Zbigniew Brzezinski: More Bad Advice on Iran
Gen. Douglas MacArthur ended his farewell address to Congress on April 19, 1951, by quoting the refrain of a barracks ballad that went, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Former presidential national security advisers, in contrast, neither die nor fade away. They’re too busy drumming up business for their inevitable consultancies and tweaking their “legacies” by writing op-ed pieces and testifying before legislative committees.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. He advocated the cessation of U.S. support for the shah of Iran, thereby contributing to (and some would say resulting in) the Islamist takeover of the country 30 years ago. On March 5, Brzezinski testified alongside his Bush 41 counterpart Brent Scowcroft at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on U.S. policy toward Iran. Both called for talks with Tehran and said the main problem posed by Iran’s nuclear program is not that nuclear-armed Iranian missiles will threaten Western cities, but that Iran’s possession of such weapons will spur other countries in the region and around the world to acquire nuclear weapons.
In his testimony, Brzezinksi lambasted an Israeli government memorandum that was leaked to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz just before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Jerusalem this month. The document, drafted to provide talking points for the officials who would be meeting with Clinton, contained four recommendations:
1. Any dialogue must be both preceded by and accompanied by harsher sanctions against Iran, both within the framework of the UN Security Council and outside it. Otherwise, the talks are liable to be perceived by both Iran and the international community as acceptance of Iran’s nuclear program.
2. Before the dialogue begins, the U.S. should formulate an action plan with Russia, China, France, Germany, and Britain regarding what to do if the talks fail. Specifically, there must be an agreement that the talks’ failure will prompt extremely harsh international sanctions on Iran.
3. A time limit must be set for the talks, to prevent Iran from merely buying time to complete its nuclear development. The talks should also be defined as a “one-time opportunity” for Tehran.
4. Timing is critical, and the U.S. should consider whether it makes sense to begin the talks before Iran’s presidential election in June.
Brzezinski warned against tightening sanctions before beginning talks and against publicly consulting with other countries about measures to be taken if negotiations fail. “The alternative approach, of course, should be rather different,” he said. “It should seek to engage Iran in a process in which there emerges the possibility of some consensual agreement. We should be very careful,” he added ominously, “not to become susceptible to interested parties.”
Brzezinski’s snide denigration of Israel as an ”interested party” — as if every country that will be within the range of Iranian missiles, which can now reach southern Europe and will eventually be able to hit American cities, ought not to be an “interested party” with regard to Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program — is of a piece with his castigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and his claim that substantive objections to his views expressed by American supporters are the product of “a McCarthyite tendency among some people in the Jewish community.”
In May 2008, Brzezinski told Britain’s Daily Telegraph:
They operate, not by arguing but by slandering, vilifying, demonizing. They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel.
It’s arguable that Brzezinski was doing a bit of slandering, vilifying, and demonizing in his Telegraph interview, but the fact that there is “an element of paranoia” in his own thinking is beyond argument. On February 1, 2007, Brzezinski gave testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was probably as paranoid as anything that has ever been said in public about U.S. policy toward Iran by an ostensibly serious observer:
A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Whew. Aren’t we glad none of that happened.
Carter was a man of symmetry. Since he himself was inept at running the US he needed a secretary of state equal to the task of being as inept as he was. And it is hard to argue he didn’t succeed.
The worst part about this in an attempt to legitimize/resurrect his legacy Brzezinski would sell the security of America down the drain.
Obama has no problem with selling American security down the drain. Is he prepared, do you really believe, to have another Cuba missile crisis with the Russians wherein the Russians’ main interest is not placing missiles in Cuba but rather in preventing our installation of a BMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic? No he isn’t.
All Right Zbig. Pucker up dude. You can almost taste it, can’t you. Mmmmmm! Yum.
In what must be an irony lost on Brzezinski President Obama’s first order of business in selling out America’s best allies was the stab in the back of Poland over missile defense before he even starts to screw the Israelis.
The president is not exactly perspicacious in his judgement of people, is he? Brzezinski is synonymous with diplomatic failure. Well, I’m sure he has made his own excuses to himself about how it’s not his fault, any of it.
Society lost a lot when it stopped publicly shaming delusional failures. They keep talking, and some people actually listen. Even Elliot Spitzer is trying to rehabilitate his reputation.
I’m not saying no one deserves rehabiitation. Chuck Coulson did it the right way. Brzezinski and Carter probably still think they did a good job.
Arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan was exactly the right thing to do in 1979. The Soviets were a real, global threat, loose bands of Muslim fighters were not. Brzezinski was correct in his analysis on that point.
Zbrez is successful where it “counts” -the doctoral thesis. And this is exactly how Professor BHO sees it. Forget the real world. There is liberal textbook doctrine and nothing else. The black Adlai Stevenson rolls onward.
Brzezinski was Carter’s National Security Adviser when Iran occupied our embassy (an act of war), and took our diplomats hostage (another act of war). And what did Ziggy and Jimmy do? They pursed their lips a lot and whimpered a lot. That’s why the clown Obama is talking to the clown Brzezinski, and seeking his advice. When is it going to dawn on the civilized world that Iran with its present regime, the ignorant Palestinians who elected Hamas, Syria, the political assassination center of the world, and the Taliban, etc., don’t want peace; they want victory on their terms and only on their terms. At some point down the road, and it won’t be with this Bozo in the White House, the lunatics in the Middle East will get peace; it will be the kind of peace that Harry Truman dictated to the Japanese in 1945.
Still Bill:
“Brzezinski was Carter’s National Security Adviser..
I thought this guy died. What’s he doing on the stage. Give this bum the hook!
