Zbigniew Brzezinski Against Air Strikes on Iran

More grist for my Iranian mill.

In my last post on Iran, I mentioned limited ground action or air strikes as a possible option for the administration to pursue. This is seeming like an increasingly likely choice for the admin., is it possibly takes care of the nukes, doesn’t get us bothering with all that namby-pamby European diplomacy stuff, and it doesn’t get us embroiled into another nasty occupation.

So, what’s wrong with air strikes? Everything!

HERE is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analysis published today in the International Herald Tribune. It is really a must-read.

Now, perhaps our hordes of neo-con Republican readers are going to write comment after comment objecting to Brzezinski as being a soft dove like his former boss, Jimmy Carter. FYI: Zbigniev Brzezinski served as Carter’s National Security Advisor. Now, because I am not expecting throngs of right-wing nut-jobs to post to our little blog, let me post some things that were posted on another blog (here)

"This is typical liberal ideology," writes the California Conservative. "Negotiate from a position of weakness is straight from the Jimmy Carter failed handbook. Then again, Brzezinski is the failed bureaucrat that gave him that 'Let's all get along' advice. It's obvious that Mr. Brzezinski didn't learn anything from Reagan's intimidating the Soviets into oblivion."

"It was he and his feckless boss President Carter who saw no cause for concern in a potential Iranian mullocracy, and hence no reason to back the Shah of Iran who stood in the mullahs way," writes Power Line. "Now, more than 25 years on, the old foreign policy hand is still assuring us that we have little to fear from the mullahs. He seems to take it as a given that, through negotiations, we can talk them out of developing nukes."

"Personally, I'd choose the realism of today's scary world over the chaotic America of the Carter/Brzezinski years," writes Valkyrjan. "Years during which nothing was done to confront the rise of Islamic fundamentalism when it first burst onto the international scene with its outrageous actions in Tehran. The war we didn't fight then is the war we must fight now."

Ok, of course you know that I am citing these blog commenters because I am going to drag their opinions through the drek. Well, without further ado:

Folks, you’re criticizing carter – C-A-R-T-E-R… you know, nice humanitarian type – believes in human rights and international law.

WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT CARTER

We are talking about is Brzezinski – B-R-Z … forget it, I’m not going to spell it out more than I have to. Brzezinski was not "the failed bureaucrat that gave him that 'Let's all get along' advice." Brzezinski was the bureaucrat that advised Carter to invade Iran during the '79 revolution.

Furthermore Brzezinski is the author of the strategy handbook on American global dominance – ‘The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative.’

Brzezinski is a hawk’s hawk – and the mentor of Madeleine Albright to boot. It was Carter and his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance who were the doves. Brzezinski and Vance were constantly at one another’s throats over the bellicosity of American foreign policy.

Furthermore, if we learned what to do from Reagan, we'd have been selling the nukes to Iran ourselves. Is there some portion of the Iran-Contra Affair that eludes the repugs-come-lately?

So there – ya’ll better do your homework.

Anyway, the moral of this story is: If even Brzezinski is against air strikes... air strikes are a REALLY BAD IDEA