Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (war, Egypt, president, German)

[jessica1000]

Mr. Zbig

Though he has no official role in the campaign, Brzezinski has become a lightning rod for hardline Israel activists, who fear that Obama will turn against the Jewish state. They point to Brzezinski’s realist views, for instance his recent visit to Syria, which he says must be brought into American diplomatic efforts concerning Iraq and Palestine, and his endorsement of the book The Israel Lobby.

“I have my own views of foreign affairs, which I have been expressing publicly,” he says. “Therefore I wanted from the very beginning to be known as a supporter but not as a spokesman for or some sort of fancy title—adviser, member of the team—and that’s the way it’s worked.” Brzezinski has nonetheless become a punching bag for Jewish supporters of Hillary Clinton, including Congressman Anthony Weiner and guru Ann Lewis. His name is a shibboleth among Zionists. When I e-mailed Norman Podhoretz, he referred me to his book World War IV, in which he devotes several disdainful pages to Brzezinski, saying that he has an “obsessive animus against Israel.” Brzezinski waved off the criticisms:

More interesting points.......

Brzezinski’s status presents numerous ironies. A generation ago, the last time he was schooling a smart but provincial presidential candidate, he was mistrusted by the Left and even the center as a hawk. “A symbol of the nastiest Cold Warrior,” says Leon Hadar of the Cato Institute. Yet under Jimmy Carter in 1979 he helped deliver the Camp David accords, which gave Israel a lasting peace with Egypt. Says realist scholar Robert Pape, “In the last 30 years what are the things that have most improved Israel’s security? Israel getting nuclear weapons, and … brokering a peace deal with Egypt. Brzezinski was at the heart of making that peace possible. And it’s become a lasting peace. … You would be hard pressed to find dramatic change in [that situation in] the last 30 or 40 years.”

Pape ascribes the demonization of Brzezinski to tension in the presidential race and to the fact that he wants to revive diplomacy as a tool of American policy. “Go through the litany of foreign-policy issues,” he says, “there are just so many that are at the boil now, and one of the things that is so clear is we have grossly underused our diplomatic power. …We seem to have forgotten we are the strongest power on the planet.”


Pape has been an adviser to both the Ron Paul and Obama campaigns. He emphasizes that one must be even more confidential about such service than when serving in government. That would seem to be especially true this cycle, when Obama’s statement that he wants to change the “mindset” that produced the Iraq War has provided a wedge to Hillary Clinton’s backers.

and....

Brzezinski also suffers for being a Polish aristocrat. Much of the enmity toward Germany felt by Jews postwar transferred to the Poles after Germany became an ally, says Rosenberg. “Poland became an easy whipping boy.” The late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was above all that: Rosenberg says that the Polish-born Begin chatted in Polish with Brzezinski at Camp David and played chess with him. Quandt notes that Begin gave Brzezinski a document found in the Israeli archives showing that his father Tadeusz Brzezinski, a diplomat, had helped save Jews. “The word went out, ‘Get off their cases,’” Quandt recalls.


Podhoretz describes Brzezinski as a realist with a “dash of liberal internationalism” and says his views are about to “sink into oblivion.” Indeed, Brzezinski has been “rooting for an American defeat as the only way to save [his] worldview from winding up on the ashheap of history.” A lot is at stake for the neocons. Shifts in Obama’s team are noted almost daily in the New York Sun, a neoconservative newspaper that is gratified that former Clinton NSC aide Daniel Shapiro is leading Obama’s Middle East group. Hadar is disappointed that Obama has surrounded himself with predictable “mediocre” names, including Susan Rice and Anthony Lake. Why couldn’t Obama have shaken it up a little more with realist names, say, John Mearsheimer or members of the Center for American Progress? That would be his downfall, Hadar concedes.

[ParkTwain]

1. You don't offer much context about why anyone should CARE what Norman Podhoretz thinks about Z.B. Who *is* Podhoretz anyway (for the audience's sake)?

2. Counting Podhoretz (a former leftie himself) as a critic is a badge of honor among many!

3. The pronouncements emanating from guys like Podhoretz and David Horowitz, each a former leftie, are always to be distrusted. They are extreme ideological partisans as part of their identity -- they seem to have an existential drive (i.e., EGO) to be a "thought leader" in the political realm. The fact that each flip-flopped in his political ideology, well into adulthood, is a RED FLAG as to the legitimacy of the stridency of their respective political opinions, IMO.

[NewToCA]

Moved to History, the article has much to do with his past sentiments and actions, and how they are currently viewed.