Doubting Thomas

Isn't It Rich?

Thomas Friedman endorses President Bush for re-election. Not 43, but 41. In "The Apparent Heir" he actually gives a pretty good recapitulation of the elder Bush's career and argues (well) that the first President Bush will be treated kindly by history. He starts:

Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no - not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father - George Herbert Walker Bush.

Um. Is there any doubt whom Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd support? For that matter is there any doubt who David Brooks and William Safire support? The first 3 (and Friedman) actually spend so much of their time bashing the president - rationally and irrationally, I hardly see the point in telling them they can't endorse someone. I mean if George W. Bush is evil incarnate doesn' that at least suggest that you support his opponent. This rule strikes me as one of those odd journalism rules that's supposed to shield the media from charges of bias or improper influence. It's just plain silly.
But getting to the meat of the endorsement:

The alliance that Mr. Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III built to drive Saddam out of Kuwait had so many allies it virtually turned a profit for America. Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong, he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia.

And if France was in the pay of the evil dictator, France should have veto power? And if we give $2 billion a year to Egypt we shouldn't expect some actual cooperation in return? But the fact that he didn't try deserves more discussion than simply shrugging and qualifying it "right or wrong."
Thousands of Iraqis were getting ready to finish the job. When Bush 41 stopped, they were slaughtered. There is a strong case for arguing that the decision not to finish the job undermined America's image in the region and hurt America's and the world's interests in the Middle East.

The elder Bush rightly understood that it was not in Israel's interest, or that of the U.S., for Israel to be expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Madrid peace conference convened by the elder Bush paved the way for both the Oslo peace process and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, which ended Israel's diplomatic isolation with countries like India and China. It was also the elder Bush who laid the groundwork for the Nafta free-trade accord, completed by President Bill Clinton.

It's interesting that the elder Presiden't Bush's Middle East policy is described here as being in Israel's interest. The hostility toward Israel was quite clear from the outset.
Moshe Arens in his book, "Broken Covenant" figured that Israel was headed for tought times with the Bush administration when James Baker described relations with Israel as being comparable to a "turkey shoot:" (p 28-29) "The important thing is knowing that it's in your hands, that you can do whatever you determine is in your interest to do."
In June 1990 Baker famously told Israel:"Everybody over there should know that the telephone number [of the White House] is 1-202-456-1414. When you're serious about peace, call us." It is a line that Friedman, then diplomatic correspondent for the Times reportedly fed Baker. (If he did, it marks a more serious breach of journalistic "ethics" than endorsing a candidate as an opinion columnist.)
Later, when Israel was asking for loan guarantees to resettle Russian Jews President Bush said he was "one lonely little guy" standing up to "a thousand lobbyists."
What was the first President Bush's failing. According to Friedman he wasn't good at public diplomacy. One of the specific problems was:

He wrongly antagonized American Jews by challenging their right to lobby on behalf of Israel.

That is a reference to the 3rd quote above. And maybe if that had been the only negative comment from his administration, that's how the remark could be conceived. But it was part of a pattern of barely concealed contempt for the Jewish state that was conveyed by the first President Bush and his team. Not that Friedman found anything wrong with that.
In "Broken Covenant" (p 206-207) Arens relates how he came to Washington to speak with President Bush to try and get freedom for Israel to respond to Iraqi SCUDS. He was surprised when Secretary Baker summoned him for a meeting. The next day Thomas Friedman reported that Arens had come to ask for aid from America but that subject had been introduced by Baker. I guess I could be generous and say that Friedman did not know that he had fed a false piece of information by Baker, more likely Friedman knew it was false, but it gave him one more opportunity to put Israel in a bad light.
I realize that there are aspects of "Broken Covenant" that are score settling. (Ariel Sharon does not come off well in the book. He was a constant thorn in the side of Shamir and Arens.) But nothing I've seen in the words and behavior of James Baker suggest that Arens was off the mark in his portrayal of the Secretary.
Friedman may say that the elder Bush's actions were in Israel's interests, but I think that the record shows that overt hostility is a more apt description. (How else do you explain that after the Gulf War Bush Sr. invited King Hussein to the White House when the king helped Iraq in the war and he showed Shamir the back of his hand though Shamir sacrificed Israel's sovereignty to support the American war effort?)
Finally we have this:

So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.

When Friedman puts "nurturing allies" together with "mak[ing] Israel more secure" I can't help but think of Charles Krauthammer's "Sacrificing Israel". No doubt Friedman would approve a Kerry's administration's appointment of James Baker as an envoy to the Middle East and America joining the European Union in condemnations of Israel. After all that would achieve most of his goals. But perhaps Friedman is driven less by an interest in Israel's security than he is driven by an overt hostility to the country. That is the aspect of George W. Bush's legacy for which Thomas is most nostalgic.
There is, of course, a benign explanation for the affinity that Thomas has for the first Bush administration. Daniel Pipes (in an article, "Can the Palestinians Make Peace?" he admits is slightly dated by events) argues that the Bush I administration was consumed by Palestinianism. By "Palestinianism" he means that the solution of the Palestinian issue (and creation of a Palestinian state) was taken to be the main issue in the Middle East. No peace could be achieved without it. After the failure of the Oslo accords even with the participation of pliant Israeli leaders like Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, it's pretty clear that Palestinianism was a dead end. Pipes wrote:

Yet this emphasis on the Palestinians (an outlook which I call "Palestinianism") has two important flaws: in the first place, even if Palestinians were to be satisfied, they are too weak to call off the Arabs' conflict with Israel; and in any case, available evidence suggests they cannot be satisfied by any solution short of the destruction of Israel.

What was true in 1990 is even more true now. And if Friedman favors Kerry for his approach to the Middle East he is endorsing him on the basis of a tried and failed approach. The endorsement says a lot about Kerry, it says even more about Friedman.
Oh and Tom, spare us the phony fear of being fired. Your essays are usually the most e-mailed articles any given day. You're a big bread winner for the Times. The Times really isn't bothered by dishonesty - intellectual or otherwise - just so long as it has an attractive bottom line. Despite its air of moral superiority, the Times is a big corporation whose main goal is to make money.
UPDATE: The Shark Blog has also dissected the endorsement. He shows to what degree George W. Bush is, indeed, his father's heir.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Doubting Thomas.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 31, 2004 06:27 AM