Should Obama welcome Zbigniew the Terrible's support?

Karmadillo

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Aug-24-07 07:50 PM
Original message

Should Obama welcome Zbigniew the Terrible's support?

My audacious hope is that Obama will say, "Thanks, but no thanks." A snip of an illuminating interview with Brzezinski from Le Nouvel Observateur follows the excerpt below.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Intro_RogueState.html

Introduction
excerpted from the book
Rogue State
by William Blum
Common Courage Press, 2000

<edit>

Consider Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter. In a 1998 interview he admitted that the official story that the US gave military aid to the Afghanistan opposition only after the Soviet invasion in 1979 was a lie. The truth was, he said, that the US began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Moujahedeen six months before the Russians made their move, even though he believed-and told this to Carter-that "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention".
Brzezinski was asked whether he regretted this decision.

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.7

Besides the fact that there is no demonstrable connection between the Afghanistan war and the breakup of the Soviet empire, we are faced with the consequences of that war: the defeat of a govemment committed to bringing the extraordinarily backward nation into the 20th century; the breathtaking camage; Moujahedeen torture that even US govemment officials called "indescribable horror"; half the population either dead, disabled or refugeesi the spawning of thousands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who have unleashed atrocities in numerous countries; and the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, instituted by America's wartime allies.

And for playing a key role in causing all this, Zbigniew Brzezinski has no regrets. Regrets? The man is downright proud of it! The kindest thing one can say about such a person-as about a sociopath-is that he's arnoral. At least in his public incamation, which is all we're concemed with here. In medieval times he would have been called Zbigniew the Terrible.

more...

http://www.marxists.org/history/afghanistan/archive/brzezinski/1998/interview.htm

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski
U.S. President Carter's National Security Adviser
By 'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Note: There are at least two editions of 'Le Nouvel Observateur.' With the exception of the U.S. Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States did not include the Brzezinski interview.

<edit>

Q: 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?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

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 fundamentlaism, 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?

more...