Freedom’s Watch finds a new target

September 30, 2007

When Freedom’s Watch burst upon the political scene last month, it was part of a coordinated effort to rally support for staying the course in Iraq. The group unveiled four slick TV ads, including one featuring a veteran who lost a leg in Iraq who argued that we have to stay in Iraq because “they attacked us.” It was part of a $15 million dishonest blitz, asking Americans not to believe their lying eyes.

It’s hard to say if the group moved the needle at all — opposition to Bush’s policy is about where it’s been for months — but it appears the group is poised to move onto its next initiatve and start pushing for yet another war in the Middle East.

Next month, Freedom’s Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.

Although the group declined to identify the experts, several were invited from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group with close ties to the White House. Some institute scholars have advocated a more confrontational policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, including keeping military action as an option.

Last week, a Freedom’s Watch newspaper advertisement called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran “a terrorist.” The group is considering a national advertising campaign focused on Iran, a senior benefactor said, though Matt S. David, a spokesman for the group, declined to comment on those plans.

“If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of Freedom’s Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. “Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel.”

For far too many on the right, it really is 2002 all over again.

I find it a bizarre thing that this large group of people on the Right in America actually and actively want to be hated as far and wide as possible.

Iran does not have to be our enemy. Their general public was among the most supportive in the Middle East in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Their general public was, until the crackdown after their last elections, among the most Westernized. Their past President sought better ties and more cultural exchanges with the West.

It is true that Iran is rapidly moving the wrong direction, but a large part of that is our fault because the Bush Administration so badly mishandled Iran when Khatami was President and we had a real opportunity there (“Axis of Evil” anyone?)

Do we not have enough threats already? Is the world not sufficiently tumultuous and insecure? Do we have to drive potentially neutral countries into the “enemy” column?

I’m a reasonably educated, informed person, and even when I try hard to imagine a reason or strategy – even if I consider the purely political or ideological – I honestly do not get this lust for war with Iran. Are they all children of 1970s hostages?

  • “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped”

    Oh, if only the warnings of “My Pet Goat” were heeded when Bush read it, he could have been stopped…

  • these hitler comparisons are very helpful. see, when someone says “how did hitler treat the jews?” you could say “well, ahmadinejad is hitler, so hilter, i suppose, maintained a state religion that limited practice of judaism and discouraged secularism to the point where most of the country’s jews fled, leaving the few remaining to be represented by a single member (commensurate with their population) of a largely ineffectual parliament. and i guess hitler made hostile remarks about a jewish state even though his military was not of a size and sophistication to threaten the world at large. great students of history, these godwins.

  • the more apt comparison is between the Bush administration and Hitler’s use of the Reichstag fire to kill off the Weimar republic and democracy in Germany.Martial law and cancelled elections in store???

  • It’s not that it’s 2002 again, it’s that, for them, it’s 2002 still. The original vision, I’m convinced, was to wrap up Saddam in a few weeks, set up our puppet state in Iraq, and roll on into Tehran soon thereafter. They’ve never let go of it.

    For a lot of the neo-con fantasists, they just want to get back to what they were working on before that nasty old reality intruded. The magical Iraqi client democracy didn’t spring up, we got looting instead, and now we’re in a quagmire, but for the deep believers, that’s no reason to give up on the original idea. Some of them probably see the fastest way to “victory” in Baghdad as going through Tehran.

    Friggin’ lunatics.

  • As many have pointed out before, the right-wing has found the perfect substitute for their eternal war against communism that went away after the Soviet Union collapsed and corporations figured out how to take advantage of all that (once horrid) slave labor in China. The new war on the Islamofascicommieraghead unbelievers of the Christian god can last decades and has great profit potential. But do they really, really think the American public is ready for an Orwellian perpetual war?
    It seems like they’re trying a little too hard.

  • “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,”

    Yes. How brilliant! If only the pre-Reich Germans had been like Germans under Hitler, they might have taken this jumped-up little nobody out back and shot him for dictating a bunch of drivel in his prison cell!

    I guess it’s too much to expect these dickheads to know what the fuck they’re talking about before they open their mouths, huh?

    But hey, if they want to burn their cash on an attempt to start war with Iran, let ’em. Maybe they’ll do such a good job that Iran will get nervous, chuck a few mines in the Straits of Hormuz and the Freedom Voyeurs will get a nice bonus from their ExxonMobilShell buddies when the price of oil rises to $2,000 a barrel.

  • I don’t get it…you’d think last month’s meltdown in the credit markets would shelve any de-stabilizing foreign policy discussions…as it is oil is priced over $80/barrel.

    The guys behind Freedom’s Watch are rich and well-connected…surely they’re talking to their guys on Wall Street…and you’d think their guys who work in the markets tell them this is crazy talk blowing up Iran…

    So what’s the point of all this…are these Freedom Watch guys truly nut-cases who want to gamble everything, or is there an ulterior motive behind the saber-rattling???

    As far as I’ve read, nobody knows what the real game plan is with these guys…

  • “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman

    So? If BushCo’s warnings were heeded when they wrote ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, they could have been stopped too. If you get a warning that something bad might happen and then don’t do anything to protect yourself – what good was the warning?

