to contemplate, after over thirty years (and five Presidents’ worth) of a bipartisan foreign policy that took seriously the notion that maybe non-Americans deserved a shot at democracy and prosperity, too*.

But it’s not surprising, in any way, shape or form. Of course certain progressives are abandoning any pretense of caring about human rights abroad; whatever their views were in 2000, some time between then and now they joined a religion which required them to abandon them for the much simpler dogma of Whatever George W Bush Likes Is Wrong. Said dogma caused them to vote en masse for the current President, who is their current avatar of the principle, so what he says goes. Even when what he says goes against progressives were saying not six months ago.

It’s really all pretty straightforward. Regrettably.

Moe Lane

*I’d include Ford in that, except that thanks to a Democratic-controlled Congress he was unable to stop the South Vietnamese and Cambodians from being thrown on the fire. There are some people out there who should start praying that there are no hungry ghosts in the afterlife.

Crossposted to RedState.

NO. REALLY.

But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than — as would have been both wise and efficacious — to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at “Tian’anmen” stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

Via Doubleplusundead, who I think is as appalled as I am. Freeman goes on to slam the Bonus Army of 1932 and endorse Hoover’s suppression of it, which is certainly an… interesting position for a Democratic politician to take. Although not as interesting as calling the deliberate murder of almost a thousand civilians as the “dilatory tactics of appeasement.” Where does President Obama keep finding these people?

Moe Lane

Crossposted at RedState.

OK, so I’m being unsympathetic; after all…

…nah, I feel like sticking with being unsympathetic. Enjoy the next four years, Marty.

Crossposted to RedState.