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Not Revising History on Tom Lantos
As I entered the building of the United States Congress one afternoon in early December of last year, I walked through long hallways in the basement of the Capitol to attend a hearing on the Annapolis meeting between Israelis, Palestinians and a number of other countries from the region. Retired Ambassador Edward Peck - the head of the White House Terrorism Task Force during the Reagan administration - was the keynote guest. Other participants included Journalist Dan Lieberman and retired Professor Grace Austin. A staff member as well as the lawyer for the Council for the National Interest foundation in Capitol Hill were also present, an organization that has long promoted America's interests through supporting fair and even-handed policies in the Middle East.
It was a great event, except there was one problem with it. The hearing wasn't organized by Congress. In fact, it was only a counter-hearing to the official House hearing on the matter. The Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had previously decided that he was not going to ask any current or former State Department officials to speak at the official Congressional hearing on Annapolis. Instead, he had only invited two people to speak at the hearing: Dennis Ross - counselor of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is the research arm of American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) - and David Wurmser - a neoconservative who has long been credited as being one of the main authors of the 1996 report Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which was prepared for then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The Chairman was made well aware of the fact that both invited witnesses had a consistent record of disproportionately and unconditionally supporting Israel, and that there was a need for at least one State Department official who could have an objective voice in the hearing. Despite hundreds of calls that were made to his office in the run-up to the hearing, he made the point of steadfastly refusing to invite a truly independent expert to speak. The name of the Chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee was Representative Tom Lantos.
Tom Lantos passed away on Monday. In light of his death, friends and colleagues have been expressing a great deal of sympathy and have had many nice things to say about him. As an immigrant and survivor of an extremist regime, this blogger admits that Lantos did have one of those truly American stories that stretched from his survival as a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor to immigrating to the United States and electing to the House of Representatives. Furthermore, it is understandable to see the way in which Lantos is viewed in light of the role that the United States played in saving Europe from fascism. In other words, Lantos was seen as a symbol of what America fought for in World War II.
However, as I read obituary after obituary on Tom Lantos's death - including a few on this site - I have noticed that most engage in relentlessly deliberate or unintentional revisionism. We saw this kind of revisionism following the death of Jerry Falwell when most seemed to remember him as a great figure, conveniently forgetting the way in which he had promoted demagoguery and intolerance toward gays and lesbians or those who had a different view of when life begins. Gerald Ford seemed to receive the same kind of treatment when after his death; it was almost as if all the people who had previously been so outraged about his pardoning Richard Nixon had pressed the reset buttons of their memories, remembering nothing but great things about his presidency.
To the extent that those who were personally related or acquainted with Tom Lantos wish to express their view of the kind of person he was in his private life, they are entitled to do it and this blogger would have nothing but respect for those opinions. But when supporters and media personalities alike try to define Tom Lantos in terms of the value of his service in public life, it would be unjust for those of us who disagree to sit back and accept historical revisions.
Since 1981, Lantos spent twenty-seven years representing California's 12th district and Israeli interests as an AIPAC ally in Congress and was one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq War, which as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt eloquently lay out in Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was not our war to fight, but we got pushed into it by Israel. Lantos may have made the same excuses for voting for the war that Hillary Clinton and others who caved make. However, evidence proves the existence of other motivations on his part. On September 30, 2002, Ha'aretz - the world-known Israeli newspaper - quoted Lantos as having told Minister of Knesset (Israeli legislature) Colette Avital, "My dear Colette, you won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator who will be good for us and for you." This may be why as one former AIPAC leader put it, Lantos "is true blue and white" and Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique has written that Lantos has acted "as a mouth piece for Likud policies."
Lantos used his status as a holocaust survivor in Congress and an unconditional supporter of Israel to obtain the support of Pro-Israel PACs. In 2004, the 12-term incumbent's power was challenged by Maad Abu-Ghazalah, a Palestinian-born lawyer, and Ro Khanna, a 27-year-old anti-war Indian-American lawyer. Hardly a critic of Israel, Khanna simply held the position that "we have to find a way of articulating a very pro-Israel position that recognizes it as a strong ally and recognizes its security threat, but expresses empathy to the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people," Khanna said. "That's in the best interest of the U.S., in the best interest of Israel and in the best interest of the world."
But as anything short of unconditional support for Israel is unacceptable to the Israel lobby, Pro-Israel PAC funds channeled the total sum of $31,600 in campaign contributions to Lantos (WRMEA). The contribution helped him hold on to his seat despite strong anti-war sentiments in his district. Pro-Israel PACs were quite generous to Lantos over his career, and as of 2006, they contributed $112,750 to his campaigns (WRMEA). While he did not receive as much as the authors of the anti-Iran Kyl-Lieberman Amendment over their lifetimes - Senator Kyl: $163,025, and Senator Lieberman: $286,258 - as of today, Lantos has been the 8th highest receiver of Pro-Israel PACs contributions in the U.S. House of 435 representatives.
