Ex-national security adviser warns that Bush
is seeking a pretext to attack
Iran
By Barry Grey in
Washington
DC
2 February 2007
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter
administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that
the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with
incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and
internationally.
Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has
publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his
remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in
Iraq
by
characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral
calamity.”
“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it
is undermining
America
’s global
legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are
tarnishing
America
’s moral
credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is
intensifying regional instability.”
Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological
struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a
“mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and
potentially expanding war.”
“To argue that
America
is
already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which
Iran
is the
epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he
said.
Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a
“plausible scenario for a military collision with
Iran
.” It would,
he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by
accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran,
culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a
lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].
This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress,
replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military
action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on
Iran
. Although
he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White
House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist
attack within the
US
—to provide
the casus belli for war.
That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience
in the top echelons of the
US
foreign
policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to
intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US
Senate has immense and grave significance.
Brzezinski knows whereof he speaks, having authored
provocations of his own while serving as Jimmy Carter’s national security
adviser. In that capacity, as he has since acknowledged in published writings,
he drew up the covert plan at the end of the 1970s to mobilize Islamic
fundamentalist mujaheddin to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and
draw the Soviet Union into a ruinous war in that country.
Following his opening remarks, in response to questions
from the senators, Brzezinski reiterated his warning of a
provocation.
He called the senators’ attention to a
March 27, 2006
report in the New
York Times on “a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister
Blair, two months before the war, based on a memorandum prepared by the British
official present at this meeting.” In the article, Brzezinski said, “the
president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of
mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given
to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.”
He continued: “I’ll just read you what this memo
allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that
the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons
had been found inside
Iraq
. Faced with
the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked
about several ways to provoke a confrontation.’
“He described the several ways in which this could be
done. I won’t go into that... the ways were quite sensational, at least one of
them.
“If one is of the view that one is dealing with an
implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain
circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in
Iraq
continues
to deteriorate, and if
Iran
is
perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential
beneficiary, that temptation could arise.”
At another point Brzezinski remarked on the
conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration and all but described it as a
cabal. “I am perplexed,” he said, “by the fact that major strategic decisions
seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably
a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the
individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war,
and used the original justifications to go to war.”
None of the senators in attendance addressed themselves
to the stark warning from Brzezinski. The Democrats in particular, flaccid,
complacent and complicit in the war conspiracies of the Bush administration,
said nothing about the danger of a provocation spelled out by the
witness.
Following the hearing, this reporter asked Brzezinski
directly if he was suggesting that the source of a possible provocation might be
the
US
government itself. The former national security adviser was
evasive.
The following exchange took place:
Q: Dr. Brzezinski, who do you think would be carrying out
this possible provocation?
A: I have no idea. As I said, these things can never be
predicted. It can be spontaneous.
Q: Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could
originate within the
US
government
itself?
A: I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and
all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very
difficult to trace.
Source:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/brze-f02.shtml
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