Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager and Main Policy Advisor is a Neocon

For those of us who may have had any last inclination of silencing our inner disillusion with the Democratic Party for just one day, on November 4th, 2008…

Illuminations From Todays Washington Post profile of Clinton’s Campaign Manager and top confidant, Mark Penn:

In their $5 million Georgetown mansion, Penn and his wife, Nancy Jacobson, a former staff member for Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) who is now a fundraiser with the Clinton campaign, run something of a salon for like-minded friends. They recently threw a book party for Jeffrey Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, to celebrate the release of his memoir on Israel. On another occasion, they hosted David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, for a dinner party and political discussion.

Penn has deep roots in the national security wing of the Democratic Party, along with other centrist Democrats — some of them Jewish and pro-Israel, like Penn — who saw the merits of invading Iraq before the war began.

Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country’s history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East. “We got a chance to experience firsthand the perils and possibilities that the state of Israel presents,” Schoen said in an interview.

Ever since, Penn has been a prominent advocate of conveying strength in foreign policy. As recently as the 2004 presidential contest, Penn argued that Democrats would lose if they failed to close the “security gap.” His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose campaign he advised when Blair won a historic third term in 2005.

On no stormy sea has Penn been more of an anchor for Clinton than on Iraq, so far the defining issue of the 2008 election. “I don’t think there’s any gap in their thinking,” said Douglas Schoen, Penn’s former business partner.

Basically, this guy is Clinton’s Karl Rove in terms of how large of a factor he is in her decision making.

And for anyone who needs a reminder on Menachem Begin, the father of the Likud Party…

Yet in the years to follow, especially during his second term in office from 1981, Begin’s government was to reclaim a nationalist agenda, promoting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories. As retaliation to attacks from the north, he authorized a limited invasion into southern Lebanon in 1982, which quickly escalated into full-fledged war.

He appointed Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon to implement a large scale expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, a policy intended to make future territorial concessions in these areas effectively impossible. Begin refocused Israeli settlement strategy from populating peripheral areas in accordance with the Allon Plan, to building Jewish settlements in Palestinian populated areas.

And as if we needed any more…from the mouth man himself, who’s 1981 Re-election campaign was helped by Hillary Clinton’s top advisor…

“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.”
– Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the ‘Beasts,”‘ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

Hmm…supported the Iraq war even before 9/11, headed the presidential campaign of neo-con joe lieberman, helped re-elect the father of the Likud Party, Menachem Begin, who was the man responsible for the main expansion of the Israeli ettlements (the illegality of which is not even disputed by much of the American political establishment), helped re-elect tony blair in 2005, after most of Europe had lost confidence with Blair’s complicity in planning the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, and passionately promoting it to the World. Is it even possible to better fit the definition of Neo-Conservative?

Thankfully though, we won’t have to worry about this, because Mike Gravel is here to steal the Democratic party nomination right from under Clinton’s nose!!

Jed Rouhana