The Sordid Stains of Zbigniew Brzezinski
By Taters on March 25, 2008 at 1:13 AM in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Foreign Affairs, Obama
As of late, someone from Camp Rajneesh Obama - a surrogate of “he who may not be questioned” - has dredged up Monica’s blue dress drivel. I believe it’s safe to say that topic has been covered at length. However, if we’re going to talk about stains - let’s talk about Sen. Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski and his stains upon credibility. And decency.
Q: 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 that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], 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 Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
(Le Nouvel Observateur, Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, January 15-21, 1998, translated by Bill Blum)
There were many causes which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Brzezinski would have us believe that he single handedly dismantled the USSR. Informed readers here do not need me to give reasons, which are numerous. Did Soviet involvement in Afghanistan play a part? Of course. So has every US president since Harry Truman. No mention, however of the one million Afghans killed in that war.
Brzezinski apparently can’t see the thousands upon thousands that have been killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Or that this is where bin Laden cut his teeth. Or that al Qaeda was supported by theTaliban. Training camps and bases of operation?
Yes, he did some good work with Jimmy Carter but his arrogance in refusing to even admit any of the blowback of unintended consequences or connect dots from the actions he prescribed is strikingly arrogant. He has a McCain-like tin ear. He stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that there has been countless deaths in Afghanistan, and that the actions he supported led to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to the rise of bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Or how about his backing of Pol Pot?
From the New York Times
But while the United States gave tens of millions of dollars in aid throughout the 1980’s to Cambodian refugees, it orchestrated a complete program of sanctions against Cambodia because it was under Vietnamese occupation. And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid.
“I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.”
According to Brzezinski, the USA “winked, semi-publicly” at Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge.
(Elizabeth Becker, When the War Was Over, New York, Touchstone, 1986, p. 440.)
You know when Jimmy Carter made a mistake, he was at least decent enough to acknowledge it. Carter took the blame for the failed attempt to rescue the US hostages from Iran when he spoke to the American people on April 26, 1980 two days after the tragic consequences of Desert One. Brzezinski, well that’s another matter. His callous approach and minimalization of the loss of human life for his distorted perceptions of a greater good is a far worse stain than anything on a blue dress.
(small, medium and large sizes; for both dogs and cats)
+ 
TATERS..
You Amaze Me.. Thats LEAD Guitar Music you are Playing man..I Love it when you get up and do a Solo..
Makes you wonder how some of the these guys got in the Door..Eh..Guess somebody gave em a ticket to Ride..Wasn’t Henry a Piece of Work..and what great fortune to have Americans like Zbigniew and Madalyn..”I Forgot my Heritage” Everbright…
What would the United States ever do without Advisor
like Condi too.. She makes Howard Hughs look like an Extrovert..
Im suprised Jimmy Carter survived all those years
in the Swamp..
Now he’s just Building Houses for Humanity and working for World peace..
Yes Sir Taters…
POL POT got better Treatment than Jimmy Carter..
makes You wonder WHO you can trust sometimes..
Thanks PH.
Hardly surprising. Zbig like many others in the Obama camp are part of the old guard dem establishment. You know, the guys the Kos crowd and the movement believes they are going to change. I suspect there’s one foreign policy for the election and another after. Like Nafta.
Mr peace is an ambitious, ruthless politician who gathers supporters where he can. I’f he’s competent remains to be seen.
ckrantz,
Yes, like McPeak.
And they hate Clinton, that guy from dogpatch, for daring to challenge their conventional wisdoem and go in a different direction.
A polish expat is going to obsess over Russia. Even n=more than he might obsess over Germany.
This isn’t shovking.
zis is ‘ow Eastern Europeans see the world.
Zbig has found religion and realizes that we need to change course and fast.
Zbig has changed religion? the hell you say … well that is just wonderful i guess. be that as it may, you can bet on one thing; ol Zibg hasnt changed his tactics!
Chiller Theater Taters;
Isn’t it unsettling that Cheney says “SO? and Zbig says SO?” and Obama says “SO?” and the neo-con beat goes on…and hope is a luxery we can’t afford.
TWK,
The way zbig has admonished the neocons - yet the arrogance is so similar.
It was well arguable that the Soviet was set to implode of its own volition. The idea of using a war to cause this is debatable.
If fighting wars covertly were so important, why were we asking the IMF to bail the Soviets out by extending loans when Reagan was still POTUS?
It was not about bringing about their downfall, it was about macroeconomic profiteering and propping the character play up until it was politically expedient.
MM,
He’s always spoken of Central Asia. He wanted to attack Iran at one point too. Perhaps he still does.
This is just astounding. The depths to which some people in government are willing to go never ceases to amaze me. I used to have some respect for Zbig even though I disagreed with him, but after reading your fine exposé I have changed my mind forever. He is as callous, careless and arrogant as Obama. Like two peas in a pod.
