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Title: Shifting The Blame For Terrorism
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/06/05/shifting-blame-terrorism/
Published: Jun 6, 2017
Author: Paul Craig Roberts
Post Date: 2017-06-06 08:45:18 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 129
Comments: 4

Brzezinski’s death is being used to shift blame for terrorism from Bush/Blair/Neocons/Israel to Brzezinski. See for example, www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-story-of-zbigniew-brzezinski-that- the- media-isnt-telling/5593085 and www.globalresearch.ca/the- geopolitical-grand-chessmaster-the-legacy-of-zbigniew-brzezinski/5593298

The main effect of these articles is to create another hate figure. The Western world, like Big Brother’s world in Orwell’s book, 1984, cannot do without hate figures.

In my account of Brzezinski, I noted the important difference between a Cold Warrior and a Neoconservative. www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/06/02/zbigniew-brzezinski-paul-craig- roberts/ A Cold Warrior was faced with handling the Soviet Threat. There were different approaches to dealing with this threat and disagreements among Cold Warriors. Brzezinski opposed the right-wing policy of “rollback,” that is, the use of force or the threat of force to force the Soviet Union to change its policies and to give up its advances. Brzezinski believed that America’s strength was its reputation as a liberal democracy and that the US government should use ideas, such as human rights and international law, as its principal weapons in the Cold War.

The Neoconservatives were boosted to power by the Soviet collapse which removed all constraint on US unilateralism and made the US the Uni-power. The neocons are advocates of using this power to achieve US world hegemony. This is different from Brzezinski’s idea of US primacy. Primacy is not the same as hegemony. Primacy does not mean that there are no other powers or that all other countries answer to Washington. Primacy is determined by who has the most standing, the most influence. For Brzezinski, it was better that the US had primacy than for the Russians to have primacy.

Essentially, Brzezinski’s life as a Cold Warrior ended with the Soviet collapse. But it is difficult for a prominant strategic policymaker to recede into the woodwork. Brzezinski could not stay relevant without a Russian threat. In latter works, such as The Grand Chessboard published in 1997 six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brzezinski focuses on preventing a Russian resurgence by achieving US inroads into Eurasia that would confine Russia to its post-Soviet size. His purpose was to prevent the possibility of a Russian comeback on the world stage as a rival for primacy.

The Grand Chessboard made him appear to some to be a neoconservative of sorts. But this was not the case. He opposed the neoconservative 2003 invasion of Iraq. He damned the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush as a catastrophe that severely damaged America’s reputation, and he expressed his contempt for Tony Blair, the UK PM who helped Bush rig the excuse for the invasion.

The notion that Brzezinski is the creater of terrorism because the Carter administration armed the mujahideen in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is absurd. The mujahideen were not terrorists. They were Muslims fighting Soviet invaders. The Taliban are not terrorists. They are fighting for an Islamic state in Afghanistan. It was the US invasion of Afghanistan that initiated the American conflict with the Taliban.

Brzezinski did not invade, attack, or kill any Muslims. But the Neoconservatives using Bush, Blair, and NATO have destroyed in whole or part seven countries, killing, maiming, and displacing millions of Muslims. It is extraordinary how little terrorism this massive crime against Muslims has caused. All of the terrorism is the terrorism of the Western alliance against Muslims in seven countries.

According to the Israelis, Palestinians have been terrorizing innocent Jews since the 1940s. If true, all to no effect as Palestine literally no longer exists. Indeed, Palestine is now a ghetto routinely terrorized by Israel. Did Brzezinski cause this also?

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#1. To: Ada (#0)

Very informative, thanks.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2017-06-06   9:26:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Ada (#0)

He opposed the neoconservative 2003 invasion of Iraq. He damned the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush as a catastrophe that severely damaged America’s reputation, and he expressed his contempt for Tony Blair, the UK PM who helped Bush rig the excuse for the invasion.

Sounds like Zbig was a sensible man (despite bad mouthing by Pravda Forum wag).

Western world, like Big Brother’s world in Orwell’s book, 1984, cannot do without hate figures.

Administratively inept politicians always need to create an enemy abroad to maintain domestic control.

Tatarewicz  posted on  2017-06-07   1:30:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Ada (#0) (Edited)

The notion that Brzezinski is the creater of terrorism because the Carter administration armed the mujahideen

Article at Countercurrents.org 24 April, 2007:

Deaths In Other Nations Since WW II Due To Us Interventions by James A. Lucas. Excerpts:

Afghanistan

... luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation. (1,2,3,4)

The Soviet Union had friendly relations [with] its neighbor, Afghanistan, which had a secular government. The Soviets feared that if that government became fundamentalist this change could spill over into the Soviet Union.

