Zbigniew Brzezinski ("Second Chance") on Charlie Rose now

[Bozita]

[Bozita]

1. NYT: Brzezinski's verdict on the current president's record -- "catastrophic,"

New York Times, 3/6/07
"ompelling... Brzezinski's verdict on the current president's record -- "catastrophic," he calls it -- is nothing short of devastating."

[seemslikeadream]

2. Oh Zbigniew don't be so modest

http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic , having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. ''what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism,

Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism?''

Are you REALLY that insanely, hubristically STUPID???????

or just another lying sac of crap who won't own up to the gigantic hellhole amongst whom YOU were one of the chief architects?

I think it's the latter


what they have in common NOW is that they ALL hate us, and will forEVER!!!!

the difference between that emotionally driven HATRED felt by almost all Muslims and that of the ideologically driven ''what'' driving the former USSR represents EXACTLY what WE have to fear now: the USSR would NEVER have gone against M.A.D, and the likelihood of some terrible mistake on either of our sides was incalulably less than what we face today, at the hands of real extremists, who will stop at nothing to see a real mushroom cloud over one/many of our cities.

AND....today they have a much, MUCH greater chance of accomplishing that feat as a result of our turning the entire Muslim world against us

how disappointing that this so-called leader hasn't taken that into his calculations

and we're SCREWED on many levels as a result, not the least of which is the eventual COMPLETE loss of whatever freedoms we labored under the illusion of having before this maniac set the wheels of eternal religious war in motion during the Carter regime

[Hippo_Tron]

4. This interview was before 9/11

In retrospect, Afghanistan was one of the dumbest things that the Carter Administration did (I'm a huge fan of Carter otherwise). But I can understand that Brezezinski wouldn't have the same attitude about the installation of the Taliban before 9/11 than after 9/11.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. well, that certainly blows a big hole in much of my response. that said,

I wonder what his reply to his gross lack of wisdom at the time, the lizard-like anti-Soviet animus playing into the hands of the likes of the Mujahadin, who they surely knew to be just as insanely theocratic then as they are now.

I know this is very reductive, but, as I said above, the word 'wisdom' rarely has been used in connection with the conduction of US foreign policy. one of the very few examples that springs to mind was JFK's refusal, against almost ALL counsel, to stay his hand during the missile crisis. That was the wisest decision, in face of the greatest dilemma, our country's leadership has ever faced. I'm sure there are other instances, certain decisions Lincoln made during the civil war could be examples, but nothing comes close to what could have happened in 1963 had Kennedy listened to the likes of his military high command, which was filled with endgame lunatics and religious fanatics, almost to the degree it is today.

can you just IMAGINE what would have happened back then if 43 had been at the helm, with his crew of Revelations-driven holy rollers. they'd most likely JUMPED at the chance to push the button.

Has Zbig, in the aftermath of what he helped wrought, ever made public the total lack of understanding of the possible consequences of their actions in the last years of Carter's presidency. And I wonder if Carter just GAVE IN to the cold warriors who insisted we throw our lot in with the Wahabists, not realizing what was about to come to fruition. He'e been whipsawed so many times by his own party, from the VERY GET GO, that he was pretty much a beaten man by the time this came about, and I'll bet a reading of the history of those last few years would show a man who was doing pretty much as he was "advised," particulaly when it came to Afghanistan, then, finally, his doom set: the hostage setup. The forces aligned against him from the beginning were too powerful for him to perceive at the beginning (starting with the corporate warhawks in his own party, who ABANDONED him from the outset, starting with his amazingly prescient Energy Policy speech of April 1997)

remember this, he had a cloture proof senate, and a significant majority in the house, yet he couldn't get ANYTHING passed, from the outset. his first high level nomination: Ted Sorenson, as DCIA was not allowed to be brought to the Senate floor for confirmation, because of the work of a sleazy group called "The Committee for the Present Danger," many whose names are recognizable throughout the intervening REagan/Bush scandal years.

here's Carter's amazingly far reaching Energy Policy Speech, from Early on in 1977. NOTHING at all came of it, except the sad acronmym CAFE standards, which have, like the rest of the policy envisioned, been IGNORED:

[Gabi Hayes]

6. The speech that SHOULD have 'saved us' from ourselves, but was ignored, derided, excoriated,

destroyed by the lobbyists for the energy and automobile manufacgtures, along with the other money/power centers that had much to lose if ordinary people were allowed to make the simple choice of whether to conserve oil resources in the manner presented by Carter, as follows, or to continue to be held hostage by the concentrated power of these giant, interconnected, integrated industries that have seized power as soon as it became available..........read it and weep for what SHOULD have been



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy.