Mr Bill, well remember that one brief flash of anger he convilsed when being interviewed by Ted Coppel on Nightline. He fulminated something about any foreign government wishing to treat our country in such a manner was making a serious mistake..
..and then he and his chowder-headed boss settled in for a 444-day snooze only interrupted by a furtive attempt to launch several helicopters into Iran in that aborted rescue attempt.
Like Carter, this guy is as dumb (and as ineffectual) as a bag of boulders.
Brzezinski is a Jew-hater. I thought I read somewhere that is father or his uncle was a concentration camp guard in Poland. Figures.
It looks to me as if the most “interested” parties in the area are Brzezinski’s Sunni buddies in Riyadh and the Emirates.In the case of , President Imawhackjob and the mullahs may chant that they will destroy the zionist entity if its the last thing they do but now with Netanyahu in charge,they will be very sure that if they attack the Israelis with their new toy, it will certainly be the last thing they do.
It’s also worth noting that Mr. Brzezinski’s daughter, Mika, is a fellow wingnut! She’s the ditsy blond sidekick on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show. Just goes to show the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Note that both Zbigniew Brzezinski and Scowcroft are lobbyists on the pay of Azerbaijan like many other of our ex-government VIPs. May they all rot in hell.
Alexander Haig (former SoS) always advised that when you work for the Federal Government then don’t hire yourself out to foreign governments or firms when you leave. The money may be good but it will eventually destroy your reputation.
As a close observer of Brzezinki’s activities both inside government and at the COFR, I have long since come to the conclusion that if he was not a Soviet plant, most of his advocacies were indistinguishable from what would be expected of a sophisticated version of same.
Normally I would not attribute malice to something as easily explained by incompetence, but in his case the preponderance of evidence is persuasive.
Menachem Begin, for sure, did not like the man, especially after the Camp David experience.
I’m stunned not only Zebigniew Brezezinki but also Samantha Power. At least we got rid of Chas Freeman. I’m waiting for the next surprise the Great One has in store for us.
Zbigniew Brzezinski is not inept. He is very dangerious to these United States as a Nation State.
Brzezinski is an adocate of a socialist world government. He calls for the loss of US soveneignty to a North American Union. A global tax, and praises Marxism in his book Between Two Ages published in 1970.
He supports the New Age religions that Oprah follows, and the worship of the world, called Gaia worship.
Obama, with his first 50 days is following a socialist plan to help move this country into a North American Union which Brzezinski supports. Obama with his BLT/Marxist background maybe the last player in a long list of players to bring the United States into the New Order of the Ages.
I bet Brzezinski is very happy with Obama, but not with anything I wrote with my freedom of speech. We still have that don’t we?
If Brzezinski is doing what I think he is doing, he is committing treason, in addition to conspiracy. Besides being a criminal, he is perpetrating acts of war against the United States of America. The man is evil.
If this country blows into civil war, this man should be on our list to arrest, try, and execute. That is, if someone doesn’t kill him first, which may very well happen.
More proof that the bigger the failure one is the higher one climbs in the democrat party.
fred
Is there really a list? And, can we all get to see it?
Ease up bro, we don’t need a civil war.
Whether we need a civil war or not here in the USA has not been decided yet. I have to agree with Fred and his comments about this traitor and vermin, Brzezinksi. I put Obuma right in there as well. Everything he has done since 1/20/09 has undermined our defense and security. Israel, Poland and others have and will be thrown under the Obuma bus on it’s drive to socialism.
This administration by it’s actions so far, has pissed off alot of people, including many that I know, who voted for this poser. If Obuma continues to push the envelope like he is doing perhaps civil war may become necessary. Obuma and his cabinet of cheats, anti semites and Carter failures do not understand our numerous enemies. Offering up appeasement from a position of weakness, and incompetence will only bring stepped up attacks om this fair country. It is obvious Obuma and his ilk are not in any position to lead or act in defense of the USA.
People like Brzhinski never admit their mistakes, they only repeat them.
It is important for us to be reminded of the role Zbiggy played in the Iranian fiasco. He tried to appease all the way and this does not move the Mullahs at all. They are still there and he is still urging appeasement.
Brzezinski seems rather like a Soviet plant to me too – although I immediately retract that statement to maintain credibility among the credulous and ignorant.
A person who reaches the pinnacle of strategic power in the world ought to have more to show for himself than an enlarged ISI, an aggressive China, and a bunch of goat-f8cking savages with shiny new anti-aircraft weapons. As he doesn’t, he should be publicly caned and made to live in the most godawful hick corner of these USA, where no one understands his cunning & manipulative goobledygook.
I remember this guy.
I was riding an FBM submarine in the 70s while Jimmy Carter and this Brzezinski clown/KGB apparatchik were trying to negotiate the best surrender terms they could get from Leonid Breshnev and the Soviets. Fortunately for us, they ran out of term.
I see nothing has changed.
For those of you who don’t remember the Carter years, welcome to the next best thing…the Obama years, which will, hopefully, be no more than one term also.
Brzezinski should be deported to Poland, where he was born. He is a venomous snake. A proud legacy of Armia Ludowa (not to be mistaken with the great and proud Armia Krajowa).
This dessicated individual is the Frankenstein of the Georgian Count Dracula Carter, the worst president ever to seat in the Oval Office.
Department of State works against American interest since Kissinger times:
All of them from Scowcroft to Rice to Albright have very fishy biographies
how could Americans trust these people i have no idea
from outside, since i remember myself interested in politics in 1970s it always looked like Department of State is hijacked by KGB
does it look the same way in the USA to Americans?
Former chairman of the Trilateral Commission. A REAL admitted member of the Stowaway Camp. Fabian Socialist. Zbig 1968 to reporter “No more questions, I have to get inside and plan some genocide.”