Brzezinski Gets to the Point on Iraq

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's disgust with Bush's foreign policy has become more visible in the last nine months. On The Newshour, Brzezinski was interviewed by Jim Lehrer (along with Walter Russell Meade) and illustrated his opening comment with an aerial photograph of Baghdad:

JIM LEHRER: You did not hear the president say anything today that gave you confidence that success was still possible under his way of doing it?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, the president opened his press conference by making a statement, which I suspect most Americans didn't quite fully interpret correctly. This is what he said: "I have just returned from Baghdad. I was inspired to be able to visit the capital of a free and democratic Iraq."

Now, this is what the president actually visited. This is an aerial map of Baghdad and, within it, the viewers can see a small spot. That is the so-called Green Zone, a fortified American fortress housing the American embassy, the American high command, and all the major institutions of the Iraqi, as he said, free and democratic government, in an American fortress.

This is worse than in the bad days of Vietnam, when the South Vietnamese regime was still operating from its own palaces, had its own army and so forth. We do not have in Iraq a free and democratic government that is functioning.

(snip)

....The fact of the matter is: The government is meeting in an American fortress.

If it is meeting in an American fortress, it is because it is not able to operate outside of an American fortress. That tells you a lot. The notions that a new plan is being put in to enhance security in Baghdad makes me think of a person in the midst of a huge fire in a house who all of a sudden announces that he has a new plan for the installation of air conditioning.

I mean, the fact of the matter is that, three years after the occupation of Baghdad, the authority we have installed is besieged and relatively helpless, and a civil war is beginning to mushroom, under the occupation, which is unable to crush the insurgency, because it is a foreign occupation.

And, last but not least, we have to get rid of the mindset, which is really by now totally ahistorical -- we no longer live in the age of colonialism. We no longer have to assume "the white man's burden" in order to civilize others, and I'm using these phrases in quotation marks.

The Iraqis are a historical people. They're quite capable of handling things on their own, provided their leaders are real leaders of the country and not essentially proteges of an occupying power hiding in an American fortress.

The Green Zone is about 104 acres. In Afghanistan, President Karzai at least controls Kabul and the immediate environs. In neither country has Bush accomplished much though Afghanistan might have been in a reasonably good position by now if Bush had not gone to Iraq. In the northern part of Iraq, the Kurds are in relatively good shape, but, thank to the no-fly zone that existed at the time, the Kurds were in relatively good shape before the invasion of Iraq.

Later in the same interview, Brzezinski has more:

JIM LEHRER: So pull out, Dr. Brzezinski, now?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Pull out in an intelligent fashion. I have been advocating a four-point program which, in a nutshell, is the following.

Talk at length with the Iraq leadership as to when we have to leave. Those who say, "We don't want you to leave," are the ones who leave when we leave. The real leaders, probably not living in the Green Zone, will say, "Yes, leave." I suspect Sistani is among them.

Secondly, then announce jointly a date, but a date set jointly.

Then, thirdly, let the Iraqi government convene a conference of all of Iraq's Muslim neighbors about stabilizing Iraq and helping it to stabilize. Most of them will want to be helpful, maybe even Iranians.

And, fourth, we then announce as we're leaving a donors conference of interested countries in Europe and the Far East who benefit from Iraqi oil on helping to rehabilitate Iraq. I think this would enable us to leave and still say we achieved basically what we wanted -- the removal of Saddam -- though not a secular, stable, united Iraq under a perfect democracy because that, frankly, is a fantasy.

From now until the midterm elections, it will be curious to see if Bush can convince American voters once again that his Photo Op, shoot from the lips foreign policy is somehow a viable solution to the chaos in Iraq.