The smear campaign against Chuck Hagel did not begin on Dec. 14, 2012. The former Nebraska senator’s opposition to war as the preferred means of conducting foreign policy made him a maverick during the post-9/11 Bush years. Although most Republicans agreed with Hagel’s socially conservative positions on domestic issues, his nuanced [...]]]>
The smear campaign against Chuck Hagel did not begin on Dec. 14, 2012. The former Nebraska senator’s opposition to war as the preferred means of conducting foreign policy made him a maverick during the post-9/11 Bush years. Although most Republicans agreed with Hagel’s socially conservative positions on domestic issues, his nuanced approach to foreign policy — and his view that diplomacy was a more efficacious means of securing long term US interests than sending in troops with an unclear and/or undefined strategic objective — set him apart from many of his fellow party members.
Some criticism of Hagel began to surface in 2007, when he briefly considered running for president as a Republican. In an effort to thwart his candidacy and undermine his potential candidacy, the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) compiled a list of petty grievances that would constitute the core of most neoconservative excoriations of Hagel, persisting in cyberspace long after the NJDC had scrubbed all references to them from its website. Hagel ultimately decided not to run, but he also chose not to support the GOP nominee, John McCain. He derided McCain’s vice presidential designate, Sarah Palin. While Hagel stopped short of explicitly endorsing Obama for president, his wife made no secret of the fact that she intended to vote for McCain’s Democratic rival.
After Obama won the 2008 presidential election, neoconservative attacks on Hagel resumed, with the aim of preventing his appointment to a cabinet post in the newly elected administration. Hagel’s name was floated as a possible Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, with Obama eventually appointing his challenger for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, to head the State Department. Obama also decided to keep Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, at his post for another year or so. Hagel was instead appointed to co-chair the president’s intelligence advisory board, although his name kept coming up amid speculation in 2009, and again in 2010, that Gates would step down.
During his two terms as a US Senator from Nebraska, Hagel’s refusal to sign various AIPAC-drafted letters presented to members of Congress outlining positions on the Middle East, compiled in 2007 by the NJDC, became, in the hands of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the neoconservative media, prima facie evidence of Hagel’s unsuitability for a position in Obama’s cabinet. That Obama would even consider Hagel also indicated Obama’s alleged perfidy. (The fact that about a quarter of other prominent Democratic as well as Republican senators also did not sign these letters has usually been obscured, with most attention given to Hagel and Richard Lugar.)
Beginning in 2009, attacks on Hagel were redirected from his stated (and presumed) foreign policy positions, to his support for the new liberal Jewish lobby, J Street. This further devolved into false charges of support for terrorism and endorsement of groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. In 2010, the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) targeted Hagel’s endorsement of retired Navy Admiral Joe Sestak for Senate in one of the ECI’s first public-relations battles. When Hagel’s name came up as a possible contender for Secretary of Defense after Obama’s re-election in 2012, the weapons for an assault against Hagel were already loaded, aimed and ready to fire, beginning with charges of anti-Semitism, “appeasement of Iran,” and hostility toward Israel, then devolving into accusations of homophobia.
The following chronology of the smear campaign against Chuck Hagel, past and present, is intended to be representative, rather than exhaustive. It traces back numerous accusations currently being made against Hagel to their earliest dubious sources. Its intention is to provide other researchers a starting point or a supplement to their own research in progress, as well as offer anyone who has just begun following this issue an overview of, and some insights into, the ideological nature and sources of neoconservatives’ hostility to Hagel’s nomination. Its aim is also to explain why Hagel’s defenders — left, right and center; peace activists and military veterans; staunch supporters of Israel and critics of its policies — believe that more than just the nomination and confirmation of a superbly qualified candidate for a top Defense post is at stake in the days ahead.
Chuck Hagel’s nomination will be a test case of the process of, and basis for, the selection, vetting, evaluating, and confirming of top US policymakers by a dysfunctional and divided legislative branch of government. It will also demonstrate whether a handful of manipulative ideologues are capable of, and can get away with, substituting smears, derision and character assassination for thoughtful consideration of — and debate about — US national security interests and needs (and what they ought to be) in the second decade of the 21st century, as well as how to best serve them. It is in this spirit that this chronology has been compiled.
