Imagine the reaction at National Review and in other neocon precincts if Barack Obama had indicated that his chief of staff would be someone who had volunteered for the military of a foreign nation, but had never volunteered in the American military, if his father had been a member of a terrorist organization,and was unrepentant about it, and if it was widely expected that the new chief of staff would use his position in Obama’s White House to advance the interests of a foreign nation.

Actually, you don’t have to imagine, since Obama has named as his chief of staff Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel, who volunteered in the Israeli Defense Force during the First Gulf War but has never served in the American military, whose father was a proud member of Menachem Begin’s terrorist Irgun organization, and whose father also forthrightly told the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, “Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel.”

When a “longtime liberal reader” wrote to Jonah Goldberg about how pro-Israel Emanuel was likely to be, Goldberg passed this information along to his readers as “an interesting point.”  Andrew McCarthy then linked to Goldberg’s post and wondered “what if any significance is to be gleaned from Emanuel’s very strong ties to Israel given the pre-election speculation that Obama’s election would mark a decline of Israeli influence on American policy.”

Excuse me, but shouldn’t the goal of Americans be a White House in which foreign governments, including Israel’s, have zero influence?  Isn’t this exactly what George Washington warned against in his Farewell Address?  And what would our first president have said about the likes of McCarthy and Goldberg and others who are so blase about the prospect of foreign influence in the White House?

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