NewsHour: Zbigniew Brzezinski "A prolonged engagement" in Iraq

[omega minimo]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec05/iraq_10-19.html

FUTURE OF U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ

October 19, 2005
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony to the Foreign Relations Committie raised questions about the length and direction of U.S. policy in Iraq. Two experts debate the implications of Rice's testimony and future of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Carter. He's now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A prolonged engagement

RAY SUAREZ: Since we didn't make any reference to it in the earlier excerpts, the secretary was asked if under the current resolution the conflict could be widened to Syria and Iran and she refused to rule it out.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right.

RAY SUAREZ: Did not endorse military action in those places.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right. But refused to rule it out in a fashion which certainly is going to be disquieting to a lot of people. And that raises the larger issue of the relationship of our prolonged engagement as I am afraid she was implying and our overall global posture.

I think we have to take a critical look at the overall cost of this war for America's legitimacy in the world, for our moral standing and indeed even for our resources both military and economic. And they are being drained.

And I sense in her testimony a kind of commitment to the notion of victory which she didn't define very precisely but nonetheless a commitment to victory which implied to me very prolonged engagement, which in my judgment underestimates, in fact, the Iraqi capacity to stand on their own feet.

[welshTerrier2]

1. Rice refused to recognize a Congressional role re: Syria and Iran

Lincoln Chaffee, and I believe some Democrats, pressed Rice on whether she would acknowledge that the IWR authorized action only within Iraq and that bush would have to return to the Congress if he wanted to take any action inside either Syria or Iran ...

Rice refused to answer the question ...

[omega minimo]

6. Striking bit of enabling, courtesy of Mead

Note the use of "specifics" --thrown in to suggest that there ARE specifics.... somewhere........ "My sense from the overall tone of what she is saying, a lot of the specifics..."

"a lot of the specifics" WHICH SHE WON'T TELL YOU :puke:

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Well, I'd say first of all, you know, I think both on this and on the Syria question, she's doing what any American official would do in office which is refusing to rule things out. And she's not going to sit there and say, okay, in five years, ten years, if you had asked one hundred years I don't think she would give an answer but that doesn't mean she thinks that it's going to necessarily be five years, ten years or one hundred years.

My sense from the overall tone of what she is saying, a lot of the specifics, is both that the -- that she is hopeful, the administration is hopeful that things are in fact getting better and also they are now setting the stage for when they feel the time is right some of the policy terms that Dr. Brzezinski is talking about in the sense that they lay out more metrics of victory and more conditions of victory that are more systematic, you know, that we can talk now about what they mean specifically, we're no longer seeing Iraqi forces standing up. We're talking about handing over security responsibilities in key areas and all.

The stage I think is being set for partial withdrawals beginning without attaching deadlines out of a belief that that would be counterproductive.


:kick: "if you had asked one hundred years I don't think she would give an answer"
:sarcasm:
was a nice touch, also.


 

 

 

 

[welshTerrier2]

8. she was asked if the WH required Congressional authorization

she kept saying things like "we're trying diplomacy" or "blah, blah, blah" or "we hope that attacking Syria won't be necessary" or whatever but none if it responded to the question ... she just loves to dodge the questions ...

the issue is not about the WH policy ... the issue is not about whether we will or won't need to attack Syria ... the issue is whether the WH believes it COULD invade Syria or Iran without coming back to the Congress for authorization ... the Senators clearly pointed out to her that the IWR did not authorize any action on Syrian or Iranian soil ... but she refused to recognize that particular requirement of law ...

let's hope the Senate, or at least the Democrats, make a big deal of her failure to respond ... bush has no authorization to wage war wherever he wants to ...

[omega minimo]

11. Ollie North-- poster boy for "we break the law because we KNOW better"

than Congress, than the American people, than the Framers of the Constitution (in the name of upholding the Constitution) is on a speaking tour now....

"she just loves to dodge the questions .... the issue is whether the WH believes it COULD invade Syria or Iran without coming back to the Congress for authorization ... the Senators clearly pointed out to her that the IWR did not authorize any action on Syrian or Iranian soil ... but she refused to recognize that particular requirement of law ... bush has no authorization to wage war wherever he wants to ..."

AND once they are in there, Rice sits before the Senate and PRETENDS that there is something wrong with having a PLAN?

Who couldn't help but remember during last night's news the huge banner "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" and "Major combat operations in Iraq are over"?

Let's remember we are Through the Looking Glass.

[MissMarple]

2. Sadly, we might be better off with Brzezinski involved in this.

Pragmatically speaking.

[omega minimo]

3. Why "sadly"?

[MissMarple]

5. We would still be involved.

But not in such a stupid way. It could have turned out better.

[omega minimo]

7. IMHO if we had more players who think and speak as clearly as ZB

a lot of things "could have turned out better."

:patriot:

[punpirate]

9. Not in such a stupid way?

Brzezinski helped create al-Qaeda. The origins of our current problems are in the same Afghanistan plan he convinced Carter to sign and on which the Reagan administration spent billions.

This is Brzezinski in an interview in January, 1998 in the Paris magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, five years after the first bombing of the WTC, and months to years before the bombings of American embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole and 9/11:

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?

B: 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 fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: 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?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

What unites them, Zb, is hatred of the U.S., something of which he simply cannot conceive.

That's who should be running the war?

[omega minimo]

12. So-- ZB started whacking the hornet's nest?

RAY SUAREZ: Well, just in the past several days, you talked of the "stay the course" argument or wrote of the "stay the course" argument. You called it flaying away with a stick at a hornet's net while loudly proclaiming I will stay the course is an exercise in catastrophic leadership.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right. I was talking about the president's speech of Oct. 7. But let me go back to Secretary Rice's testimony and what bothers me about it. First of all, implicit in her notion of what we're going to be doing in Iraq is a prolonged engagement.

And I think the questions posed by Sen. Sarbanes were very apropos. There is also implicit in it a kind of a notion of tutelage that almost smacks of colonialism. We are going to be creating in effect an Iraq. I believe that this really not only in effect intensifies the resentment of many Iraqis against us, because the conflict in Iraq operates on two levels -- it is a sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, but it is also a nationalist conflict of many Iraqis against us.

<>

I noticed the senators were quite pointed in their comments to the effect that they do not feel that prior congressional resolutions gave the administration a free hand to escalate and to widen the conflict.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, just to be clear --

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: She was very evasive on that.

:kick:


WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: And here I guess I would say that actually I think implying that if need be we will sit here forever is more likely to discourage the insurgents. And if they think that we are -- that they are succeeding in pushing us towards a withdrawal, I think they'll be encouraged.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I don't think it's not a question of discouragement or encouragement. We're dealing with fanatics. They're going to do their thing anyway.

"WE'RE DEALING WITH FANATICS. THEY'RE GOING TO DO THEIR OWN THING ANYWAY."

"Fanatics" that became more fanatical and organized due to the policies in your post?

[MissMarple]

13. I think he would have been better than the neocons.

It would be hard to be worse. I don't think he should be running the war, but if he was involved, it would have gone better. But I don't think we should have started the war in the first place. This American empire thing is a bad idea, overall, what ever direction it comes from.

And I'm guessing he "gets it" now about Islamic radicalism. At least one would hope so.

[kurth]

4. Brzezinski was being a gentleman

Rice couldn't be precise because her moron boss had NO strategy.

[LynnTheDem]

10. "prolonged"? Bahhh! Rice yesterday said "LESS THAN 50 YEARS"!

And all warsupporting bushbot morans will enlist themselves, their children, and their grandchildren of course!

RAH! RAH! RAH!