You can download the chronology (.pdf) by clicking here: A Chronology of the War Against Chuck Hagel
Photo: Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the former Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska walk together after the ceremony to mark National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony at the Pentagon, Sept. 21, 2012. DOD photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Sun L. Vega
]]>Now, Paul is not a foaming-at-the-mouth neocon. But neither do his views on the Middle East seem likely fulfill the hopes that the Leveretts have for the Tea Party — namely, providing “the most outspoken congressional opponents of potential moves by the Obama Administration toward military confrontation with Iran.”
For a more fleshed out account of the direction of the Tea Party’s foreign policy, check out Scott McConnell’s piece at Right Web. McConnell, a founding editor of the American Conservative, described the different approaches of neoconseravtives and Tea Partiers who tend toward fiscally-conservative restraint and writes:
Thus far, the neoconservatives appear to be parrying the challenge effectively. The question is, can the neocons, as they have with other political factions in the past, successfully co-opt this new political force in such a way as to make it amenable to their goals?
McConnell notes that Palin was discovered by neoconservative don Bill Kristol. Those Tea Partiers who have actually been successful (winning or garnering great followings and attention) have been courted by — and often seemed to please — Israel lobby forces and some neoconservative influences.
Take Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, who will represent Florida in the Senate as of early January. The day after winning his seat, Rubio announced a visit to Israel. During the campaign, Rubio, much to the excitement of neoconservatives, said that the U.S. should attack Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons. Likewise, Utah’s Senator-elect Mike Lee, another Tea Partier, met with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and ran on a platform that “military action [against Iran] would be justified.” Both Senators-elect said the U.S. should allow Israel to strike Iran.
The picture with Rand Paul is significantly more complicated than what the Leveretts present. Comments Paul made during the campaign in May sparked a minor blog squabble between various elements of the “old right” — the American Conservative‘s Daniel Larison and Antiwar.com‘s Justin Raimondo. (Both could claim the “old right” mantle before the Tea Party was even a glimmer in the eye of Rick Santelli or the Koch brothers.)
Just a week after the mid-term elections that elevated Rubio, Lee and Paul to the Senate, McConnell gave an updated breakdown of Paul’s views in his Right Web piece:
On the other hand, Rand Paul, the son of the isolationist icon and early Tea Party favorite Ron Paul, has studiously avoided discussion of foreign policy issues in his campaign. In October, a GQ article reported that after Paul’s primary win he met with prominent neoconservatives Bill Kristol, Tom Donnelly of AEI, and Dan Senor (cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative) in Washington to talk foreign policy. While he once criticized the Republicans’ “military adventurism,” opposed the war in Iraq, and “scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes,” he may have begun changing his positions. Senor categorized Paul as “in absorption mode” and not “cemented in his views.” Paul later met with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he reportedly “told them what they wanted to hear” and distanced himself from his father, who has been critical of the extent of U.S. support for Israel.
McConnell concludes by noting that the Tea Party has a strong “religious” right element as well as a “libertarian” one.
The “religious” element is likely aligned with Christian Zionists such as John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI), whose views on the Middle East profess a Greater Israel Zionism even more fervent and violent than one finds in most public neoconservative quarters (the two groups are already strong allies). As with the neocons, Christian Zionists tend to take a moralistic worldview that finds any and all enemies of Israel (particularly Muslims) to be “evil” — unredeemable to the point of requiring extermination by force (otherwise known as Armageddon, or the final battle between good and evil, a central piece of Christian Zionist eschatology.)
Furthermore, the “libertarian” elements of the Tea Party might indeed include those who, confronted by the wider consequences of an attack on Iran, would recoil at the idea of a broad and unpredictable Middle East war. But neoconservatives — in attempting to build a diverse coalition for their aggressive policies — will constantly downplay these negative wider consequences of an assault. (As they did during much of the panel on the “kinetic option” at the big Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran confab earlier this month.)
