World Threats

I’ve been pretty supportive of President Obama’s staffing choices. Then…he chose this guy. Chas Freeman, the former ambassador to Saudi Arabia; former director of the Saudi-funded Middle East Policy Council; and basically, acting as an unofficial ambassador and publicist for the Saudi Royal Family. He also helped promote historically inaccurate Saudi textbooks, and has denied that there is extremism in the Saudi education system.

He parrots the Saudi government line that all terrorism stems from our immoral support of the democracy of Israel, who he argues does not favor peace with the Palestinians. This Israel-centric approach should serve as a case study of an “expert” being so obsessed with an issue that he views all other problems as a subset of it. I’d like Freeman to explain what the LET bombings in Mumbai had to do with Israel.

He furthermore dismisses the liberal movement inside Saudi Arabia, saying change has to come from above: “…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.” The reason reform came from the top was because it’s a tyrannical regime, there were no other change agents, particularly without the U.S. backing them as we did in Eastern Europe.

The Saudis are the only tyrants embraced by Freeman, either. Michael Gordfarb posts this email written by Freeman where he decided to take the side of the Chinese government over the democratic activists during the Tinanmen Square incident.  Freeman also “sits on the board of a major oil company owned by the Chinese government that is widely seen as conducting business deals meant to expand China’s influence worldwide, WND has learned.” Click here for the rest.

This clearly shows that he is a typical bureaucrat concerned with good relations with unelected readers rather than the oppressed masses I like to consider today’s Minutemen.