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Just the man to to write the president’s National Intelligence Estimates!
Though Charles W. Freeman has stepped aside from his designated job as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, his prolific statements on the Mideast don’t cease to amaze. Here are two: Charles W. Freeman on the main cause of Moslem terrorism:
We face perplexing choices in every region of the world. But the policies that have brought discredit upon us center on one region—the Middle East. To restore our reputation we must correct these policies. And the problem of terrorism that now bedevils us has its origins in one region—the Middle East. To end this terrorism we must address the issues in the region that give rise to it.Charles W. Freeman on whether the Palestinians should be expected to seek peace with Israel:
The fact is, of course, that Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. Occupations are acts of violence. The dispossession of people from their land is an act of violence. Preventing people from coming to and going from their own country is an act of violence. And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis.Now think about that. What this means is that Freeman never respected the Oslo process, which was aimed at a peace settlement and required the Palestinians to engage in negotiations and stop terror. Freeman never thought that the Palestinians had any obligation to stop terrorism. He thought that after Israel had brought Arafat and the PLO back from impotent exile in Tunisia, after Israel had set up the Palestinian Authority, after Israel had given the Palestinians control over their own cities, after Israel had embarked on a process aimed at creating a Palestinian state, and then, in 2000, after Israel had offered the Palestinians 97 percent of the West Bank plus all kinds of other things (see Dennis Ross’s 2003 statement detailing Barak’s offer to Arafat which Arafat rejected), Freeman thought that the Palestinians nevertheless had every right to continue the terror war against Israel. Think about the fact that Freeman’s copious record as a convinced enemy of a U.S. ally and as a justifier of Arab terrorism did not warn the Obama administration against picking him to head the National Intelligence Council. I don’t normally read Scott McConnell’s magazine, The Palestinian Conservative, but I’m sure Freeman has become its number one hero. These and more quotes are at Andrew Bolt’s blog.
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