And as for fiscally minded small-government ideologues from either branch of the Tea Party, they will come to learn that the cost of a bombing run will only be the price of a warehouse full of ordinance, smart bombs, drones with Hellfire missiles, and the fuel to get it all into Iranian territory. That just ain’t that much dough.
If the Leveretts so choose, they can take heart that there might indeed be some Tea Partiers who, as they put it, “are stalwart in their criticism of the Iraq war and their determination that the United States not launch another ‘war of choice’ in the Middle East that will end up doing even greater damage to America’s interests and international standing.” But I’m not going to hold out hope on this score.
Tea Partiers who make it into the halls of power will likely have their principles watered down by that power. The opinions of Tea Party activists in the field won’t concern neoconservatives, who are known for focusing their efforts on elites — what journalist Sidney Blumenthal called the “Counter Establishment” in his 1986 book. Irving Kristol once said that with a magazine that has “a circulation of a few hundred, you could change the world.” (Some recent populist outreach on YouTube and other mediums notwithstanding.)
The Tea Party — or even a significant portion of it — seems to me to be an unlikely part of any coalition in Washington that will work to stop the United States from starting a war with Iran.
]]>Commentary: Jonathan Tobin writes on Commentary’s Contentions blog that the Obama administration has fallen for the Iranian’s ploy of practicing “Fabian diplomacy in which they play upon the West’s belief in negotiations with endless delays.” According to Tobin, the administration’s position that the West [...]]]>
Commentary: Jonathan Tobin writes on Commentary’s Contentions blog that the Obama administration has fallen for the Iranian’s ploy of practicing “Fabian diplomacy in which they play upon the West’s belief in negotiations with endless delays.” According to Tobin, the administration’s position that the West could accept Iran enriching uranium for peaceful purposes “is an open invitation to Iran for more stalling and pretense” and ”a signal that Obama and Clinton are willing to appease Ahmadinejad in order to gain his signature on an agreement that will pretend to stop an Iranian nuke but will, in fact, facilitate one.” Tobin, attacking Tony Karon’s recent piece in The National, concludes, “talk of a ‘diplomatic solution’ that ‘could be years in the making’ helps to stifle the calls for action against Iran from sensible Americans that rightly fear the consequences of the mullahs’ gaining possession of a nuclear weapon while giving Ahmadinejad and his confederates all the breathing space they need.”
USA Today: Sarah Palin opines that “it’s time to get tough with Iran” and repeats the hawkish, but misleading, talking points that the WikiLeaks cables show Arab leaders want the United States to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. “If Iran isn’t stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons, it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race in which these countries would seek their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves,” writes Palin. Stressing the threat to Israel posed by a nuclear Iran, Palin writes, “Iran already possesses missiles that can reach Israel. Once these missiles are armed with nuclear warheads, nothing could stop the mullahs from launching a second Holocaust.” She calls for dramatically tighter sanctions, advocates the threat of military force, and states that “I agree with the former British prime minister Tony Blair, who said recently that the West must be willing to use force “if necessary” if that is the only alternative.”
The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs on the Post‘s website that it’s time for the United States to give up on the Israeli Palestinian peace process and “do something more productive.” She advises the administration to “fire George Mitchell (whom neither side trusts), work on Palestinian institution-building, and go after the main sponsor of regional terrorism, Iran.” Rubin argues against “linkage,” again (making it explicit with a tweet), writing “the Obama administration was convinced that a peace deal would bring about progress on Iran. This was another false premise.” She repeats the “reverse linkage” argument that “regime change in Iran would help to stem the supply of weapons and support to Hamas and Hezbollah and re-establish the U.S.-Israel relationship as the essential component in a stable, peaceful Middle East.”
]]>ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), [...]]]>
ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), sent a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), slapping them on the wrists for asking AIPAC to take a public stance on the New START treaty (for it).