I acknowledge upstream that the had his moments. But the Rumsfeld type arrogance and the minimalizing of AQ, the taliban and bin laden as “some stirred up Moslems” is well…
Yet another reason to believe that Obama will Iraqify Pakistan if elected. Ugh.
By the way, why is Zbig held in such high regard by so many people–for example, Steve Clemons?
Obviously he’s intelligent, but that has little to do with having a good policy record, as we all know.
Von Neumann was pretty damn smart, and he advocated a first nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.
Mark L,
Well there’s a mind there and I certainly respect Steve Clemmons. It’s hard to knock Salt II and Camp David. Then again, how much of that was Cyrus Vance, I wonder?
Funny how Zbig shows so much more concern for the people of Eastern Europe. Nothing like a little egocentrism to give you “principled” foreign policy positions.
What gets me about this line of thinking (Brzezinski) is just how narrow-minded it is! There was so much ranting and raving about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe for so many years, and yet, when the Soviet Union collapsed and their grip on Eastern Europe slipped away, we also saw the evolution of a different set of problems–war in the Balkans with Yugoslavia splintering into several countries.
As to Afghanistan, the blow back from our funding and training of the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets was certainly one of the factors in the rise of al Qaeda. Whether the Soviet Union would have imploded without our assistance to the Mujahideen in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan is a matter that will certainly be debated in the future. There is no question that the war in Afghanistan certainly cost the Soviet Union a lot of money which undermined their economy.
One line of thinking that I have subscribed to for a long time was that put forth by Richard Nixon in his treatise on foreign policy entitled The Real War. Nixon argues that the real war is an economic war–that we do not have to “like” how other countries govern themselves to trade with those countries, but that the way to defeat countries such as the Soviet Union was through economic policy, which is why selling wheat at top dollar to the Soviets was not only a boon to our farmers, but also undercut the economic position of the Soviet Union–and thus, undercut its political ideology.
Perhaps my thinking is “dated” in this regard, but it does seem to me that the thing that is pulling this country down like a rock is bad economic policy.
Having said that, I doubt that there is a national security advisor over the past 50 years who hasn’t gotten it wrong occasionally. I agreed with Zbig in his early assessment of the war in Iraq and why it was WORSE than Vietnam–something that was said BEFORE comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam were being made by anyone other than the real peaceniks. I totally agreed with Brzezinski’s assessment at the time–and even more so now.
Where I part company with Zbig Brzezinski is his comparison of Hillary Clinton to Mamie Eisenhower or his travel agent. A better First Lady comparison would be to Eleanor Roosevelt, who, if she were alive today, might actually be a viable candidate for president. Eleanor Roosevelt was not a natural-born speaker or politician, but she grew into the role and was extremely active in her husband’s administration. And Eleanor Roosevelt’s activism only increased after the death of FDR with her being a strong advocate for civil rights, among other causes. Incidentally, Mrs. Roosevelt ranks 9th on Gallup’s list of most admired people of the 20th century–higher than Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, or Margaret Thatcher. (FDR ranks 6th.)
Clinton is a US senator, and as first lady redefined the role, an innovator.
Period.
Men like Zbig, and Mcpeak, when criticizing Clinton, show their age, in their very inability to correctly evaluate her responsibilities, degrading her as “Mamie Eisenhower.” They look so old, so silly, so incompetent. And if they can’t even properly evaluate Clinton’s role, how can they recognize the myriad and complex factors facing us in the middle east? Part of problem solving is correctly identifying the issues, and the responsibilities of the various players, even the President’s wife. Who has influence? And is that influence any less becuase you’re an old guy sexist creep?
No.
Things change, it’s the American way, progress, Clinton brought the role of first lady into the 21st century.
McPeak and Zbig look like old fossils.
(What is it with Obama and all that second tier talent?
For a so called progressive, his crew can’t even rehash old seventies flotsam creatively).
Zbig and McPeak don’t win wars.
(Oh, yeah, team xerox).
Again, this is where those critical thinking skills come in so handily.
What are the consequences of men as inept and obtuse as Zbig and McPeak running foreign policy?
A lost war, a lost superpower, and then some.
Look at Bush, look at Cheney….
BTW, Christopher Hitches wrote an article for Slate about Obama throwing grandma under the bus. It really brought it home for me in terms of understanding what he did, comparing this aged, unwell civilian woman, living alone in a Hawaiian condo, to the Rev Wright, labeling her a racist.
Axelrod is a moron, reaching.
http://www.slate.com/id/2187277/
And someone on Taylor Marsh mentioned Rush has a new song “Grandma got Run Over by Obama.”
How much hate mail do you think grandma is getting?
Great post, statbabe. You know, while Eleanor Roosevelt wasnot a legislator, her influence was profound. The Tuskeegee Airmen and the integration of the US Armed Forces certainly bore her footprint. Coretta Scott King did much good too - although I have a strong hunch I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.
