Adam Schiff Is No Friend of Progressives
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
31 October 19
A huge national spotlight is now on Adam Schiff, the member of Congress
leading the impeachment inquiry. In his tenth term, Schiff is really going
places. But where is he coming from?
This year, as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he has relentlessly
built a case against a horrendous president. For progressives eager to see
Donald Trump impeached, Schiff is an enemy of their enemy. But whether he's
a friend is another matter.
"Schiff's record on foreign policy, civil liberties, human rights and other
key issues has often put him more in line with Republicans than with liberal
Democrats," international affairs scholar Stephen Zunes told me. "It is
ironic, therefore, that Trump and the Republicans are portraying him as some
kind of left-winger."
For a backstory perspective on Schiff, I contacted a progressive activist
who has been closely tracking his political career for two decades. Howie
Klein, the publisher and editor of DownWithTyranny.com, lives in Schiff's
Congressional district in the Los Angeles area. They met when Schiff was a
state senator running for Congress in 1990 against a Republican incumbent.
"I was all gung-ho and raised a lot of money for him from my music industry
colleagues," Klein told me. "I didn't understand at the time that although
he was a Democrat, he was a conservative Democrat. There were a couple of
hints during the campaign, but it wasn't until he was elected and joined the
Blue Dogs and started voting that I realized that we had traded a right-wing
Republican for a GOP-light Democrat."
Schiff wasn't merely playing it safe with his constituents. "It was a
rapidly changing district that in just a few years went from red to swing to
blue to deep blue," Klein recalled. "The most Schiff was willing to move was
from the Blue Dogs to slightly less odious New Democrats."
As for the dynamics that have elevated Schiff to star on the House
impeachment stage, Klein commented: "Most of Nancy Pelosi's committee chairs
do exactly what she tells them to do, but Schiff seems to be even more exact
than most of the others. He's her guy, and she has given him a perfect
opportunity to transform himself into a political celebrity."
Alignment with the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill has paid off for
Schiff. This month, Speaker Pelosi skipped over Jerrold Nadler - who, as
Judiciary Committee chair would have ordinarily taken the lead - instead
choosing to appoint Schiff to drive the impeachment train.
Schiff is tenaciously challenging a despicable president who should be
impeached. At the same time, while Schiff has emerged as a marquee foe of
Trumpism, we should be aware that he remains deeply enmeshed with
corporatism and militarism.
Schiff is significantly more hawkish than Nadler. While Nadler was one of
the 59 House Democrats who voted against the National Defense Authorization
Act for fiscal year 2019, Schiff voted yes on that landmark measure - which
abetted Trump's push for a massive two-year 11 percent boost in military
spending. Pelosi, who also voted for the bill, proudly wrote to Democratic
colleagues: "In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting
for increases in funding for defense."
The Pentagon has been able to rely on Schiff to vote for military spending
increases throughout his career. And he has rarely done anything contrary to
the interests of the military-industrial complex.
In March 2015, when Saudi Arabia launched air strikes against Yemen that
began the ongoing murderous intervention, Schiff went out of his way to
voice support. The Obama administration, he declared, "made the right
decision" to support the Saudi bombing. Said Schiff: "The military action by
Saudi Arabia and its partners was necessitated by the illegal action of the
Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers."
After more than four years of vast suffering and death among Yemini people,
Schiff recently played a positive role as he co-sponsored an amendment
(accepted by the House) that could end U.S. participation in the Saudi-led
war in Yemen.
Aside from his reflexive support for military spending hikes, Congressman
Schiff's most egregious roles have involved policies in the Middle East. He
voted to greenlight the U.S. invasion of Iraq that began in March 2003.
"Schiff was among the right-wing minority of House Democrats who sided with
Bush and Cheney over the broad consensus of Middle East experts,
international legal scholars, independent arms control analysts and others
who warned that an invasion of Iraq was unnecessary, illegal, and would be
utterly disastrous," said Zunes, a professor of politics at the University
of San Francisco.
Zunes added: "Contrary to the wishes of the majority of his liberal
California constituents, Schiff effectively renounced the UN Charter and the
Nuremberg Principles by voting to authorize it and lied about Iraq having
'weapons of mass destruction.' In doing so, he contributed to the deaths of
4,500 young Americans and close to 1 million Iraqis and others, wasted $2
trillion of our tax dollars, helped destabilized the region, and helped
inflict enormous environmental damage, including a huge carbon footprint."
Notably unconcerned about the human rights of Palestinian people, Schiff has
consistently run interference for the Israeli government. "One of the great
ironies of Schiff being accused of having a liberal bias in leading the
impeachment investigation is that he was one of the leading critics of a
2009 United Nations investigation of violations of international law by both
Israel and Hamas," Zunes said. "He co-sponsored a resolution claiming that
the 585-page report, which confirmed earlier assessments by Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch and criticized both sides, was somehow
'irredeemably biased' against Israel and that its well-documented findings
were 'sweeping and unsubstantiated' and therefore 'unworthy of further
consideration or legitimacy.' Like Republican critics of his impeachment
hearings, Schiff has shown himself unwilling to consider the actual facts
uncovered through a meticulously detailed investigation and instead simply
attacks those doing the investigating."
In December 2016, as President Obama was preparing to leave office, Schiff
urged him to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334. Schiff was among the
lawmakers who couldn't stand the idea that Israel would be censured for
violating international law with its settlement building in the occupied
Palestinian territories.
With Schiff's historic role in the impeachment process gearing up this week,
I contacted Marcy Winograd, who mounted a strong primary challenge as a
peace candidate 10 years ago in the LA area, throwing a scare into hawkish
Congresswoman Jane Harman. Winograd said: "I would ask House Speaker Pelosi
and Congressman Schiff, a skilled prosecutor undaunted in the face of
Trump's relentless tirades, to broaden the laser-like impeachment focus on
Trump's demagogic extortion of Ukraine to include abuses of executive power
that might resonate more with the American people while not provoking a new
Cold War nuclear arms race with Russia."
Schiff's front-seat presence on the Russiagate bandwagon has done wonders
for his mega-media profile. He's well-positioned to run for California's
Senate seat now held by 86-year-old Dianne Feinstein, while big money has
been pouring in faster than ever.
Schiff brought in $6.25 million for his campaign committee during the last
two-year election cycle, and he ended 2018 with $4.7 million in cash on
hand. This year, as the intelligence committee chair, Schiff has picked up
the fundraising pace, raising $4.37 million in just nine months; he now has
close to $7 million in the bank. Schiff certainly doesn't need the money to
get re-elected in his heavily Democratic district, where he has received
more than three-quarters of the votes in every one of this decade's
elections. His interest in higher office seems clear.
Right now, right-wing media are teaming up with the White House and
Congressional Republicans to vilify Adam Schiff while he leads impeachment
efforts in the House. Under the circumstances, progressives might view him
as an ally. But any alliance with the likes of Schiff should be understood
as tactical and temporary.
Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He
is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the
author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page