Several Jewish groups recently came out in favor of New START because they think a rocky U.S.-Russia relationship is bad for putting pressure on Iran. According to Laura Rozen at Politico, AIPAC has even reportedly been pushing for the treaty behind closed doors (with Republicans, and maybe even successfully).
But ECI, which was birthed at Sarah Palin advisor Randy Scheunemann‘s shop, says that for Schumer and Levin to ask AIPAC to go public with their support of New START is “unSenator-like conduct” — “public bullying,” as the ECI directors put it in the letter.
Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative blogger who just moved from Commentary — where she worked with now-ECI director Noah Pollak — to the Washington Post, wrote from her new perch that Kristol, Bauer and Abrams “would no doubt claim, the actions of these two senators…would set a dangerous precedent.”
First of all, I’m not exactly sure it’s even sure it’s “unSenator-like conduct.” Aren’t politicians supposed to play politics to make what they think is good public policy?
Secondly, don’t you wonder what a pro-Israel group is doing defending its turf against the evils of the New START if it’s “a matter far outside its expertise and area of concern,” as ECI put it?
Well, the letter has a hedge that says, “needless to say, the Emergency Committee for Israel takes no position” on New START. But, hey, why is the Emergency Committee for Israel weighing in on Senate ethics?
Furthermore, the notion that AIPAC — or other Jewish or Israel lobby groups — shouldn’t support Congressional action (in this case, Senate ratification of a treaty) is ridiculous. For years, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) worked against Congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide because Turkey was considered a strategic ally of Israel (the support ended when the relationship went icy over the Gaza War of Winter 2008/09).
It’s not as if the legitimacy of the Armenian genocide is exactly within the scope of “pro-Israel” activity. But, before the Israeli-Turkish alliance fell apart, a happy Turkey was good for Israel. Just like how the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) supports New START because a happy Russia makes it easier to confront the “Iranian nuclear threat.”
AIPAC and other Jewish groups also joined the Greek lobby to support a Congressional resolution about Cyprus (also to stick it to Turkey). So this really is business as usual for Israel lobby groups — they play geopolitics in ways they think will be good for Israel.
The mysterious part is why ECI felt compelled to jump into this at all. Was it to protect the purity of “pro-Israel” advocacy? A partisan shot against two powerful Democrats to pry AIPAC away from them? Or could it be because the faltering opposition to New START (which the, needless to say, don’t oppose)? Or was it just to weaken Obama to make room for anti-START Sarah Palin (who was pushed onto the national stage by Kristol)?
What’s funny — though predictable — is the charge of “public bullying” from a group that employs the likes of Kristol, Bauer, Abrams, Pollak and another Scheunemann employee, Michael Goldfarb.
]]>When the Post hired former Bush speechwriter and torture enthusiast Marc Thiessen as an opinion columnist, I encountered widespread disgust and some outrage among the people I talked to about the hire. Reaction to the Rubin hire, by contrast, has largely consisted of amusement and incredulous smirks. “What was Fred Hiatt thinking?” has been the question most frequently asked asked about the Post‘s hawkish editorial page chief. While the Post op-ed page still features some smart right-of-center commentary from Charles Krauthammer and George Will, Hiatt has also brought on board a number of party-line hacks like Thiessen, Bill Kristol, Michael Gerson, and now Rubin. The fact that Rubin is intended as a counterpart to Sargent is also revealing about the way that “balance” is understood in the mainstream media. Sargent certainly leans liberal, but he is also a very good reporter who breaks stories and is willing to criticize the Democrats; Rubin, by contrast, has no real experience as a reporter (as opposed to commentator) and has never met a Republican or Likud talking point she didn’t like.
The dominant feature of Rubin’s politics, of course, is her ultra-hawkish Greater Israel Zionism. She is adamantly opposed to any Israeli territorial concessions, which explains her great affection for John Hagee’s Christian Zionists, who believe that Israeli control of the entire Holy Land is necessary in order to precipitate the Rapture. While she is quick to accuse Israel’s critics of anti-Semitism, Rubin is not so fond of actually existing American Jews, whom she views as unpatriotic and insufficiently supportive of Israel.
