Matt Yglesias

Washington Post on Khalidi

A great editorial:

Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was “deeply flawed” but conceded there were also “flaws in the alternatives.” Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging — as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he “offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.”

It’s fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable — especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

The specifics of the Khalidi case and the sleazy racism of the whole affair aside, there’s something very disturbing to me about the broader implications of the sort of guilt by association tactics that the McCain campaign has used over and over again this year. I expect the merits of my political views to be judged based on my writing and other statements and my actions. Like anyone who’s interested in politics and interested in learning, I have cordial relationships with lots of people who have lots of opinions. And that’s how the world ought to work. It would be a disaster if someone everyone who wanted to operate in mainstream politics had to spend his entire life in a hermetically sealed bubble in which he never meets or talks to anyone with unpopular views on any subject.

For example, on the subject at hand, would it really make sense for a U.S. President to wade into the Israeli-Arab conflict without ever having spoken to an intelligent, articulate defender of the Palestinian side of the argument? Precisely because the United States tries to pull off the difficult trick of both being Israel’s friend and also being a mediator, it seems to me that it’s vitally important our that our leaders really understand different perspectives and be in the habit of listening to a wide range of smart people. Look back at American policies toward the whole region — and especially Iraq, obviously — during 2002-2004 and you see the wages of a policy elite that’s determined to cocoon itself off from any engagement with widely held views.

The Iron Cage

Ezra Klein suggests that people might want to stick it to the smear artists by purchasing a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. It seems like a good idea. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “A first-rate and update-to-date historical and political analysis of the Palestinian predicament.” Anthony Lewis says “Khalidi uses history to provide a clear-eyed view of the region and assess the prospects for peace. He strives successfully for even-handedness.”

What’s more, it costs just $10.20 and it’s eligible for Amazon Prime. I just placed my order.

UPDATE: Note that when you can’t get Marty Peretz to jump on your Arab-bashing bandwagon, you’ve got a bit of a problem:

Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post has an article about the Times’ refusal to make the clip public. But the news story reports exactly what Obama did say about Khalidi, and frankly it is utter pabulum. Read for yourself.

I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute. And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work.

I would never assume that anyone’s Zionist credentials are not in dispute when wading into this sort of territory. You’d be surprised who can get labeled an anti-semite when someone decides that’d be a good way to advance their political gambit of the day.

The Epistemology of Connections

Barack Obama has a stated Middle East policy. He also has a set of foreign policy advisers. And beyond the relatively narrow group of people who’ve been Obama’s national security team from the beginning he, as the Democratic nominee, now draws on the advice of the wider circle of Democrat-aligned foreign policy hands. This is a group of more-or-less known quantities whose views are by no means uniform, but which fall in a fairly predictable range. One might think the best way to ascertain Obama’s likely approach to national security policy would be to think about these people and their views. The institutions where Obama’s advisers will be coming from — CAP, CNAS, NSN, CSIS — have all kinds of written documents about foreign policy issues that could be perused.

Or you could follow Stanley Kurtz and focus on the views of Rashid Khalidi a scholar and left-wing Arab nationalist who, according to Kurtz, was a supporter of Obama’s when Obama was a local politician in Khalidi’s neighborhood.

It seems tedious to even point this out, but the standard of proof being applied here couldn’t possibly be applied consistently. Consider, by contrast, Obama’s ties to Joe Biden. They’re both Senators and, indeed, if Obama becomes President then Joe Biden will become Vice President. Or Obama’s ties to General Colin Powell — Obama specifically sought and received his support for a presidential bid and has repeatedly suggested that he would be interested in getting input from General Powell on national security issues. Or Obama’s ties to New Republic editor Marty Peretz who has written positive things about Obama. But then again, so has Jeffrey Goldberg. And so has Spencer Ackerman. But those guys think different things about American policy to the Middle East.

Or consider John McCain. He’s been in politics a long time. And his views have changed over the years. And he’s had a lot of different kinds of political allies. Back when he was leading the charge for the McCain-Feingold bill, he worked closely with the heads of a lot of liberal good-government groups. Should we take that to mean that he agrees with the heads of those groups about abortion rights or foreign policy? His “ties” to them are much more substantial than anything between Obama and Khalidi.

The procedure just doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile, National Review doesn’t agree with the foreign policy views of the sort of mainstream Democrats who, unlike Khalidi, will actually wind up staffing an Obama administration and making policy in it. Wouldn’t it make more sense to expend time and energy attacking those people and their views? Conservatives aren’t going to like the real Obama, so they’d do well to focus a little bit on him instead of obsessively hounding this mythical figure they’ve created.