In an interview given to Global Viewpoint in late July, former U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that neoconservative foreign policy represented a potentially "fatal" danger both the United States and to Israel.[1] -- Daniel Pourkesali commented on the interview on the web site of CASMII (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran).[2] ...
1.
NEOCON POLICIES FATAL
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Global Viewpoint
July 27, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/beginning-of-the-end-for-_b_26247.html
Nathan Gardels: Israel beat the big Arab states in six days of war, but it wasn't able to defeat Hezbollah after more than a decade of occupation before it withdrew in 2000; and it hasn't been able to stop missile strikes now after three weeks of intensive air and artillery pounding, plus special operations on the ground.
Does that mean Hezbollah has "won" by standing up to Israel, damaging the Israeli deterrent by revealing it is not invincible?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: It is important to recognize that Israel defeated formal armies led in most cases by inefficient and often corrupt regimes. Hezbollah is waging "asymmetrical" warfare against Israel based on increasingly radicalized and even fanaticized mass support. So, yes, Israel will have much more difficulty in coping effectively with this latter in contrast to the former.
Gardels: Over the years, Israeli hardliners like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have argued that Israel lives in a "tough neighborhood" where its enemies only listen to force. The American neocons argued the same -- that going into Iraq unilaterally would provide "a demonstration effect" of overwhelming U.S. might that would scare the "tough neighborhood" into compliance with U.S. goals.
Hasn't this turned out to be wrong? Doesn't military superiority as a blunt instrument lead to eternal enmity, not security? Touring the devastation of towns across southern Lebanon after Sharon's invasion in 1982, one could predict that something like Hezbollah's hatred of Israel would emerge years later.
Brzezinski: These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.
Gardels: Don't the deaths of so many innocent civilians in Qana in the south of Lebanon -- like the massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by American troops -- send a message to Arabs and Iranians that the "new Middle East" coming from the U.S. and Israel will amount to occupation, carnage, and bloodshed? Even Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize, told me recently that Iranians would rather suffer the mullahs for now than the horrors they see in Iraq.
Brzezinski: This is precisely why neocon policies are recklessly dangerous both to America and Israel.
Gardels: Beyond the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, where does U.S. diplomacy for the region go from here?
Brzezinski: The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem, and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that.
The solution can only come in the Israel-Palestinian issue if there is serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or few they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of greater interest to the warring parties to accommodate than to resist, both because of the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs.
When Iraqi Prime Minister (Jawad) al-Maliki recently harshly criticized Israel in the Lebanon conflict, it was an indication of things to come. The notion that the U.S. was going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding.
That is why the U.S. needs to start talking with the Iraqis about the day of our disengagement. We shouldn't leave precipitously. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Zalmay) Khalilzad told me that four months would be precipitous. I agree. But we should agree that the U.S. will disengage at some period beyond that.
As far as Iran is concerned, we have made an offer to the Iranians that is reasonable. I do not know that they have the smarts to respond favorably or at least not negatively. I lean to the idea that they'll probably respond not negatively but not positively and try to stall out the process. But that is not so bad provided they do not reject it.
While the Iranian nuclear problem is serious, and while the Iranians are marginally involved in Lebanon, the fact of the matter is that the challenge they pose is not imminent. And because it isn't imminent, there is time to deal with it.
Sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly. To do that produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. We have time to deal with Iran, provided the process is launched, dealing with the nuclear energy problem, which can then be extended to involve also security talks about the region.
In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country; it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player. And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education, and the role of women in society.
The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation.
If we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the worst. But if we do not, I fear that the region will explode. In the long run, Israel would be in great jeopardy.
2.
BRZEZINSKI: THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR ISRAEL
By Daniel M. Pourkesali
Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
August 3, 2006
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/page/p/Brzezinski-The-Beginning-of-the-End-for-Israel
What a difference 3 weeks makes. You know the warmongers are in trouble when the Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the U.S.-backed prime minister, who until last week would not hesitate to appear in a photo-op [1] with Condoleezza Rice, tells her she is not welcome in Beirut unless she demands and sees to an immediate ceasefire before thanking Hezbollah [2], a long political thorn in his side, for its sacrifices to protect Lebanon.
Bush-Blair & Company in their unison support for a barbaric Israeli onslaught on Lebanon have managed to completely turn the proverbial political table around -- on themselves, that is. Their adoption of the absurd notion of Israel acting in self-defense and continued insistence that there would be no halt to the offensive unless Hezbollah fighters are driven from the border has not only strengthened Hezbollah but will prove a boon to the anti-Zionist resistance movement in Lebanon and beyond.
Nathan Gardels, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social and Political Thought published by Blackwell/Oxford, and Global Services of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune in a recent interview [3] with Zbigniew Brzezinski posed this question to the former National Security Advisor to President Carter: "Doesn't military superiority as a blunt instrument lead to eternal enmity, not security?"
Brzezinski responded: "These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region, and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well."
He then asks: "Don't the deaths of so many innocent civilians in Qana in the south of Lebanon -- like the massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by American troops -- send a message to Arabs and Iranians that the 'new Middle East' coming from the U.S. and Israel will amount to occupation, carnage, and bloodshed?" to which Brzezinski replies: "This is precisely why neocon policies are recklessly dangerous both to America and Israel." He then continues to explain that "today it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem, and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that."
"Public opinion around the Arab world has reacted by strongly supporting Hezbollah and Lebanon" Rami Khouri wrote in a recent Beirut's Daily Star article [4]. "Washington is feeling the pain of its own self-inflicted diplomatic castration, as a consequence of siding with Israel."
Israel's ongoing and indiscriminate bombing of every village, road, bridge, and other infrastructure, which has so far killed over 900 people, many of them children, and displaced another million has forged a remarkable unity among both politicians as well as the entire Lebanese population, whether Christian, Sunni, or Shia. Those who may have rejected Hezbollah at the outset of this crisis, are now unanimously behind it.
The absurd neo-con invented and Bush-Blair adopted policy of waging wars in order to achieve peace will only serve to create more anti-U.S. and anti-Israel sentiment and strengthen the resolve and increase support for those resisting the U.S.-U.K.-Israel axis of aggression.
[1] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/2006/64679.htm
[2] http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19966759-23109,00.html
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/beginning-of-the-end-for-_b_26247.html
[4] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=74326
--The Founding Meeting of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) took place on 1 December 2005 in a gathering in London, where a broad based group of Iranian and non-Iranian academics, students, and professionals of different political and ideological persuasions agreed on the name and the Mission Statement of this campaign organization. The Founding Meeting was the culmination of a few weeks of discussions among the members of the group on the threats of sanctions, foreign state interference, and military intervention in Iran, and the urgency of building an effective international campaign to oppose the war drive against Iran. -- While there are different political and ideological viewpoints among us, we are united in action in our campaign to oppose sanctions and military attacks against Iran. We strive to bring together the broadest possible spectrum of forces, organized on the basis of democratic principles and decision making structures. CASMII is independent of all political groups and governments, in particular the Iranian government, and adheres to no particular religion or ideology. Our core values include respect for human rights and a democratic state, in particular freedom of expression, freedom of press, an independent judiciary, equal rights for women, ethnic, and religious minorities in Iran. -- Our first major action was our very successful organized intervention in the London International Peace Conference on 10 December 2005 which unanimously adopted our resolution to call on the anti-war movement in all countries to oppose any attack on Iran or Syria. -- We call on all Iranians and non-Iranians alike to join us to build a strong independent international campaign to stop another disastrous war in the Middle East before it starts.