Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, page 22

Outside the Beltway

Sarah Palin—New Darling of the Neocons

By James G. Abourezk

	Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at a Sept. 10 campaign rally in Fairfax, Virginia (AFP photo/Paul J. Richards).

WE SHOULD not be surprised at the news that Sarah Palin has been taken under the wing of the neocon branch of the Republican Party. She is, of course, an answer to their wildest fantasy, the dream of having a new media star to lead their cause in a new administration.

According to a Sept. 13 report in the conservative British Telegraph newspaper, as part of a 2007 cruise to Alaska sponsored by the Weekly Standard Magazine, the cruising neocons had tea with Alaska’s Governor Palin. It was at that meeting that she was identified as a potential future asset of the neoconservative cause. It was William Kristol, the magazine’s editor, who pushed her into McCain’s arms just before the Republican convention, resulting in her selection as McCain’s vice presidential nominee.

Handed over to advisers who advocate the Dick Cheney brand of aggressive behavior—to which Palin may already have been inclined—McCain’s running mate was described by one neoconservative as a “blank page” on which, apparently, anything can be written. Watching her interviews with the ABC news anchor, Charles Gibson, confirmed this description. Palin’s scripted answers—evident by her never directly answering his questions—sounded more like a tape recorder being turned on than someone who is capable of providing a thoughtful answer to questions on issues. Her Joe Lieberman-escorted meeting with AIPAC leaders on the second day of the Republican convention in Minneapolis resulted in her thrice-voiced position that “we cannot second guess the measures Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.”

What frightens many of us about Governor Palin is that she is more like George W. Bush than John McCain is. Although McCain is an unabashed warhawk, Palin is more like Bush in the respect that neither she nor Bush has enough intelligence to reject the aggressive advice of the neocons who now surround her, advice that would keep the U.S. in more and more unnecessary wars. Palin is the kind of semi-robotic personality who comes across attractively enough to appeal to millions of (understandably, in this case) uninformed voters, but who will fail to be aware of the arguments of the reach-for-empire neocons who want to engulf America in more imperial wars. Iran is next in their crosshairs, as we’ve seen. The Israeli Lobby and their neocon allies in the U.S. government are straining to move America’s military power in that direction. They press for it in public, loudly, and with no shame whatever, despite the horrendous cost of winning their last argument that resulted in George W. Bush invading Iraq.

Palin also told Gibson that she favored Georgia and Ukraine becoming members of NATO, despite the knowledge that, as NATO members, the United States would be required come to their defense militarily should Russia move against either one.

We now know that Georgia’s defense minister is a dual Israeli-Georgian citizen, which gives us another reason for Georgia’s unprovoked attack on Russian forces in South Ossetia.

In her convention speech, Palin mocked the notion of Barack Obama having been a community organizer. What this good Christian woman forgets is that Jesus Christ himself was a community organizer, during the same period of time that Pontius Pilate was the governor.

We are living in a dangerous world, and Palin, who is an odds-on favor to succeed John McCain as president, believes that, because she can see Russia from the tip of Alaska, she understands everything she needs to know about foreign policy. She is nothing more than a modern-day Aimee Semple McPherson, the charismatic demagogue who preached her way to riches in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Sarah Palin as president is an even more frightening prospect than that of having George W. Bush as president for four more years.

James G. Abourezk is a former U.S. senator (D-SD) and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He currently practices law in Sioux Falls, SD.

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