To me, this is a stunning appointment

To me, this is a stunning appointment. There are very few former senior diplomats as experienced and

geographically well-rounded (just look at this bio here), knowledgeable, entertaining (in a mordant

sort of way), accessible (until now at least), and verbally artful as Freeman. He can speak with equal

authority about the politics of the royal family in Saudi Arabia (where he was ambassador), the Chinese

Communist Party — he served as Nixon’s primary interpreter during the ground-breaking 1972 visit and

later deputy chief of mission of the Beijing embassy, and the prospects for and geo-strategic

implications of fossil-fuel production and consumption over the next decade or so. But, more to the

point, he was probably the most direct and outspoken — and caustic — critic of the conduct of UGGs

Sheepskin Cuff Boots’s “global war on terror,” especially of the influence of the neo-conservatives

— of any former senior member of the career foreign service. His appointment constitutes a nightmare,

for the Israeli right and its UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots supporters, in particular, (and for reflexive

China-bashers, as well).

For a taste of both his rhetorical style and his politics, see, for example, this UGGs Sheepskin Cuff

Boots he gave to the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots Information Agency Alumni Association two years ago or,

better yet, this one to the Pacific Council on International Policy in October 2007 in which he says:

“In retrospect, Al Qaeda has played us with the finesse of a matador exhausting a great bull by

guiding it into unproductive lunges at the void behind his cape. By invading Iraq, we transformed an

intervention in Afghanistan most Muslims had supported into what looks to them like a wider war against

Islam. We destroyed the Iraqi state and catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war

in that country.