Newsmaker Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski 
Quote:
Zbigniew Brzezinski
10th United States National Security Advisor
In office
1977 – 1981
President Jimmy Carter
Preceded by Brent Scowcroft
Succeeded by Richard V. Allen
Born March 28, 1928 (1928-03-28) (age 80)
Warsaw, Poland
Political party Democratic
Alma mater McGill University
Harvard University
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (Polish: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński, pronounced [ˈzbigɲev bʐɛˈʑiɲski]) : (born March 28, 1928, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. Known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish, he is a foreign policy realist and considered by some to be the Democrats' response to Republican realist Henry Kissinger.[1]
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran to an anti-Western Islamic state, encouraging reform in Eastern Europe, emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan[2] to fight against the Soviet-friendly Afghan government, increase the probability of Soviet invasion and later entanglement in a Vietnam-style war,[3] and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.
He is currently the national security advisor for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Zbigniew Brzezinski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Brzezinski is credited for starting the chain of events leading to the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan, for supporting the Islamists (through our Pakistani allies) in making the Soviets leave Afghanistan in defeat.
Here, he admits those provocations.
Quote:
One of the most fascinating items of Internet samizdat is a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, conducted by the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur. In the interview -- translated by author and CIA critic William Blum -- Brzezinski boasts that the CIA was supporting guerilla activities inside Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention, taking steps to “induce” the Soviets to intervene:
BRZEZINSKI: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
LNO: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
BRZEZINSKI: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
LNO: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
BRZEZINSKI: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.…
LNO: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
BRZEZINSKI: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Interviewed in Oct. 2001 by columnist David Corn, Brzezinski said he still had no regrets about launching the Afghan covert operation, knowing it would likely induce the Cold War foe to fall into a trap.
The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was indeed Vietnam-like in its brutality, killing more than a million Afghans and helping to tear apart a country that in 1979 had relatively little religious fanaticism and was making advances in the status of women.
In the upheaval, Afghanistan became a base for terrorists. Yet mainstream U.S. journalists refuse to mention the Nouvel Observateur interview and fail to ask Brzezinski obvious questions about how his Afghan policy may have helped us get into the current crisis. Instead, mainstream media repeatedly present Brzezinski and other former US foreign policymakers as omniscient seers whose wise counsel can get us out of the crisis.
Internet Samizdat Releases Suppressed Voices, History |
More in-depth info re: our role in Afghanistan 1979 - 1990 may be found here:
War and Piece:
Here is Brzezinski in Afghanistan rallying the Islamists to victory in the late 70's, telling Afghan Jihadists:
"Your cause is right. God is on your side." YouTube - Zbigniew Brzezinski to Jihadists: Your cause is right! Brzezinski is no doubt a gifted analyst but he is human and one of those human failings seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of radical Islam.
This misunderstanding led to his failure to recognize the true importance of his support for the Jihadists in Afghanistan in 1979. And it seems he has only superficially changed his view of them since then. His is a 19th Century European view of radical Islam which is that Jihad is a trifle and nothing to be concerned with. Or that Jihad is like a spiritual form of Yoga. This worldview manifests in a failure to recognize the unique importance of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestinian intransigence in the stalemate with Israel. A stalemate that only exists because the Palestians have been unable, so far, in pushing the Israelis into the sea.
Further, Brzezinski's belief in negotiating with the most committed Jihadist leaders betrays his lack of understanding that when an enemy has only your demise and capitulation as a goal there is no room for negotiation except how slowly or quickly shall the surrender or annihilation begin? That, or "how may we appease you?"
Here, he backs the candidacy of Barack Obama and suggests that our policies toward Israel are too warm, that the Palestinians don't already have the keys to achieving peace with the Israelis and that talking with fundamental Islamists is the same as negotiating with Communists.
YouTube - Barack Obama Endorsed by Zbigniew Brzezinski
In this Washington post article from 2005 he questions President Bush's comparing global Islamic terrorism with Communism.
But before he even gets up a head of steam he deflates his whole argument and makes invalid anything he might say or advise on the subject of foreign relations with regard to the GWOT and Islamic aggression when he reveals a faulty belief that Islamic extremism is ONLY Osama bin Laden as opposed to being endemic throughout the Islamic world and representing the beliefs and sentiments of almost 300 Million Muslims.
Quote:
By asserting that Islamic extremism, "like the ideology of communism . . . is the great challenge of our new century," Bush is implicitly elevating Osama bin Laden's stature and historic significance to the level of figures such as Lenin, Stalin or Mao. And that suggests, in turn, that the fugitive Saudi dissident hiding in some cave (or perhaps even deceased) has been articulating a doctrine of universal significance. Underlying the president's analogy is the proposition that bin Laden's "jihad" has the potential for dominating the minds and hearts of hundreds of millions of people across national and even religious boundaries. That is quite a compliment to bin Laden, but it isn't justified. The "Islamic" jihad is, at best, a fragmented and limited movement that hardly resonates in most of the world.
Do These Two Have Anything in Common? |
Brzezinsky clearly misunderestimates the nature and scope of Islamic Jihadism, at least as recently as 2005 and certainly prior to that. He doesn't understand the nature of the Koran, nor Quttb. Nor has he kept up with current events having to do with Islamic trends throughout the world or else he would know that all of the estimates by responsible analysts say that there actually are (and were existent at the time of this interview) hundreds of millions of Muslims who supported the goals and activities of Islkamists to spread the religion to all the world, using violence if necessary.
If any reader leaves this thread now and never returns they should leave knowing that Zbigniew Brzezinski does not understand Islamic Jihad and his failure to understand it has made the world more vulnerable to it. And now he is advising the Obama campaign. That means Obama innocently agrees with Brzezinski's flawed vision or that Obama has chosen Brzezinski BECAUSE of the Carter administration's National Security Adviser's blind spot when it comes to Islamism.
I do not trust his opinions as they pertain dealings with Islamic leaders. He has an inability to understand their religious motivation.
07-27-08, 02:53 PM
#1 
LinkBacks (?)
Linear Mode
