For the right wing noise machine when it comes to MidEast policy they forge a truth that is better held together by the force of narrative rhetoric and metaphor than by fact. So it comes as no surprise that Obama's pick for the NIC would threaten that very narrative.
A thunderous, coordinated assault against one of President Obama's intelligence picks is now underway. It started in a few right-wing blogs, migrated to semi-official mouthpieces like the Jewish Telegraph Agency, and today it reached the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, in the form of the scurrilous piece by Gabriel Schoenfeld, a resident scholar at some outfit called "the Witherspoon Institute."
http://www.thenation.com/...
The target is Charles ("Chas") Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former top Defense Department official during the Reagan administration, and president of the Middle East Policy Council, whose wide-ranging experience stretches from the Middle East to China. The NIC is the body that includes a host of analysts called national intelligence officers who are responsible for culling intel from sixteen US agencies and compiling them into so-called National Intelligence Estimates. It's a critical job, since NIE's -- often released in public versions -- can have enormous political and policy impact. Cases in point: the infamous 2002 Iraq NIE on weapons of mass destruction and the 2007 NIE on Iran that revealed that Tehran had halted its work on nuclear weapons.
And why are NIE's so important?
NIEs are the DNI's most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues. They contain the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community regarding the likely course of future events. The NIC's goal is to provide policymakers with the best, unvarnished, and unbiased information—regardless of whether analytic judgments conform to US policy.
Which means the neocons and warmongers lose their magical war stick.
Freeman is a one-of-a-kind choice: with an impeccably establishment pedigree, Freeman has developed over the years a startling propensity to speak truth to power, which is precisely what one would want in a NIC chairman. Over the last decade, he's excoriated Israel for its stubborn refusal to compromise with the Palestinians, he's accused George W, Bush and the "neocons" of having pushed America over a cliff in Iraq, and he's ridiculed the military-industrial complex for trying to tout China as a bugaboo because, Freeman once told me, the Pentagon has suffered from "enemy deprivation syndrome" since the end of the Cold War.
Enemy images are considered instrumental in sustaining popular consent to constantly increasing armament costs. The military-complex appears as the main culprit for international enmity, so another enemy is created.
Freeman's analysis on Afghanistan in last December's cover story:
"What we conveniently have been labeling 'the Taliban' is a phenomenon that includes a lot of people simply on the Islamic right," says Freeman.
"What began as a punitive raid aimed at beheading Al Qaeda and chastising its Afghan household staff has somehow morphed--with no real discussion or debate--into a prolonged effort to pacify Afghanistan and transform its society," says Freeman. "This moving of the goal posts gratified neoconservatives and liberal interventionists alike. Our new purpose became giving Afghanistan a centrally directed state--something it had never had. We now fight to exclude reactionary Muslims from a role in governing the new Afghanistan." Freeman suggests that this is an untenable goal, and that it is time to co-opt local authorities and enlist regional allies in search of a settlement.
Just can't let go of those colonial tendencies.
But the greatest threat Freeman poses, is his unabashed criticism of Israel:
Freeman's real offense (and the president's if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history.
My bad, I thought the protection of the US would be at it's core. I guess coming 2nd is better than nothing.
In conclusion, the military-industrial complex can only survive if there's a continued threat to the U.S.. So it's in their best interest to have someone in the NIC who'll overlook the facts and not digress from the group-think mentality. Because nothing scares the Pentagon more than losing power. Imagine: No more defense contractors. No more military lobbyists. No more retired military officials making a bundle of money as consultants. No more troops or bases overseas. No more bases across America.