These aspects of Rubin’s thought came to a head in her Commentary piece “Why the Jews Hate Palin,” which was almost universally denounced across the political spectrum for sloppy argumentation and trafficking in anti-Semitic stereotypes. (To briefly summarize Rubin’s arguments, The Jews hate Palin because they are a bunch of effete, overeducated, rootless cosmopolitans, averse to manual labor and military service, who therefore despise Real Americans like Palin.) “In a strikingly unified response from liberals as well as conservatives,” the Atlantic noted in a rundown of the various demolitions of Rubin’s piece, “most commentators are trashing the piece as illogical, poorly-argued, and anti-Semitic.”
Along with Israel, Rubin’s abiding passion is her hatred of Obama, whose “sympathies for the Muslim World,” she argues, “take precedence over those, such as they are, for his fellow citizens.” Ever since Obama came to prominence, she has spent several posts a day prophesying impending doom for his political fortunes. I actually came to enjoy reading her analysis during the 2008 presidential campaign — every time the McCain-Palin campaign hit another pothole, Rubin would invariably come forward with a strained explanation for why this was only an insignificant setback, and the collapse of the Obama campaign was surely right around the corner. (Like Bill Kristol, I’ve often thought that Rubin would have made an excellent Soviet agitprop officer.) Of course, in recent months Obama’s popularity has indeed sagged — a stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. But even if Obama recovers and successfully serves another six years in office, we can expect Rubin to use her perch at the Post to offer daily predictions of Obama’s impending collapse until the moment he leaves office in 2017.
While it is sad to see the continuing self-destruction of one of America’s great newspapers, I am curious to see how low they can go. David Broder is getting up in years and surely due to retire soon; could Pamela Geller be next in line for his job?
]]>McConnell, in an article for Right Web, traces the Tea Party’s foreign policy pronouncements back to Sarah [...]]]>
McConnell, in an article for Right Web, traces the Tea Party’s foreign policy pronouncements back to Sarah Palin and her close relationship with neoconservative heavyweight Bill Kristol. Kristol, as described by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, “discovered” Palin the summer before John McCain put her on the Republican national ticket.
McConnell writes:
McCain enlisted influential neoconservative Randy Scheunemann as a policy advisor, and in turn Scheunemann brought on Steve Biegun as her chief foreign policy staffer. Palin’s previous foreign policy pronouncements had been vague and scattered, but she became an eager student. She made hawkish noises during the campaign: while she spoke more loosely than expected about the possibility of war with Russia, she forthrightly supported an Israeli strike on Iran. Despite efforts by paleoconservatives to reach out to her and provide some counterinfluence, she stayed on message—which would have considerable significance as she became a political star in her own right.
Palin has continued to hit neoconservative talking points even while the Tea Party movement has, at times, called for cuts in government spending and rejected the Bush administration’s military adventurism.
McConnell observes:
She reliably echoes neoconservative talking points about war with Iran. When addressing the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last February, she hit neocon talking points by citing Ronald Reagan, “peace through strength,” and “tough action” against Iran.
And
Wearing an Israeli flag pin, she charged that President Obama was causing “Israel, our critical ally” to question our support by reaching out to hostile regimes.
But Palin’s apparent willingness to uphold Bush’s “freedom agenda” of spreading democracy has not always been received with enthusiasm by Tea Party audiences who embrace small-government.
McConnell writes:
Even David Frum, the prominent neoconservative writer and Iraq war enthusiast who has expressed deep skepticism regarding Palin and the Tea Party, praised the foreign policy segments of her speech, claiming that she sounded as “somebody who knew something of what he or she was talking about.” Live blogging her talk, Frum tellingly observed that Tea Partiers sat on their hands during these segments: “Interesting—no applause for sanctions on Iran. No applause for Palin’s speculation that democracies keep the peace.”
