Obama chose Brzezinski : is he ignorant, naive or forced to do so ?

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   thecounterpunchposted 17 years ago

   It was reported in the New York Sun on February 15, 2008 that Barack Hussain Obama has chosen Zbigniew Brzezinski to advise him on Middle East policy.
   
   Formely, in September 2007, MSNBC announced that:
   
   The former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter [surprisingly they forgot to mention that in 1988, Brzezinski was also co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force (see Military Think Tank RAND Corporation’s News release) and that he endorsed Bush for president - breaking with the Democratic party] introduced Obama at Ashford University in Iowa today, after decrying what he called the Bush administration’s colonialist policies in a postcolonial world, adding the Administration had “used mendacity” to justify the war and that “it has discredited America as a whole.”
   
   For Brzezinski, 79, support for Obama means support for a radical change in direction of American foreign policy. But some argue Brzezisnski’s support could hurt Obama, particularly with Jewish voters. The Politico today wrote Brzezinski came under fire this summer for an essay he wrote in the journal Foreign Policy, “defending a controversial new book about the power of the ‘Israel Lobby’ in American politics.”
   
   “The fact of the matter is that I’m part of the only administration that brought about peace between Israel and its neighbors,” Brzezinski said in an interview with NBC News/National Journal in Iowa on the day Obama delivered his Iraq policy speech, which he said he did not have a direct hand in. “And so I’m proud of my record in the Middle East.”
   
   Talking of his support for Obama, Brzezinski evoked the mantle of former presidents Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy Jr. “What makes Obama attractive to me,” he said, “is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and peoples.”
   
   But in truth Brzezinski faints to criticize Bush whereas he advocated the Bush’s Policies since at least 1997 when he wrote in “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives“:
   
   “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” (pp 24-5) [Compare with PNAC’s Report 2000]
   
   “In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.” (p.209)
   
   “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211)
   
   “…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)
   
   “Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55)

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