The neocon grip on the next president

If neoconservatives were worried that their grip on power was about to loosen completely under the new president, they can breathe easy. With his first announced appointment, Barack Obama makes clear that he is committed to the status quo in the Middle East.

Who is Rahm Emanuel? Not merely an Illinois congressman. As Patrick Cockburn points out in Counterpunch this weekend, Emanuel's a real hawk's hawk on terrorism and pro-Israel policy:

Emanuel, as Ralph Nader points out in my interview with him below, represents the worst of the Clinton years. His profile as regards Israel is explored well on this site by lawyer John Whitbeck. He’s a former Israeli citizen, who volunteered to serve in Israel in 1991 and who made brisk millions in Wall Street. He is a super-Likudnik hawk, whose father was in the fascist Irgun in the late Forties, responsible for cold-blooded massacres of Palestinians. Dad’s unreconstructed ethnic outlook has been memorably embodied in his recent remark to the Ma’ariv newspaper that "Obviously he [Rahm] will influence the president to be pro-Israel… Why wouldn't he be [influential]? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

As other commentators have pointed out, Obama's foreign policy slant toward the Middle East and Central Asia sounded increasingly like the Bush administration's as the campaign wore on. With the appointment of Emanuel to this key administration post, it is now safe to assume that we'll have a major military presence in both regions for the foreseeable future. Calling this a disappointment, for those of us opposed to U.S. interventionism in general, is an enormous understatement.