October 17, 2009

General Jones Flipped Here

Consider this post an addendum to our last, Gen. Jones Scoffs at Afghanistan "Surge" - Just Like Failed Iraq "Surge!".

Scott Johnson at Power Line points us to a Michael Goldfarb post on the Weekly Standard blog revealing an astonishing decision by our ancient enemy, President Barack H. Obama's National Security Advisor, Gen. Jim Jones.

As a tiny handful of you may recall, towards the end of our previous post, we noted a disturbing tendency of the top brass in all branches of the military; this trend may become determinative in Jones' final decision whether to support or oppose the recommendation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal that we switch to a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan, which would require adding 40,000 troops. We wrote:

It's not clear whether Jones is himself an anti-war leftist, but it's not uncommon for top generals to drift left as they progress up the heirarchy. It often seems that the bigger the command, the more the commandant "grows in office;" cf. Eric Shinseki, Anthony Zinni, and of course the ultimate recent example, Colin Powell. It's not hard to explain; at the highest levels of command, a general or admiral is less like a military leader and more like a cabinet secretary. Those who head up gargantuan bureaucracies tend to believe in big-bureaucracy solutions to all problems... witness Powell insisting that we could not depose Saddam Hussein without a buildup of half a million troops.

Powell must have known that was impossible; thus, had his advice been accepted, we could not have invaded Iraq at all -- which would have suited Powell (and Shinseki and Zinni, and probably Jones) just fine.

Then we asked and partially answered the critical question:

Does that make such a general a leftist? In the limited sense of having a more Eurocentric (or even more European) viewpoint, yes it does. The reason that European armies typically refuse to fight is that they can't risk their soldiers' lives on anything smaller than the tank battles of the North-Africa campaign. This fits well with the so-called Powell Doctrine: Never send troops unless it's worth refighting World War II... which of course it never seems to be.

In addition to the other strands of evidence we presented, we now have a new piece of the puzzle, via the Weekly Standard blogpost linked above.

There exists a group that calls itself "J Street;" J Street claims to be pro-peace and pro-Israel but is easily demonstrated to be just the opposite: It's pro-Palestinian and very, very anti-Israel, to the point of being antisemitic, in my opinion -- notwithstanding the fact that most members are ethnically Jewish and many are religious Jews as well.

(How can that be? In my worldview, one kind of antisemitism is to insist that of all the peoples in the world, only the Jews have no right to a homeland and must remain nervous, barely tolerated guests in other people's countries. This definition holds no matter the cultural or religious affiliation of the bigot doing the insisting. There are self-hating Jews, just as there are self-hating blacks, gays, and conservatives.)

As Power Line reported, J Street is holding its first annual feast and gabfest soon, and a great many Democratic senators and representatives have signed aboard as "hosts." Alas, so did a couple of Republicans; but it was clear from the outset that many of these sponsors, even many of the Democrats, were fooled by the seemingly pro-Israel rhetoric of J Street: These hosts weren't Israel or Jew haters; they were just useful idiots.

In the last few days, as word hit the street about J Street, their "Gala Dinner" has been shedding sponsors like my old Alaskan Husky used to shed fleas. From the Weekly Standard blogpost:

The anti-Israel organization J Street has been hemorraghing sponsors for its conference as Senators and Congressmen learned of its true agenda. Just in the last few hours, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Leonard Boswell (D-IA), have asked to have their names removed from the host committee. [Sen. Thad Cochran, R-MS, 68%, demanded yesterday that J Street withdraw his name as well. -- DaH]

And then comes the kicker, which is the point of this post that you are reading now...

So J Street has played its hole card: Obama national security advisor Jim Jones has accepted an invitation to participate.

And we now have not just a squabble over J Street. We now have a "teachable moment" about the Obama White House.

To tote up some of the positions of J Street, I must combine information dug up by Michael Goldfarb, Paul Mirengoff, and Scott Johnson:

• Avrum Burg, former speaker of Israel's Knesset (parliament), is closely associated with J Street; he declared that "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end," then went on to compare Israel to "pre-Nazi Germany."
• Prominent J Street member Henry Siegman compared Israel to South Africa under apartheid; he also appears to support the Walt and Mearsheimer conspiracy theory about a "Jewish lobby" that controls the American government (search on Power Line for many posts about this offensive and antisemitic absurdity -- enthusiastically and monetarily endorsed by Israel's great friend, former President Jimmy Carter);
• J Street receives much of its funding from Arab-American and Moslem-American organizations, as well as from Palestinian and Iranian lobbying groups;
• J Street is "bitterly hostile to the democratically-elected government of Israel" (especially now, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu);
• Another luminary invited to speak at the Gala Dinner is "poet" Josh Healey, who suggests that Israel is at least metaphorically "writing numbers on the wrists of babies born in the ghetto called Gaza," yet another equation of Israel to the Nazis; Healy extols a march he joined for "Palestinian solidarity."

With the notable exception of the Obamacle's high priest, Chief of Staff Rahm Israel Emanuel (yes that's his full name), the most consistently leftist members of Obama's cabinet and administration have adopted anti-Israelism as a core element of their leftist foreign policy: That is, they blame Israel, not Iran, for nearly all the violence in the Middle East and demand "concessions" that would, in fact, be an Israeli suicide pact.

Gen. Jones eagerness to participate in the Gala Dinner of such a group as J Street is a very strong indicator that, at least with regard to foreign policy, he is indeed a leftist, aligning himself much more with antisemites Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Jimmy Carter than with Israel supporters like Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT, 85% liberal) or Charles "Chuck" Schumer (D-NY, 100%).

Is it too hard to believe that if Jones is in bed with Power -- policywise, I mean; get your rmind out of the gutter! -- on the demonization of Israel, that he's likely to agree with her position, and that of the others in Obama's leftist bloc (including the One Himself), on Afghanistan?

Asked and answered.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 17, 2009, at the time of 2:57 PM

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