While Tea Party members are, understandably, skeptical of the benefits of “nation building,” neoconservatives such as Frank Gaffney have capitalized on the movement’s nativist leanings by hyping the threat of “creeping Shariah.” Islamophobic fear mongering has proven itself a more effective tool for bringing, otherwise isolationist, Tea Partiers behind the neoconservative’s foreign policy.
And besides, a militarist foreign policy is far less expensive—dare I say “more fiscally responsible”?—if the nation building is cut from the budget.
McConnell writes:
]]>Asked at a recent Washington forum whether the new Congress would support or oppose an attack on Iran, Colin Dueck, author of Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War ll, quipped that if you do air strikes you don’t have to do nation building. In this sense, the budget constraints which Tea Party candidates worry about may be much less a barrier to near term neoconservative foreign policy ambitions than might be imagined.
Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare [...]]]>
Her comments, says NSN, are part of an attempt to treat Iran as a “political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran.” The report counters her statements with those of former civilian and military Pentagon officials and former Foreign Service officers who all think such an attack would be a disaster. (We referred to NSN’s list here).
From the NSN report (with my emphasis):
Today, on a Newsmax broadcast, Sarah Palin proclaimed that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons would result in a battle between good and evil, leading to “Armageddon.” Palin’s remarks are the most recent in a litany of bellicose rhetoric made by extreme conservatives about how to deal with Iran. Yet despite the attempts to use Iran as a political football to scare voters and intimidate policy makers into taking military action against Iran, national security experts and military leaders disagree with such an approach. In addition, the voters aren’t buying this argument, as a recent poll showed that only two in ten Americans would go to war with Iran if that country tested a nuclear bomb. [...] Nonetheless, despite the fact that the Obama administration’s dual-track approach towards Iran of sanctions and diplomacy is beginning to bear fruit, the loudest conservative voices continue to be the most militant ones. However, policymakers should be wary of these arguments during this election season, as we have seen them before in the context of Iraq, where the most militant rhetoric won out during the midterm congressional campaign season of 2002. A skeptical eye needs to be drawn towards those who would use military action against Iran as a political tool rather than treating it as the serious national security issue that it is.
[...] “We have to realize that at the end of the day that a nuclear weapon in [Iran's] hands is not just Israel’s problem or America’s problem – it is the world’s problem,” [Palin] said. “It could lead to Armageddon. It would lead to World War III that could decimate so much of this planet.”
At last week’s “War With Iran?” conference at Columbia University, I asked if either side in the nuclear stand-off — the Iranian leadership or the U.S. administration — was capable of cutting a nuclear deal while facing domestic political constraints. John Limbert, a former Iranian hostage who went on to serve as a Foreign Service officer and an Obama administration State Department official, responded that Iran is not an election issue. He cited the attempts of both Hillary Clinton (in the primaries) and Sen. John McCain (in the general election) to score points against Obama on the issue, noting that both failed and Obama won.
Limbert might be right. But it looks like Iran hawks won’t stop trying to make war with Iran a politically polarizing issue.
]]>Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question –should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.
This appears to be a none-too-subtle rebuke of Newt Gingrich’s bizarre-to-say-the-least claim that there “should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.” Similarly, I can’t help but wonder whether Bloomberg’s professed hope that the mosque will “help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam” (my emphasis) was an allusion to the aforementioned former half-term Alaska governor’s well-known adventures with the English language.
In any case, taken together with today’s ruling by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission clearing the way for construction, Bloomberg’s statement should help put this phony controversy to rest. More than a few public figures have made themselves look awfully foolish in the process, however — Palin and Gingrich, to be sure, but probably no one more than Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman.
Full statement below the jump:
The following are Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s remarks as delivered on Governors Island:
“We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We’ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.
“Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.
“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life and it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.
“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.
“Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.
“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.
“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780’s – St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.
“This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.
“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.
“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.
“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.
“On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’
“The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.
“Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.
“The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.
“Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest.”
]]>Last Tuesday, in the National Review (see Jim Lobe’s comments, Feb. 2), and reproduced in the Jerusalem Post , Pipes declared that bombing Iran was the only way that President Barack Obama ( “a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear and whose policies I work against”) could salvage his failed presidency and assure his re-election in 2012.
