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.''
That is simply false.
If they were so happy to do so, why didn't they volunteer in large numbers to help at the murder camps? Why were the Nazis hiring Ukrainians from hundreds of miles away?
I'll point out, also, that there is a difference between "giving back" a Jewish refugee from the murder camps and being forced to turn over a fugitive when the lives of your entire family are threatened.
Many Poles behaved less than honorably but many Poles acted with great honor.
And Poles had very little sympathy for those who collaborated with either the Nazi or the Communist invader.
Try and read the painted bird for instance...
Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird is a tissue of lies, and I find it interesting that you cite a novel instead of a scholarly work of history for your anti-Polish slander. What does that tell me about your good intentions?
Mr. Kosinski claimed at first that the novel was semi-autobiographical, but then the truth came out.
In reality, Mr. Kosinski's parents took him to the local Polish Catholic priest for help in hiding him from the Nazis. The local priest, at great personal risk, forged a baptismal certificate and placed Mr. Kosinski in the house of a Polish farming family who kept him safe until the end of the war. He never left the farm, let alone wandered throughout Eastern Europe as the book narrates.
After he made up the sensationalistic Painted Bird he then plagiarized almost an entire obscure Polish novel and republished it in English under his own name as Being There. He was subsequently exposed as a fraud for that book as well.
He also pulled a John Kerry and married a steel heiress and lived off her family money after she died of cancer. He later committed suicide by strangling himself while masturbating.
While they did suffer, Poles were disgustingly happy to get rid of their Jewish neighbors!
This is a myth. Some Poles were bad people, more were good people who mourned the loss of their neighbors and tried to help them. Slanderers and liars like Jerzy Kosinski should not be allowed to speak for the mute thousands of Poles who risked their lives for years to save their Jewish neighbors from government-mandated mass murder.
I note with interest that you sanction the Nazi-style government-mandated murder of helpless Terri Schiavo. While the Nazis were murdering six million Jews they were also murdering tens of thousands of "useless eaters" like Terri Schiavo in hospitals and climics throughout their empire.
But as far as you're concerned, it's better to slander an entire nation and culture on the strength of a novel written by a lying plagiarist hack than confront that dark part of yourself that agrees in part with the Nazi program.
Poles were also serving in the camps...
You say it is false? It is documented... by Poles...
Try Jewadne...
trying to rewrite history?
As to Poles being happy to kill their neighbors? Sorry pal... My family saw it... in Warsaw, in Chelm, in Lublin etc...
You better try to read more than pro-polish propaganda because it is false...
But I guess you don't want to see the truth! Maybe your family comes from Jewadne or Kielce,...
You, my friend, are a racist. You are as bad as any anti-Semite.
Unlike yourself, there are many Jews who are proud of the Jewish people and their unique and irreplaceable contribution to all humanity.
They don't need to dabble in the blood libel of the Polish people to feel good about themselves.
In fact, I am starting to suspect that you are not actually Jewish, but that you yourself are an anti-Semite who is trying to make Jews look bad.
Were? History? Sorry friend, your slur was framed in the present tense. You wrote that Poles stink of anti-semitism.
It's bad enough that you think your certified victimhood confers a unique license to deal in racism. Don't make it worse by lying.
About these honorable Poles
From http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=5821
"The estimated 1,600 Jews of Jedwabne, a village northeast of Warsaw, were rounded up, herded into a barn and set on fire on July 10, 1941. For decades the perpetrators were believed to be the Nazis, but “Neighbors,” a book published last year by Professor Jan Gross, a Polish-American scholar at New York University, documented that the massacre had been carried out by the Polish townspeople themselves. ..."
There were certainly Poles who helped murder Jews in the Nazi death camps.
My point was that if the Poles as a nation were so universally dedicated to murdering Jews, why did the Nazis have to import guards from far away? There should have been more than enough Poles on hand with a few miles' radius if the Polish nation as a whole were as evil as you say.
As to Poles being happy to kill their neighbors? Sorry pal... My family saw it... in Warsaw, in Chelm, in Lublin etc...
As I said, I seriously doubt your assertions and I think you may be an anti-Semitic plant on this forum.
I have personally known Holocaust survivors from Poland and they have never expressed the anti-Polish animus that I have seen from you on this board.
You better try to read more than pro-polish propaganda because it is false...
While there are Poles who like to pretend that no Poles were complicit in the Holocaust, I recognize that they are not telling the truth. It as much of a lie to say that no Pole helped the Nazis as it is to say that they all did.
But I guess you don't want to see the truth! Maybe your family comes from Jewadne or Kielce,...
I have no Polish ancestry of any kind. One doesn't have to be Polish to see that a person calling on God to damn the entire Polish nation is an unstable bigot.
That's one statistic. I've seen others that state 80% for Poland and 65% for France.
That being said, it was a lot easier to flee unoccupied France in 1940 than occupied Poland in 1939. There is no comparison in the two situations.
It was also much easier for a secular Jew conversant with French customs and manners to navigate through Gentile society to safety than it was for an observant Jew in rural Poland to do so.
A better statistic might be to ask how many Poles died under the Nazi yoke and how many Frenchmen.
The Poles did more than their part in fighting Nazism.
I kind of compare him to the English author J.G. Ballard whose semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (made into the Spielberg movie, the book was a LOT more ugly and nihlistic) would go a long way towards explaining HIS cracked, twisted output (he wrote Crash among other perversions).
It's funny that you should mention kids reading inappropriate things at young ages, since I took home a collection of Ballard short stories at the age of 12 when our local library was giving away old paperbacks.
Some of those tales were extremely disturbing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.