Reply #11: DISGRUNTLEMENT WATCH, ANTI-SEMITIC CABAL EDITION. [View All]

[seemslikeadream]

September 09, 2004
DISGRUNTLEMENT WATCH, ANTI-SEMITIC CABAL EDITION. The Forward reports on a memo written by Michael Rubin (a former CPA official and Ahmed Chalabi loyalist who fell out with Paul Bremer and has been carping about Iraq policy from the sidelines at the American Enterprise Institute ever since) alleging the existence of "an antisemitic campaign to marginalize being conducted by the CIA and the State Department." If you read on it's clear that this vast anti-semitic conspiracy's tentacles reach into the FBI, where the Larry Franklin investigation began, and the National Security Council, where neocon bête noir Robert Blackwill is allegedly now running the show while Condoleezza Rice smiles for the cameras. And, of course, since the Franklin case has gone to the grand jury, the U.S. Attorney's office must also be involved.
Clearly, a rough time for the Jews. Although somehow we Jews who never worked with in the Pentagon on dubious Iraq- and Iran-related matters are doing okay. No one's arresting Ari Fleischer. Franklin, meanwhile, isn't Jewish (but you know how unreasonable these anti-semites are), and the only targeted Jews happen to be directly above him in the Department of Defense chain of command.

Leaving spurious charges of anti-semitism aside, however, there's a legitimate point to be made in Rubin's neighborhood here. Whatever the facts of the Franklin matter, the wider inquiry he's now cooperating with looks an awful lot like an effort to advance a policy agenda by means of the criminal justice and counterintelligence system. Either way, it's hard to see how this reflects well on the Bush administration. Either the Pentagon is chock full of spies, or else the administration's policy process is so screwed up that bureacratic rivalries have become massive witch hunts centered around spurious allegations of criminality. Most likely the truth is that there's some combination of the two going on.

Now here's the thing to consider. What if we had a president who didn't disdain nuance, detail, policy, and book-learning? The sort of president who would resolve an Iran policy dispute by asking the various players to write up their arguments, read what both sides have to say, ask a few more questions, read a few more memos, make up his mind, and then tell everyone they either need to get with the program or leave his administration. Well, then, we could have gotten this whole engage-or-don't-engage/strike-or-don't-strike dispute settled. Instead we have a president who's a captive of his advisors rather than their boss, a president who, when his advisors disagree, remains paralyzed while they fight it out amongst themselves. And the fights are getting nastier, dragging foreign intelligence services and the U.S. law enforcement apparatus into the mix. It's no way to run a
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http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/09/index.html#003982