In a Friday column headlined “Will Obama Play the War Card?”, Buchanan noted the popularity of sanctions and military strikes against Iran in several recent public opinion polls and in Congress, among members of both parties, particularly in the Senate. Buchanan suggested that the most recent Iran sanctions, lopsidedly approved in the House and agreed to in a voice vote by the Senate, targetted Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad less than they did the President of the United States:
The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
If it is in the interest of the US to support “those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West,” Buchanan wrote, the recent sanctions legislation in the Senate and House “seem almost diabolically perverse.”
Buchanan noted that the low-enriched uranium at Natanz. sufficient in quantity for a single test, “has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade.” Drawing attention to Ahmadinejad’s overlooked offer last week to accept in good measure the West’s deal that would exchange Iranian enriched uranium for imported nuclear fuel for Iran’s civilian reactor, Buchanan pointed out that Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. supervision, that the number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000, and that those centrifuges that remain may be breaking down or have been sabotaged.
“If Iran is hell-bent on a bomb,” Buchanan asked, “why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 [National Intelligence Estimate] finding and given us the hard evidence?”
Buchanan expressed deep concern that, even as US anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf and anti-missile batteries being deployed on the Arab shore, “Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.”
In his conclusion, Buchanan makes a brief reference to Pipes’ piece, with whose recommendations he clearly disagrees:
Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,” in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
In the Fox News interview, Wallace asked Palin if she thinks Obama can be re-elected in 2012. Palin responded, “I got this from reading one of Buchanan’s columns the other day: Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided to come out and do whatever he can to support Israel, which I would like him to do. That changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years.”
“You’re not cynically suggesting that he would play the war card…” Wallace inquired rhetorically.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Palin responded. “I’m saying that if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies.”
This is a direct paraphrase of Pipes, who calls on Obama “to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the US and its allies” by attacking war on Iran. Palin goes on to defend the Tea Party movement, who apparently favors foreign policy by polling, the dominant theme in Pipes’ piece. My Lobelog colleague Daniel Luban has just pointed out to me that Pipes has already claimed full credit for Palin’s comments to Wallace, and is delighted with the attention Buchanan has brought to his article, while conveniently ignoring Buchanan’s view that both “crippling sanctions” as well as war with Iran do not serve the interests of the US.
Buchanan, whose foreign policy views are so staunchly anti-interventionist that he’s been criticized for suggesting that the US should not have even entered World War II, openly challenged Pipes’ recommendation that the US president cynically use Iran policy to score cheap points with the pollsters and politicians of both parties who are running for reelection in 2010, depicting “crippling sanctions” as a prelude to a war with Iran that he opposes.
As for Israel, Buchanan has repeatedly challenged the distortion of US policy in Israel’s favor, in support of which Palin invoked Buchanan’s name. In a column in 2008, Buchanan wrote, “Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them…”. The Anti-Defamation League has an entire page devoted to such quotes under the heading “Pat Buchanan: In his Own Words“.
Palin either did not read or she did not understand Buchanan’s column last Friday. How else could she have failed to notice that not only the few concluding paragraphs dealing with Pipes’ war drums but Buchanan’s entire article were highly critical of the position she was espousing to Wallace?
Indeed, progressives who oppose war with Iran would do well to remember and bring Buchanan’s astute arguments not only against the sanctions promoted by the Israel lobby to the attention of nervous politicians of both parties who are looking over their right shoulders:
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
In the best case scenario, the more publicity Pipes’ claim that military action is good domestic politics for Obama and the Democrats (even if would be disastrous for both Iranians and for US interests as Buchanan contends) receives, thanks to Palin and others, the more constraints it may place on Obama, seeing the morass of “Wag the Dog” syndrome if he accedes to a military option against Iran.
It will be interesting to see how Buchanan will respond to his convoluted conscription by Palin into the warmongering pro-Israel netherworld of Pipes.
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