Posted on 10/25/2004 10:55:39 AM PDT by Destro
October 25, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
How to Make New Enemies
By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI
It is striking that in spite of all the electoral fireworks over policy in Iraq, both presidential candidates offer basically similar solutions. Their programs stress intensified Iraqi self-help and more outside help in the quest for domestic stability. Unfortunately, these prescriptions by themselves are not likely to work.
Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time. President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated moderates. The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in a head-on collision with America.
After all, look what's happening in Iraq. For a growing number of Iraqis, their "liberation" from Saddam Hussein is turning into a despised foreign occupation. Nationalism is blending with religious fanaticism into a potent brew of hatred. The rates of desertion from the American-trained new Iraqi security forces are dangerously high, while the likely escalation of United States military operations against insurgent towns will generate a new rash of civilian casualties and new recruits for the rebels.
The situation is not going to get any easier. If President Bush is re-elected, our allies will not be providing more money or troops for the American occupation. Mr. Bush has lost credibility among other nations, which distrust his overall approach. Moreover, the British have been drawing down their troop strength in Iraq, the Poles will do the same, and the Pakistanis recently made it quite plain that they will not support a policy in the Middle East that they view as self-defeating.
In fact, in the Islamic world at large as well as in Europe, Mr. Bush's policy is becoming conflated in the public mind with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy in Gaza and the West Bank. Fueled by anti-American resentments, that policy is widely caricatured as a crude reliance on power, semicolonial in its attitude, and driven by prejudice toward the Islamic world. The likely effect is that staying on course under Mr. Bush will remain a largely solitary American adventure.
This global solitude might make a re-elected Bush administration more vulnerable to the temptation to embrace a new anti-Islamic alliance, one reminiscent of the Holy Alliance that emerged after 1815 to prevent revolutionary upheavals in Europe. The notion of a new Holy Alliance is already being promoted by those with a special interest in entangling the United States in a prolonged conflict with Islam. Vladimir Putin's endorsement of Mr. Bush immediately comes to mind; it also attracts some anti-Islamic Indian leaders hoping to prevent Pakistan from dominating Afghanistan; the Likud in Israel is also understandably tempted; even China might play along.
For the United States, however, a new Holy Alliance would mean growing isolation in an increasingly polarized world. That prospect may not faze the extremists in the Bush administration who are committed to an existential struggle against Islam and who would like America to attack Iran, but who otherwise lack any wider strategic conception of what America's role in the world ought to be. It is, however, of concern to moderate Republicans.
Unfortunately, the predicament faced by America in Iraq is also more complex than the solutions offered so far by the Democratic side in the presidential contest. Senator John Kerry would have the advantage of enjoying greater confidence among America's traditional allies, since he might be willing to re-examine a war that he himself had not initiated. But that alone will not produce German or French funds and soldiers. The self-serving culture of comfortable abstention from painful security responsibilities has made the major European leaders generous in offering criticism but reluctant to assume burdens.
To get the Europeans to act, any new administration will have to confront them with strategic options. The Europeans need to be convinced that the United States recognizes that the best way to influence the eventual outcome of the civil war within Islam is to shape an expanding Grand Alliance (as opposed to a polarizing Holy Alliance) that embraces the Middle East by taking on the region's three most inflammatory and explosive issues: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the mess in Iraq, and the challenge of a restless and potentially dangerous Iran.
While each issue is distinct and immensely complex, each affects the others. The three must be tackled simultaneously, and they can be tackled effectively only if America and Europe cooperate and engage the more moderate Muslim states.
A grand American-European strategy would have three major prongs. The first would be a joint statement by the United States and the European Union outlining the basic principles of a formula for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, with the details left to negotiations between the parties. Its key elements should include no right of return; no automatic acceptance of the 1967 lines but equivalent territorial compensation for any changes; suburban settlements on the edges of the 1967 lines incorporated into Israel, but those more than a few miles inside the West Bank vacated to make room for the resettlement of some of the Palestinian refugees; a united Jerusalem serving as the capitals of the two states; and a demilitarized Palestinian state with some international peacekeeping presence.
Such a joint statement, by providing the Israeli and Palestinian publics a more concrete vision of the future, would help to generate support for peace, even if the respective leaders and some of the citizens initially objected.