  • “Answer is orange” got me thinking…

    There probably is a hard core on the right that thinks they have their bets covered with a confrontation with Iran…they’ve moved their assets into gold or whatever currency they think will profit from an oil panic…they have a chunk of oil stocks in their portfolios…they probably think they’ll profit handily from the fallout…

    The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2011 – for them it’s time to put the next big capital enhancing scenario into play…and if the Far Right dictates the timing of the event so much the better for them – it’s their wet dream to time the markets, after all. Martial law??? – it only sweetens the deal.

    Economic panic??…Depression??… one forgets that a lot of people made a lot of money in the Great Depression buying up deflated assets cheap..

    I have read that it’s Cheney who’s pushing confrontation…Bush probably understands the ramifications and is ambivalent about the idea – the absolute panic in the markets – but can he really control Cheney and his mercenaries at this point???….

    Sorry about the tin foil ramblings here, but the Bush era is the best years of their lives for this crowd…and they are still making bank…

  • ricardo,

    A sentence which includes “Bush” and “understand” and “ambivalent” without irony?

  • These folks are just another bunch of Israel-first, soulless, neo-cons who would readily use the blood and treasure of others to fulfill their selfish agenda. The sons and daughters of the non-rich are just cannon-fodder; meanwhile, these bastards are taxophobes, who are ready to cut Social Security and other entitlement for the masses, in order, to preserve the wealth of their families. Despicable!

  • “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,”

    … And that is exactly the reason why we have to realize that the Bush Kampf is doing exactly the same thing…. So…. are we going to sit back like all the Germans did, and let the Bush/Cheney gang take over OUR country?

    Or… are we going to do something about it? Or just keep whining about it. Don’t underestimate that Freedom Watch scum group. They are only a few now, but with the amount of money they can poor into a campaign, it is easy for them to ‘turn on’ the 30% dead-enders. FEAR talks… Maybe we need to put even more fear into them.

    NOT FEAR of the so called islamofascists, BUT FEAR about what the Bushfascists have in mind for OUR country.

  • “A sentence which includes “Bush” and “understand” and “ambivalent” without irony?”…

    Yeah, I know, Jen Flowers…I kinda choked myself when I wrote it…LOL.

  • veteran who lost a leg in Iraq who argued that we have to stay in Iraq because “they attacked us.”

    Just because a guy lost a leg doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about, or that he’s being honest.

  • The following is what I sent to the idjuts at FW:

    Please convey my sympathy for Mr. Kriesel’s lost limbs. I thank him for his service, but, unfortunately, it was, in fact all in vain.
    And you might want to share a bit of actual history with him… There were eighteen Saudi’s involved in the 9/11 attacks.
    So, this war might make sense if we were attacking Saudi Arabia, but nobody in Iraq attacked us, you ignorant jackasses.

    I get SO impatient with utter ignorance.

  • Oh my what the corporations and corporation backed neocon think tanks are willing to back in their pursuit of oil.

    If that ad stated that “they attacked us” can we form a class action suit against this ad or the station that ran it for perjury and misleading the American people?

  • But will the Democrats vote to authorize Bush to attack Iran? The ads won’t matter if they hold fast against the Bush agenda. If they don’t and give Bush the authority and funds, these warmongers are sitting pretty.

  • But will the Democrats vote to authorize Bush to attack Iran?

    Will that stop Bush if chokes on another pretzle and thinks he hears Jesus telling him to frag Iran? He and his minions will find some language somewhere in something somebody signed and say that document gave him the authoritah.

  • “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,”…

    Freedom’s Watch is the very organization that would have been supporting Hitler calling the British and the Americans terrorists because they harbor Musl..er..I mean Jews. The Jews are all terrorists who, like the democ..er..I mean social Democrats are trying to destroy our country…They aren’t fooling anyone but some far rightist who use any reason as an excuse for war with Iran. They are covering for corporate power and the corporate agenda for which they are all a part of and are trying to make it seem they are really for the American public. Once you know the messengers here, then you can easily see the message is phoney. Their only concern is to keep the money coming and war is so profitable…for them and theirs no matter how they try to wrap the flag around it.

  • Disagree strongly when you say (zeitgeist) that “Iran is rapidly moving in the wrong direction”…that comment is unjustifiable and is based on American propaganda. They are being compared to America rather than other ME countries as a standard. It only adds to the neocons attempts to make Iran look like the giant evildoers. They did not use chemical weapons against Iraq even when Iraq used them against Iran…Iran said no. It was totally unethical and inhumane. The neocons here have put Iran in a bubble and refuse to let anyone look inside for themselves. The closer we get to having diplomatic relations with Iran the faster the neocons want to attack them…they don’t want us to see that Iran is not what they claim. That would spoil their war for profit plans. Ahmadinejad may be crazy but his country is not. Cheney doesn’t give a shit how many innocent Iranians get killed and would consider it ” such a small sacrifice”.

    Freedom’s Watch is a timepiece that counts down our freedoms as we lose them. It’s a gold watch that few can afford to wear.

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