Any impartial historian will attest to the fact that since World War II, the United States has pursued an uneven-handed policy in the Middle East, and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have identified the significant influence of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby in the United States as the cause of this phenomenon. In return, that uneven-handed policy has continually cost the United States allies around the world and thousands of lives throughout terrorist attacks against us or through a war we have been fighting for the past six years. It is fine for friends of Tom Lantos to remember what, this blogger has no doubt, have been pleasant times. But let's not forget that to the extent that America's policy has for the past four decades been to support a foreign state's illegal occupation, home demolitions and settlement building in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, give them one-fifth of our entire foreign aid and veto just about every UN Security Council resolution that's passed against them, Tom Lantos was the embodiment of everything that has been wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East.
While this writer takes no pleasure in any human being's death, one can also see the end of Lantos's presence in politics as a symbol that reminds us about a new generation of politicians who will have the opportunity of allowing a more objective analysis of the impact of our foreign policy on our standing and moral reputation in the world.
25 Comments so far
Show AllWe tend to bury people's faults with them with a few exceptions such as Caligula, Ghenghis Khan, Hitler...
That bastard Lantos can rest in piss.
Thanks, Sam for your eloquent truth.
I listened to KQED do a half hour show yesterday and persons who attempted to state Sam's positions were pooh-poohed and on to the next caller.
My parents fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and they turned to the republican party as their spokesperson. This always caused very animated discussions at the dinner table as I was known as the commie pinko in my family.
The republicans were 'anti-communist' and that was all my parents needed to hear.
But what was forgotten in their thought process was that Hungary (and other 'communist' countries at the time) was first and foremost a totalitarian government, an oppressive regime where justice, democracy and human rights were pushed aside. The rulers would make the rules according their own desires regardless on the effect on the general public.
You can have tyranny by majority, and you can have oppression of freedoms and human rights in a democracy (or republic) like we are experiencing more and more right here in the US.
What I dislike more than anything else is when people use their power and position to promote personal agendas at the expense of the public good. That is what is happening in our country. Our rulers think that what is good for exxon/mobil is good for the ruling class because that is all they care about.
And maybe the war is good for the corporate powers that rule, but it isn't good for the public, the civilians in Iraq, and most of the others in the world.
I met Mr. Lantos at an event and he seemed like a nice man, like my parents, but he was lacking the compassion that many conservatives lack. Their thought process says, 'I am going to get back what I lost unjustly, even if I have to act unjustly against other innocent people.'
That in a nutshell is the problem I have with the conservative mindset who have suffered though injustices of their own. Witness the jewish treatment of the palestinians.
The killing of innocents for democracy, communism, or religion should never be tolerated, no matter how often it is done.
so it goes...
Before the Zionist trolls start shouting us down here, let me add to the chorus of "Good Riddance" to total Zionist tool Lantos. I'm sorry he suffered at the hands of Hitler, but that did not justify Zionism's genocide committed on the Palestinians. Our (U. S.) complicity in this horrendous conduct was in no small measure lead by politicians like Lantos.
Let us hope we can get a successor to him who is more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Let us start with a call to end all U. S. financial and military aid to Israel.
Tom Lantos rest in peace. Whatever his policies with respect to the Middle East, I am sure he was basically a good man.
I am in CA 12th and have Lantos' phone # in my cell phone. When I heard that he died I remembered the night walking my dogs in Golden Gate Park listening to live coverage from Palestine last year (thank you KPFA). I hated Lantos' pro Irael connections and powers. I don't know if there is an afterlife, but I have an image now of Tom Lantos in the company of Jews (and Gypsies and so many others) killed in the holocost, as well as innocents slaughtered due to U.S. power brokering in the middle east, always in support of Irael and the war economy machine. It doesn't end well for anyone does it Tom? Too bad we have such a strong hand in the misery of others before we all f*@#-ing die.
Who needs Lantos? Few in US national politics (or the US press) are not more loyal to Israel than the US.
Why does Israel have 200-500 nukes? Not for any threats in the area. Are they to keep the US in line?
Our corporate media seems to feel that whenever a politician dies that they must have led a good life simply because they attained a position of political power. They did it for Reagan and they'll probably do it for Bush.
I agree that AIPAC has a significant influence on our foreign policy, and this influence pushes the US to actively support and arm Israel as it dispossesses and kills Palestinians and Lebanese. I must disagree with the notion that "we got pushed into" the Iraq war by Israel.