To an extent, this gives an opening to examine Clinton’s role as a legislator during her time as first lady, drafting legislation, even, such as the health care initiative.
I’d be interested in knowing the full extent of Hillary’s work, particularly in terms of policy, while she served as first lady.
Tuskegee Airmen …”straighten up and fly right”.
http://www.tuskegeeairmen.org/Tuskegee_Airmen_History.html
All through this period of time there seems to be certain well worn paths of power, money and static ideologies. If the idea was to wage economic warfare over a protracted period of time Zbig and Kissinger had no allegiance to the common man.
Kissinger held the very men executing his policies in very low regard. Zbig’s role
and actions he supported led to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to the rise of bin Laden and al Qaeda.
On this point I have puzzled after. Would an OBL have materialized eventually? What would Afganistan have been left to it’s own devices? The whole region has searching for balance and finding none.
Does anyone remember that “Cold War” series that was aired on CNN a few years back ? There is a video footage of Brzezinski meeting with the Mujaheeden, bringing with him a shipment of weapons and giving a speech praising and extolling them. The man surely has some dirty hands …
some dirty hands?????????
can you say god father of Osama…
and we should be surprised he supports Obama..
where does anyone think Obama got the idea of Bombing Pakistan?..The problem was, Obama didn’t understand it all before he said it in a debate!!
I didn’t see it but I wished I had, vanroth50. I’ve seen some photos of Zbig and the muhaj, though.
Obama says he wants to “end the mindset” in foreign policy that got us into the war in Iraq in the first place.
So, it’s more than a little ironic that he would have Zbigniew Brzezinski as a foreign policy advisor, considering that Brzezkinski’s interventionist mindset is precisely the foreign policy folly that created Osama Bin Laden and the Islamic Mujahaddin in the first place in Afghanistan, which led to 9/11 which led to another interventionist foreign folly in Iraq, which is leading to another foreign folly in Iran.
But, as has been repeatedly warned, Barack Obama told you so, when he described himself as a “blank slate” onto which people of all political stripes “project their own views.”
Caveat Emptor, people. You don’t know who the man is, but you can tell his values by the friends he chooses. And, his friends are a motley crew of the usual suspects. Nothing new to see in them; just the same old politics…
Leading, in part, IMO, to the Ollie North “do it yourself foreign policy.”
Don’t like the American elected government?
Think you can do it better, outside the law?
A mediocre 10th tier republicans op?
Well, start your own war, then…
Doesn’t quite work in terms of a cohesive strategy, to have men as dull and obtuse as North trying to run a war, outside command.
It would be interesting to know what Zbig was doing in Damascus this February meeting Bashar Assad. Secretary of state Zbig? Of course the campaign said the trip was unauthorized.
OT, but there seems to be a lot of outrage over Caville calling Richardson a “Judas” for shitting all over his close friends without whom he would never have accomplished anything. For once I agree with Carville. He won’t back down either. He stands right there and says, “I said it and I meant it.” Richardson sold out his friends for personal gain.
But, nothing at all about a second Obama advisor callling Bill Clinton “worse than Joe McCarthy”, then throwing out the Blue Dress bomb. IOKIYAO (it’s okay if you’re an obamazoid).
I saw this on CNN. I have to give Carville credit for standing his ground. Apparently, Mr.Carville had some “understanding” with Richardson. Richardson must ‘ave “done somebody wrong”… along the lines of “Words Matter” but not to Billy.
Elmore James
apishapa,
Actually it’s quite on topic and on point.
Thank you Taters, very informative.
I wish more Obama supporters would think through their own rationale for why the change they say they can believe in gives them hope.
No one disputes that a president doesn’t do every little thing. But POTUS most certainly delegates and coordinates those who do things. The short Obama list: Rezko on financial advise, Rev. Wright/Wrong on spiritual and moral matters, and the big Zbig on foreign policy. Let’s see a show of hands from Obama supporters who think these choices are less of a liability in the GE than the judgements Hillary has made.
Obama supporters ignore this and focus on his words, because he tells them “…just words?”
My answer to that is this. No, words are not just words. Words have meaning as part of action. When Obama quotes Jefferson, King, FDR and others and says “…just words?”, he ignores that King was calling for collective bargaining, FDR was implementing WPA and SS to turn the economy around, and Jefferson was calling for revolution against the most powerful empire on earth at the time.
Obama’s greatest accomplishment to date with his words, is to become popular, by using words to talk about hoping to become popular.
Meanwhile, the supporters of Obama’s empty rhetoric, bash the Clintons because, Bill lied to Ken Starr about fooling around under the Oval Office desk, and Hillary presumably shares blame by not punishing him sufficiently enough in public to satisfy the public’s own moral insecurity.
