Posted on 01/15/2016 6:02:40 AM PST by Citizen Zed
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, continues to be apologetic to the Iranian regime and a cheerleader for outreach to the Islamic Republic at any cost. In the aftermath of Iran's seizure and humiliation of ten U.S. sailors, for example, Brzezinski tweeted criticism to the American media for not seeing the episode in a positive light. "The US media has conveniently missed that Iran's release of US sailors is a direct result of the dialogue created by the Iran deal," he wrote. If that's the case, then what explains Iran's holding of multiple American hostages, several of whom were seized during negotiations and in the aftermath of the Iran deal?
Brzezinski's desire to exculpate Iran has precedent. As Iran accelerated its nuclear program in the 1990s, Brzezinski harshly criticized President Bill Clinton for slapping sanctions on those companies that traded sensitive American technology to Iran through third countries. "There seems little justification for the treatment the United States currently accords Iran because of its nuclear program," argued Zbigniew Brzezinski alongside Brent Scowcroft, another former national security advisors. Instead, they proposed swapping sanctions with incentives and even suggested offering Tehran preferential trade.
Brzezinski's constant apologia for a repressive Iranian regime, one that leads the world in executions and represses its citizenry on the basis of both religion and politics, is ironic on two counts. Firstly, it was Brzezinski's unbridled enthusiasm in 1979 for diplomacy with the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran that provided the spark for the original hostage seizure.
Visiting Algiers on November 1, 1979, Brzezinski met Mehdi Bazargan, the Islamic Republic's new prime minister. According to his memoirs, Power and Principle, Brzezinski told Bazargan that the United States was open to any relationship and partnership the Islamic Republic wanted. Brzezinski may have been well-meaning, but his initiative showed how ill-timed diplomacy backfires. The day after newspapers published photographs of Brzezinski shaking hands with Bazargan, protests rocked Iran, culminating in the embassy seizure. Revolutionary Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini endorsed the hostage-takers and their paranoid worldview in which the United States was seeking to recruit Iranian traitors to collapse the revolution from within. "Our young people must foil these plots," he declared. While Brzezinski encourages President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to reach out to Iranian reformers, his desire to play the Iranian factional game is arguably what caused the rupture in U.S.-Iranian ties in the first place.
The second reason Brzezinski's constant enthusiasm for engagement with Iran is ironic is because of its sharp contrast with the moral clarity with which he approached communist Poland, the nation of his birth. As national security advisor, Brzezinski did not seek compromise with the regime repressing Poles, and he constantly reached out to dissidents and those seeking freedom. That Brzezinski believed that Poles and others suffering under the yoke of communism deserved liberty. That apparently Iranians do not is troubling in the extreme, as it suggests that Brzezinski considers Iranians somehow less deserving of human rights, democracy, and basic freedom.
Let us hope that's a misreading, but it is long past time for Brzezinski to resolve the cognitive dissonance which appear to mark his foreign policy prescriptions or explain why he appears to take diametrically opposite positions depending on the people facing oppression and the nations threatening the United States.
We shouldn’t even be talking about a Brzezinski, unless it is that Mika who should be shakin’ it in a Montana T!tty Bar. Zbigniev? Well, I remember him but this putz should be relegated to the same sh!thole of history Jimmy Carter should be.
It’s a waste of brain cells on your young for them to learn or hear anything about Carter and his ilk of the past.
The guy is responsible for losing America’s Best non-Israeli ally in the Middle East, why the hell do people listen to this guy?
Imagine the past 40 years if we’re weren’t kissing the Saudis butts and had a Pro-West ally to rely on?
Wahabbism would be far less spread.
Now I know where Mika got her brilliance.
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