In 1998, in an interview with the Parisian publication Le Novel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to President Carter, admitted that he had been responsible for instigating aid to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan which caused the Soviets to invade. In his own words:

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 on 24 December 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. (5,1,6)

Brzezinski justified laying this trap, since he said it gave the Soviet Union its Vietnam and caused the breakup of the Soviet Union. “Regret what?” he said. “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?” (7)

The CIA spent 5 to 6 billion dollars on its operation in Afghanistan

Footnote 6: The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

Many more references and details here:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, United States National Security Advisor - World Wide Invention Association, posted on 19-11-2009. Excerpts:

... considered by some to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger.[1] ... Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned [by President Carter] to ensure that the NSA [National Security Adviser] would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it was under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation Talks/Treaty] issues.

Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights. ... While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. ... and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the [PRC] 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 from an important US client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union,[2] the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan[3] to fight against the Soviet-allied Afghan government to increase the probability of Soviet invasion and later entanglement in a Vietnam-style war,[4] and later to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt US control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

Some [have] painted him as a neoconservative because of his friendship with Paul Wolfowitz and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. However in 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized the [GW] Bush administration's foreign policy. He defended the paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and was an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose is to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the free world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Government

Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. ... After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Advisor. ... Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents.[11] ... [He] ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies.[14] West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.[15] ... [Brzezinski had attended] Harvard University in the United States to work on a PhD, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Lenin's state, and the actions of Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism and apply it to the Soviets in 1956.

After 9/11 Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, ... Brzezinski is also accused of having "knowingly increased the probability that they (the Russians) would invade" by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Russians into an "Afghan trap".[18]

The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between [Secretary of State Cyrus] Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX [missile], together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. ... An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, 16 June 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter and is the only person smiling in the picture.

Afghanistan

Main article: Operation Cyclone

Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the CIA and Britain's MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.

Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again— for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt. [19]

Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from the Saudi king to match American contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.[20]

The most important strategic aspect of the invigorated U.S.-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the Sino-Soviet Split, helping the United States to balance against Russia. A notable example, discussed above, is Chinese assistance in Brzezinski's efforts to draw Russia into a Vietnam-style conflict in Afghanistan. This strategy, initiated under Nixon and Kissinger, and consolidated under Carter and Brzezinski, is really the first instance of statesmen altering the world's polarity by design.[citation needed]

In 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin had started before the 1979 Soviet invasion, knowingly increasing the probability of a Soviet invasion. Brzezinski saw the invasion as an opportunity to embroil the Soviet Union in a bloody conflict comparable to America's experience in Vietnam. He referred to this as the "Afghan Trap" and viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant Islamic groups.

He went on to say in that interview, "What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" When the interviewer questioned him about Islamic fundamentalism representing a world menace, Brzezinski said, "Nonsense!" [21] [22]

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the Persian Gulf to prevent Soviet political or military penetration farther south (see: the Carter Doctrine).

In a footnote in his 2000 book The Geostrategic Triad, Brzezinski notes:

The full story of the productive U.S.-China cooperation directed against the Soviet Union (especially in regard to Afghanistan), initiated by the Carter Administration and continued under Reagan, still remains to be told.

A memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter on December 26, 1979, discusses the implications of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Iran.[23]

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between [Sec. of State] Vance and Brzezinski. ... In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation. ... Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the American hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance. ... Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration. Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the convention Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.

After power

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the [GHW] Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party ... Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades.

In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the U.S. would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin to Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.

Public life

Brzezinski [was] a past member of the board of directors of Amnesty International, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

He was formerly a director of the Trilateral Commission, [later] serving only on the executive committee, and was formerly a boardmember of Freedom House. He [was] a trustee and counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a board member for the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus[33], on the advisory board of America Abroad Media[34], and on the advisory board of Partnership for a Secure America.

He [was] married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czech president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he has three children. His son, Mark Brzezinski (b. 1965), is a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe. His daughter, Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967), is a television news journalist and a regular anchor on MSNBC. Brzezinski's other son, Ian, was employed by the John McCain presidential campaign. ... Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO ...

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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2017-07-08   5:53:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: All (#3) (Edited)

Archiving:

US Foreign Policy, Mar 8 2004 | Video [approx. 1 hour] | C-SPAN.org - Speaker: Zbigniew Brzezinski at Nitze (Paul H.) School of Advanced International Studies

MARCH 8, 2004

U.S. Foreign Policy: Mr. Brzezinski spoke about U.S. foreign policy issues. Among the topics he addressed were operations in Iraq, the Middle East peace process, weapons proliferation, and multilateral cooperation in future diplomatic efforts. Following his remarks he answered questions from the audience. [Q & A @ 44:38]

A short synopsis: US driving globalization ... can't militarily defend everything ... national insecurity will be the norm because of globalization and interdependency ... "The North Korean issue is a test case" of regional cooperation and security agreement

@ 23:40-25:32, NATO/expansionism Eastward as much as possible - then an alliance of North America/NORAD? and Europe/EU; @ 28:45 only poor countries can afford war; @ 33:39 Global Security Cooperation

@ 49:38, he claims that the UN is not a World Government and there's not going to be a World Government for a long time to come [but it's presently under construction, is what that sounds like]. ... possibly an Israeli and Palestinian peacekeeping arrangement eventually with NATO or the UN flag flown over that

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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2017-12-17   0:42:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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