Great post yb!
Brzezinski et al are truly proponents of the end justifying the means. Reminds me of Thracymachus in Plato’s Republic: remember his simple yet immoral philosophy, “might is right.”
Taters, your opening sentence is a joy to behold. Comparing Obama to Rajneesh and alluding to Voldermort all in one sentence, deserves a prize.
Thank you, that made my day.
Might is right. What’s wrong with that? It’s the reality of international affairs.
Howvere the question is–is Zbig right about backing the Ghazi madmen of Afghanistan in the context of 9/11?
He sowed the seeds of Al Qaeda blowback and the old fucker and is conclusively but loosely associated with the terrible event because he armed and funded the Muj.
He wasn’t right to do it. He thought he was back in the 90’s.
He is right about this:
And this:
Video of Cheney on Gulf War 1 - Surprise?!?
Part 1 of today’s tag team has arrived.
afternoon crew!!
Team Obama has a whole crew working this web site!!…and watch the spamming happen on the front page!!
Iraq, for one and the simplistic expectation a bomb can win a war, in this new and modern age.
See?
Zbig, Cheney, Bush that whole crew has no clue about strategy, and the mechanism of warfare.
Bombing Pakistan will not stop terrorism.
Some people need to get it through their heads bombs don’t threaten.
Comment by salo | 2008-03-25 13:17:10
Might is right. What’s wrong with that? It’s the reality of international affairs.
It is contrary to our idea of justice for all.
to salo
who said this:
Might is right. What’s wrong with that? It’s the reality of international affairs.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
my reply..it is against everything this nation has stood for, that is what is wrong with that.
Innocent till proven guilty, and a constitution, and treaties we have signed that become part of our constitution, that is what is wrong with that.
Whe we become what we percieve our enemys to be …or what goes against the very principles of this nation of ours, and our treaties and our responsibilities to our constitution…we are worse.
It didn’t take a bomb to kill my co-workers on 9/11 ..and that was someone else’s “might” .. was it not?
did that make it right?????????
fly
Thank you and you are very welcome, MJK. Actually I was thinking of Rumpole the Bailey’swife - “she who must be obeyed.” I wish I could take credit for the “Volder” part though - that’s much better.
“The Nobel War Prize”
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO210B.html
25 October/ octobre 2002
Most American high school history books describe how the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, “without provocation and with overwhelming force”. America then “came to the rescue” of the Afghan “resistance”. This happened under president Jimmy Carter.
Yet Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that it was the US and not the Soviet Union which started the war:
“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 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….” (Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 November 1998)
In the Wake of 9/11
In an incisive editorial published a few days after the tragic events of 9/11, anti-war critic Tom Burghardt points to the historical roots of Al Qaeda and the complicity of successive US administrations since the presidency of Jimmy Carter:
As evidence mounts that the perpetrators [of the 9/11 attacks] were connected to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida (”The Base”) organization, it is also critical that we expose the deadly roots of this group: the CIA, the corrupt Saudi dynasty and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. It mattered not a whit to the American ruling class that two million Afghans were killed in the U.S. “jihad” against the Soviet Union. Carter, Reagan, Bush, Brzezinski, Casey…mark these names down…they should be remembered — and cursed — in the coming days… If there is to be a full account of last Tuesday’s massacre [September 11 2001] — and criminal prosecution of the perpetrators — justice cries out for an indictment of the architect’s of the Afghan “resistance” [meaning the "Militant Islamic base"]… (Antifa Bulletin 133, 16 September 2001 http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l/2001.09/msg00010.html )
snip:
This continuity in US foreign policy since the Carter Administration is not in itself a result of a “consensus” between Republicans and Democrats. It essentially points to a crisis in “civilian politics”. In other words, the military and intelligence apparatus has taken over the reigns of foreign policy in close consultation with Wall Street, the Texas oil conglomerates and the military industrial complex. With key decisions taken behind closed doors at the CIA and the Pentagon, civilian political institutions including the President and the US Congress increasingly play the role of a façade.
In other words, US foreign policy does not emanate from the institutions of civilian government (i.e. the Legislature and Executive). It exists because the US military-intelligence apparatus — and the various powers behind it — tend to override the institutions of civilian government in setting both the military and diplomatic agenda.
In this process, which has reached a new stage during the G. W. Bush administration, the Commander-in-Chief, largely responds to the instructions of key advisers. While the illusion of a functioning democracy prevails in the eyes of public opinion, the US president has become a mere public relations figurehead, visibly with little understanding of key foreign policy issues.
About Carter taking resposibility. He never took responsibility for Iran falling from the Shah to Khomeini to begin with! Books like Party of defaet and the Iranian Time Bomb show this!
Pardon me. The book Party of DEFEAT! Another book showing this guilt about Carter and his former administration is They Must Be Stopped!