As Stephen Zunes notes in Foreign Policy in Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4837),Mearsheimer and Walt's work on the Israel lobby is highly problematic in its methodology. Blaming the Iraq war on the Israel lobby diverts the blame from the real architects of the Iraq war, corporate interests (namely oil multinationals) and the neo-conservatives, particularly the Project for a New American Century. President Bush and his cronies were thinking about privatizing Iraqi oil and establishing their doctrine of unilaterally invading any Global South country that does not do the US's will in the bull-%*#$ War on Terror and the advance of neo-liberalism.
Engaging in mud-slinging wars with AIPAC has done little to change American policy towards the Middle East. I believe that those of us who stand for the rights of Palestinians must instead counteract AIPAC's power by seeking to convey to the world the human suffering that Israeli and American foreign policy causes in Palestine and Iraq. The American Friends Service Committee has led the way in this regard (I don't work for them), and also the groups that rallied to protest Israel's recent deadly policies towards Gaza. I think we can also counteract AIPAC by opposing politicians who back Israel unconditionally. The campaign to unseat Lieberman came so close (Lamont beat him in the primary)-such efforts must be continued. But bi%&*ing about AIPAC and blaming everything on them will do little to help us in this struggle.
Those of you who trash AIPAC and Israel who stands behind it, sound like the story of the scribes and Pharisses who tossed a woman caught in the act of adultery at Jesus' feet expecting to force him to condemn her to death(curiously enough the man involved was nowhere to be found).
Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more. If enough American officials told AIPAC and Israel "no" and then reported the attempted solicitation activity in their congressional statements and newsletters to constituents she wouldn't have such a thriving business and long list of "Johns" waiting to be hired to supply her "services".
Both sides are both prostitutes and clients and are equally at fault and equally the victim of the other.
truthteller SAID:
"Let us start with a call to end all U. S. financial and military aid to Israel".
I agree completely.
Israel would clean up it's act or cease to exist.
That in turn would DRASTICALLY improve our chances in the fight against Islamic extremists.
Israel has long held too much power over our foreign policy.
We MUST end that if we hope to improve the chances for world peace.
arobnorwich oil lobbies do not make foriegn policy and contrary to popular belief they did not push for war. Oil lobbies push for tax relief and other business breaks/incentives. Its the neocons, AIPAC, and the Military Industrial Complex which pushed for this one.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
As for Lantos although I usually disagreed with his views I am sorry for his death.
Amerika and its corporate media substitute for culture has truly come to fetishize its deceased politicians, especially Republicants or honorary Republicants such as the exceptionalist Mr. Lantos.
I see this as part of the overall cognitive dissonance in which the body politic is mired. See, if the teevee-- with its various celebrity infotainwhores serving as masters and mistresses of ceremony, and an endless stream of honored elite guests singing from the same page of overweening praise-- pumps out an endless gush of pious bereavement and tributes to the honored deceased, it's another win-win outcome: the deceased is rehabilitated as a paragon of virtue, and the credulous and polite audience of mourners feel a frisson of satisfaction and participation by laying a virtual rose atop the casket.
It's the exact opposite of Mark Antony's eulogy to Julius Caesar; nowadays, the elite consent-manufacturers make damn sure that the evil is oft interred with the bones, and the hyperbolized good lives on.
Thus, Amerika buries conservative politicians in the whitest sepulchres in the world.
One of the great human failings, selective memory. Without it, denial would be impossible.
Read "Overcoming Zionism" by Joel Kovel. Then you will be thankful that arch-Zionist Lantos is no longer on the scene.
dcbeltway: re oil lobbies and the war:
They had they means and opportunity - it is called the energy task force (2001)
They had the motive - look at their profits as a result
The details of the Cheney Energy Task Force are kept hidden from the public.
We have a crime; means, motive, and opportunity; and we have a failure to cooperate with investigators.
Why do you not suspect a connection?
Because of this:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=332835&sw=Haifa+Mosul
And the role PNAC and the neocons played.
Finally majority of our oil comes from Canada, Mexico, Africa, Venezuela and not the Middle East. A small percentage comes from Saudi Arabia.
American Oil companies could have gotten the oil cheaper from trade instead of war. In addition, its cheaper to not re-route the oil all the way to Haifa and instead export it via waterways from Iraq in the Gulf.
For you to deny the role of Israel and its lobbies in the Iraq war is to bury your head in the sand GDE or to purposely cover-up the truth.
dcbeltway: I did not deny the role of PNAC, the neocons, or Israel's role in expanding the invasion of Iraq (which has been continuous since January 1991).