The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood -- which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel -- to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution.

The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different.

Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.

I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years' increase in our nation's energy demand.

Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.

But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden.

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today.

We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price.

If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.

We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation.

We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country.

If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.

But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time.

That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday.

Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others, which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.

--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people.

We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example.

And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act.

I've given you some of the principles of the plan.

I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.

Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom

[Hippo_Tron]

7. Carter didn't do well getting along with Congress...

Part of it was that the establishment didn't like him. Part of it was stupid mistakes on his part like not giving Tip O'Neill enough tickets to the inauguration or inviting him to the White House for a drink like Reagan did. He got rid of the Presidential Yacht because he thought of it as an excess but the drawback was that he couldn't entertain Congressmen and Senators on it.

I highly doubt, though, that a man of Carter's intellect just gave in or didn't have any sense of what was coming. Carter was the ONLY Cold War President who realized that overthrowing left wing democratic regimes and replacing them with right wing dictatorships was not a good policy.

Also, Raygun escalated the arming of the Mujadeen far beyond anything Carter did. He also armed Saddam Hussein. And it wasn't Carter who overthrew Mossadeq which is the cause for the Iranian revolution in the first place. We can thank Eisenhower and Churchill for that one.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. ONeill was his Iago, nothing but an errand boy for the power brokers who would have NONE

of Carter's two centerpiece policies: energy independence and campaign finance reform

the dems in congress, led by ONeill, Wright, and Scoop Jackson, were just as crooked and sleazy as the worst of the venal Wingnutters of the 90s.

there's plenty of detail in Liberty under Seige that makes the point. while some disagree with the thrust of the book, they were out to GET the newcomer, both in govermnent, media, AND social circles. they never had a chance....read back through some of Sally Quinn's snide 1976-7 welcoming columns to the Carter's. they were every bit as snide/rude/trendsetting as what faced the Clinton's. there was also a manufactured scandal at the very beginning of his term that poured cold water on the idea of the honest outsider riding in to sweep away the corruption of the Johnson/Nixon/Ford years.

Carter, not having the experience, didn't know how to play the game, didn't realize that his only chance was to go DIRECTLY beyond his OWN PARTY LEADERS, the WAshington, and national media, and make his case directly to the people. he had no idea he was being set up by a group who realized his projected vision of a changing America was absolute ANATHEMA to their very entrenched interests. He could NOT be allowed to succeed, because his two very simple goals would rend the power structure asunder.

He had no idea what was in store for him, and by the time he forced himself to believe that even his own party was against him, it was far too late to be effective.

I lived there at the time, and saw it as my local news story, watching in stunned disbelief at how easily the 'most powerful man in the world' was taken down by a group of venal, sleazy creeps, who when banded together, and knowing how the power game is played, overwhelmed his inexperienced adminstration without much trouble.

Once again, a very compliant, VERY CONSERVATIVE media, only too happy to show its true colors after having been forced by a very small group of driven journalists to actually do their jobs as active members of the fourth, protectors of the interests of the people ostensibly served by the government they chose. Back in their much more comfy seat as protector of POWER, they knew whose side of the story to cover in spun gold, and whose to cover in dross.

It's been that way ever since, and unless some MAJOR shakeup occurs in this election cycle, I don't see things getting anything but MUCH worse over the years.

the recent revelation of the HUGE "extent of FBI abuse of national security letters"

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3227

is just one instance of depths to which they sink.

and god knows what the DOJ has planned for future elections, in clearly the most widescale corruption of a US governmental department since Casey's CIA under Reagan/Bush

I just can't imagine how completely policiticed EVERY single agency has become, from GSA to the Secret Service, the Postal Board, to whatEVER agency one cares to name. they've had almost seven years to privatize and politicize EVERY aspect of government, most dangerously the positions that, by law are NOT subject to political suasion....just normal GS positions

if they get in again, we are totally and utterly screwed. the courts will become theirs to the degree that they can pass ANYTHING they want, without fear of reversal, and they'll go back and turn stare decisis into rice krispies, along with habeas, and all those irritating rights in the first ten that keep them from going full bore fascist.

can't wait to see what happens....