Steve Clemons has posted a partial transcript of recent remarks made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Carter on July 20th at an event in Washington, DC.
His analysis offers a sharply delineated & beautifully articulated take on developing events in the Middle East. Of particular interest to me was his assertion that Israel's actions in Lebannon essentially amount to taking hostages.
The question is- could we not say the same about OUR actions in Iraq?????!!!!!! More below...
Steve Clemons of the indispensible Washington Note
Steve Clemons of the indispensible
The Washington Note details
Zbigniew Brzezinski's opening remarks
Steve notes that t"he Q&A was not fully on the record, so I will be working
to digest the best material from the Q&A to protect the identities of those
posing questions or making comments -- and will post that material at a later
time.." further adding (the following text is from The Washington Note)
Some of the
notable points made by Brzezinski were:
1. America's "policy in the Middle East is the basic test of America's
capacity to exercise global leadership." This is similar to "what transpired
during the Cold War when the ultimate test of America's capacity to act as a
defender of the free world was its ability to conduct a meaningful policy
in Europe."
If America does not do well in its Middle East challenge, the U.S. will
lose its capacity to lead.
2. Neither the United States nor Israel "has the capacity to impose a
unilateral solution" to Israel's problems in the Middle East. "There may be
people who deceive themselves of that. We call them neo-cons in this country
and there are other equivalents in Israel as well."
3. Israel and its neighbors alone "can never resolve their conflict
peacefully, no matter how much they try, now matter how sincere they may be."
When one party is sincere, the other's intentions are not synchronous.
4. Brzezinski stated: "I hate to say this but I will say it. I think
what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in
effect -- maybe not in intent -- the killing of hostages. The killing of
hostages."
"Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do
with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately
by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing
hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And
more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them
and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies
increasing."
5. "The solution can only come if there is a serious international
involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or
non-numerous they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of
greater interest to both parties to accommodate than to resist because both of
the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs.
That means a deliberate peace effort led by the United States, which then
doubtless would be supported by the international community, which defines
openly in a semi-binding fashion how the United States and the international
community envisages the outlines of the accommodation."
6. It's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the
Israeli-Palestinian, problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other.
7. "The Iraq problem, look what Prime Minister al-Maliki said today --
it's an indication of things to come. The notion that we're going to get a
pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which
is rapidly eroding and which is now being contradicted by political
realities."
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Please- visit The Washington Note & leave a comment- there's much more to
this story & every line is simply riveting.