What I wrote is that the oil business appears to have advocated a criminal expansion of the war that existed, starting in August 2002 with increased bombing of Iraq. I have never stated others were not involved. The way that US politics works is that money not only talks, it shouts out people and gets its way, and the oil business money does strongly influence US "policy".
It is fact that oil corp profits have soared with the increase in petroleum costs totally refutes your argument that cheaper oil without war was in the financial interest of the oil corps. By analogy, are there more profits in diamonds or in glass fakes?
SO,sammy,you are willing to sniffingly acknowledge that the late lamented lantos was an immigrant who survived an "extremist" government.you must think your audience is composed of illiterates.you managed to smear aipac and infantalize the nazis in a few fetid paragraphs.a mind is a terrible thing to waste,huh?don't stop now,chief.keep us posted on whatever else strikes your ass as unfair.
Dodger Dave... "smear" AIPAC? I don't think AIPAC needs any smearing. It is a tool of corruption and immorality by definition. And as for the "extremist regime" segment, I read it as Sam saying that HE had survived an extremist regime, so he understood Lantos's survival story. Read Sam's bio. I think the only illiterate member of Sam's audience is, well, you!
Whatever his policies with respect to the Middle East, I am sure he was basically a good man.
Ah suhail_shafi, how touching of you to throw in your borrowed shekels. Yep, what is a few hundred thousand lives so long as one is 'bascially' a good man. I presume in the 'banality of evil' sense. Eichmann was a good man -- Nice to neighbours, nice to pets, kids loved him.
suhail_shafi is not a very common name in the US, so I am assuming you are a fellow Asian who feels he has to earn his green-card by resorting to daily Uncle-Tomisms. Kind of reminds me of the reality show where immigrants are made to eat worms and do other demeaning things in order to earn a stab at a green card. I presume you feel you haven't earned yours yet?
PLEASE excuse my poorly worded disjointed comment above-let me try again-the author DOES trivialize the nazis by calling them extremists.he DOES demonize and overemphasize the role of aipac in shaping mideast policy.the relationship of the usa to the Saudi feudal lords is much more detirminative,not to mention nauseating to watch than the furtive activities of aipac.those 120 inbred cousins have more money,power,and influence than all the "you know whos " who ever lived.the most telling category error in that travesty of an article is the one that compares lantos,basically a tool,with falwell who was a dangerous demagogue in the beginning,and a vastly more influential man than lantos in the end.asfor the charge that i'm illiterate-you might want to look up the word "immigrant" in your trusty dictionary-then check out the definition of "refugee." different,huh? my adhomininems are no better than the genius who called me out above,but they are no worse,either.
In 1997, Fortune magazine asked Congressmen to rank the "25 most powerful" lobbying organizations in DC. In 2005, the National Journal did the same. Both times, AIPAC came in 2nd - ahead of, for instance, the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association (NRA), but behind the AARP.
If you think AIPAC is less powerful than oil lobby, why don't you read "Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." AIPAC is the reason why we've not been able to pursue a comsonsensical foreign policy in the mid east and have supported a 4-decade-long illegal military occupation and settlement building in direct violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. Say what you want, but facts are facts.
OK,chief,for the lAST time,i promise-"facts are facts",but you didn't present any-neither did i,BUT AT LEAST I ADMIT IT.i was working more in the area of some attempt to achieve rhetorical parity-you present as "fact" a book whose thesis and conclusions you relished,and an article you liked which appears to contain a listing-er facts -with which you seem to concur-never mind the methodology ,let alone the questions used to compile thelist.good luck with that.p.s. since you seem to be working on a doctorate in category errors-keep in mind that the saudi royal family is not quite part of the "oil lobby".the former does not lobby this lamentable administration so much as it SUMMONS it.once again,definitions are not as cool as facts..but still,you don't have to be some sort of wizard to comprehend the difference between "lobby",and "cartel".more properly,it might require higher wizardry to miss that distinctiion.thanks for your time.
Their methodology was fine, and so was the book on Israel Lobby. And you're just posing some vague questions about the "methodology" without even knowing yourself what you mean. Manufacturing phony charges without being specific just because you don't like the results won't do. If you have a specific charge against these studies or the book, make it. If not, you don't have a point. There is no evidence that the oil lobby lobby pushed for the war. But there is plenty of evidence that neocons such as Richard Pearl, William Kristol, Dick Cheney and a whole host of others pushed for a war in Iraq. Saying that AIPAC didn't push for Iraq war or the recent resolution on Iran equates being delusional. By the way, you may want to work a little bit on your spacing, capitalizing and other stylistic stuff when it comes to typing. Just a suggestion.