Secondly, the European Union would agree to make a substantial financial contribution to the recovery of Iraq, and to deploy a significant military force (including French and German contingents, as has been the case in Afghanistan) to reduce the American military presence. A serious parallel effort on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process might induce some Muslim states to come in, as was explicitly suggested recently by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The effect would be to transform the occupation of Iraq into a transitional international presence while greatly increasing the legitimacy of the current puppet Iraqi regime. But without progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, any postoccupation regime in Iraq will be both anti-United States and anti-Israel.
In addition, the United States and the European Union would approach Iran for exploratory discussions on regional security issues like Iraq, Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation. The longer-term objective would be a mutually acceptable formula that forecloses the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran but furthers its moderation through an economically beneficial normalization of relations with the West.
A comprehensive initiative along these lines would force the European leaders to take a stand: not to join would run the risk of reinforcing and legitimating American unilateralism while pushing the Middle East into a deeper crisis. America might unilaterally attack Iran or unilaterally withdraw from Iraq. In either case, a sharing of burdens as well as of decisions should provide a better solution for all concerned.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, is the author of "The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership.''
Ziggy runs a close second to Soros in wanting to rule the world and also, coincidentally, in being among the most despised people I know of.
This man is delusional. We are already in all-out war against islam. Where does he think terrorists come from?!
What is it about democrats that makes them live with their heads up their backsides?
This idiot thinks that islam is having a civil war? Doesn't a civil war require some sort of conflict? of opinion, if nothing else.
Exactly.
Well, I don't... But in the case of Zbignew, it is fact... All his interventions while in office where of that kind...
OTH don't forget that there was a reason why Auschwitz, Treblinka etc. were located in Poland and not in say France or Denmark...
I am just a Polish Jew... So I do know what I am talking about...
Again, it was NO coincidence that Auschwitz was located in Poland... Or that there was a pogrom in Kielce after the war...
The truth of Poland's antisemitism is a well-documented fact...
Deal with it!
Your response to the bigotry you see and have experienced is to engage in bigotry yourself.
Pity.
Your answer is to be blind...
How come you don't vote for sKerry?
There are several.
(1) The vast majority of those murdered at Auschwitz lived much closer to Auschwitz than they did to Paris or Copenhagen. The Nazi animals located their murder camp in the Jewish heartland, not on its borders.
(2) The Nazis were able to isolate rural Poland from the prying eyes of world opinion better than they could France or Denmark.
If the popularity of the Holocaust among local residents had been the Nazi criterion instead of logistical efficiency, the camps would have been located in suburban Paris.
3) The Polish peasants were very happy to help the nazis kill the Jews... Any Jew that escaped was given back to the Germans...
Try and read the painted bird for instance...
While they did suffer, Poles were disgustingly happy to get rid of their Jewish neighbors!
Because he is an idiotic, weak socialist who cannot tell the truth about the most trivial matters.
BTW only 50% of French Jews were killed while 90% of Polish Jews were killed... There was no comparison whatsoever between the level of antismitism in Poland and in France... As simple as that!
Sorry to burst your bubble about Poles!
Absolutely. Isolation from Allied press and Allied intelligence.
Further, Stalin hated the Jews too, so if the killings happened in his front yard, why would he do anything to stop them?
Again false... It was that because the Poles were very happy to help the Germans in killing Jews...
And Stalin in this case did help to save Jews... Not that I defend him at all! But in this case, it is true: he opened the borders to Jews...
In a way, what happened to Poland after the war was not enough to repay the Poles for what they did... They were by and large accomplices of mass murder, and made themselves out as victims...
Enjoy your hate. You're soaking in it.
For some sources to all who wants try
http://www.rnw.nl/society/html/polish_antisemitism.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl/relations/
http://www.yadvashem.org.il/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203985.pdf
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/cgi-bin/data.show.pl?di=record&da=encyclopedia&ke=107
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/updates/i00004.html
If you think that gives you a license to dabble in racism, you're mistaken.
It gives me a chance to know what I am talking about...
Because if you want to assert that Poles were not a bunch of antismites, then you are whistling in the wind!
And forgetting history (if you ever knew it)
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