Zbigniew Brzezinski , writing in the Int’l Herald Tribune yesterday:
- during the last four years, the Bush team has thus been dangerously undercutting America’s seemingly secure perch on top of the global totem pole by transforming a manageable, though serious, challenge largely of regional origin into an international debacle.
To be sure, since America is extraordinarily powerful and rich, it can afford, yet for a while, even a policy articulated with rhetorical excess and pursued with historical blindness. But in the process America is likely to become isolated in a hostile world, increasingly vulnerable to terrorist acts and less and less able to exercise a constructive global influence.
Flaying away with a stick at a hornets’ nest while loudly proclaiming “I will stay the course” is an exercise in catastrophic leadership.
But it need not be so. A real course correction is still possible, and it could start soon with a modest and common-sense initiative by the president to engage the Democratic congressional leadership in a serious effort to shape a bipartisan foreign policy for an increasingly divided and troubled nation.
In a bipartisan setting, it would be easier not only to scale down the definition of success in Iraq but actually to get out – perhaps even as early as next year. And the sooner the United States leaves, the sooner the Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis will either reach a political arrangement on their own or some combination of them will forcibly prevail.
With a foreign policy based on bipartisanship and with Iraq behind us, it would also be easier to shape a wider regional policy that constructively focuses on Iran and on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process while restoring the legitimacy of America’s global role.
Well, I’m not so happy about the possibility of just some of the domestic Iraqi groups “forcibly prevailing” over the others after a US withdrawal. (But remember the scale and lethality of the attempts to “forcibly prevail” that are being pursued in the country right now…) Otherwise, though, well said. I just wonder how many people in the Democratic Party leadership are listening.
” … an international debacle.”
Off colour and may be deleted, but I’m reminded irresistably of the old joke about the maiden lady who asked a Scotsman what was under his kilt. He invited her to have a feel. “Aargh,” she cried, “it’s gruesome.”
“Have another feel, lady,” said the Scottie. “It’s gruesome more.”
What Bush and his gang have done is lifted the skirts of the Statue of Liberty.
And revealed something pretty gruesome.
“I just wonder how many people in the Democratic Party leadership are listening.”
While I am as happy as anyone to flay the Democratic Party leadership for its craven and shortsighted ducking of the Iraq issue, this is still a rather silly point.
Brzezinski, who has been dining out on his “realism” for decades is just indulging himself in fantasies about George W. Bush to allow himself to play the statesman.
The idea that Bush could bring himself to make genuinely bipartisan overtures to the opposition to develop a sane policy on the Iraq disaster is preposterous, particularly since they would have to include believable guarantees that it was not just a political ploy to avoid responsibility for the debacle.
There are many good things the Democratic leadership could do to try to begin a legitimate discussion of the quagmire. Listening to a self-serving lecture from Zbiggy is not one of them.
As far as we know, Brzezinski is still quite happy about generating a hornets’ nest of “stirred-up muslims” to harass the Soviets and draw them into “their Vietnam.” For an old cold warrior, the logic is probably still compelling, but such calculations relying on the cheapness of other people’s lives sometimes have consequences that are not immediately apparent, such as 9-11.
The “stirred-up muslims” have a different world view and a different way of calculating than the likes of Brzezinski. They don’t play by the same rules and are not motivated by the same factors. George W. Bush is similar to Osama bin Laden in his fanaticism and complete disinterest in the kind of logic Brzezinski thinks he should use. The main differences are that Osama actually plans and is also willing to put his own life on the line, not just other peoples’.
Hey, Zbig hired Bin Laden for a special mission in Afghanistan, so why should we listen to him?
Last night on PBS, Zbig praised Rice’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because the expression of goals seemed more realistic. His example of her realism was that she never mentioned as a goal the establishment of a democratic Iraq.
I’ve always thought that “goal” was mostly window dressing and the USA would gladly settle for a thuggish government as long as it obeyed the USA’s interests. But that can only be cued during a 2nd term.