The petty sniping-du-jour between the Obama and McCain campaigns focuses on Obama’s allegedly “close” relationship with Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian academic associated with the late Yassir Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Army, defined by the U.S. government as a “terrorist” organization. The McCain campaign has made a big deal of an older story (from April 10, 2008) in the Los Angeles Times of a farewell dinner for Khalidi which, depending on whose version you believe, ranged from a casual appearance of Obama to his offering a “toast” to the suspected Palestinian terrorist, and McCain and his operatives have demanded that the Times release a videotape of the event.
Now, from the Huffington Post, closely allied with the Obama campaign, comes the breathless information that the Arizona Senator has for many years been chairman of the “democracy-spreading” organization, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and that in 1998 the IRI made a grant of nearly a half million dollars to fund a Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, and a copy of IRI’s 1998 tax statement been published to support the claim.
Some trivialities that arise in the course of a political campaign can serve a useful function in highlighting actually consequential issues, and this “who’s a terrorist?” game between the McCain and Obama forces could turn out to be one such, if responsible journalism could bring the relevant issue to life. The IRI, along with its “sister” organization, National Democratic Institute (NDI), should be fully explored by a public being asked to make a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who are bidding to take over the ship of state in the area of foreign policy. The IRI and the NDI are two of the branches of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to facilitate the U.S. government’s intrusion into the internal political affairs of countries around the globe, a kind of kinder and gentler version of the rough interventionist tactics of the C.I.A., the clandestine agency which experienced much negative exposure in the Watergate era. (William Blum’s work has highlighted much of this chronic American interventionism.) Wherever around the world there has been a political coup or attempted coup, look for the hand of one of the NED agencies, supported mostly by funds channeled through the Agency for International Development (AID) which in turn is funded by the U.S. Treasury and is an arm of the government. From rose revolutions in Georgia, the orange one in the Ukraine to interventions in Venezuela, Haiti, Iraq, you name it, the NED’s mark is there. It is often exercised through “polling” data in populations facing election decisions, often data pointed toward showing the unpopularity of some “regime” the U.S. is interested in toppling. The NDI was most prominent in Venezuela, where it supported an illegal foreign-funded electioneering group called Sumate, while the IRI was credited with being the “most active player” in the 2004 U.S.-orchestrated ouster of Aristide in Haiti. These are pernicious agencies and operations to be sure, and their history and continued activity deserve the kind of public exposure that the Khalidi incident may produce. But neither party should expect to come out of the exposure without smelling like a rose (or an orange), as the two parties, with their NDI and IRI components, have been equal-opportunity participants, along with the other two components of NED, representing organized labor and private enterprise. Along with McCain’s long-term role in chairing IRI, the NDI has for years been chaired by Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State and a foreign policy advisor to Obama, and another Democratic nominee, Walter Mondale, has been a sometime chairman. Obama’s campaign, if it wanted to portray a real difference in the Senator’s expected presidency with that of McCain, could repudiate the NDI and the broader NED policy and seek a return to the “good neighbor” policy of FDR by joining rather than trying the dominate the community of nations. Given Obama’s record of negative condemnations of “regimes” in countries the likes of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan and his extreme hostility toward the duly elected Hamas government in Palestine, the likelihood of a Democratic Party high road on this issue is pretty remote.
Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist
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