Way back in January 2008, I referred to “Barack Obama’s Zbig problem” — Zbigniew Brzezinski, that is. Zbig was never a friend of Israel, and I was more than a little bothered by the suggestion that he would be a key foreign policy adviser for candidate Obama.
After quoting some of Brzezinski’s more egregiously anti-Israel remarks, I wrote,
Brzezinski supports the pernicious, even anti-Semitic Mearsheimer and Walt, he accuses Israel of ignoring collateral damage and in effect committing war crimes in Lebanon, he perpetuates the false and dangerous accusation that Israel is in some sense responsible for the US being in Iraq, and — time and again — he declares a moral equivalence between Israel and her terrorist opponents — Hamas and Arafat…
We don’t need another James A. Baker in a critical position in a future Obama administration. Obama has received criticism from pro-Israel voices like Alan Dershowitz about Brzezinski. The Obama campaign has responded that the criticism is politically motivated and coming from supporters of Hillary Clinton. Regardless, Brzezinski’s slant is clear from his own words.
Well, Zbig does not have an official position in the Obama administration, but there is no question that his voice is taken seriously.
And what he is saying is obscene. This is from an interview in the Daily Beast (thanks to Michael Goldfarb for noticing it and Dan Friedman for bringing it to my attention):
How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?
We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?What if they fly over anyway?
Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.
“A Liberty in reverse”?
Just a couple of words about the USS Liberty:
The facts are that Israeli planes attacked the US naval vessel in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 171. Israel said it was a mistake caused by a series of errors and that the ship was thought to be Egyptian. The government apologized and paid compensation for the crew members who were killed and injured, as well as for the damage to the ship. The US officially accepted the Israeli explanation of the incident and the apology.
But those are just the facts. The reality is that there is a huge controversy, with survivors of the crew and others firmly convinced that the attack was deliberate, and that the US and Israel conspired to cover up the truth (a good presentation of the case that the attack was a tragic error can be found in “The Liberty Incident” by A. Jay Cristol).
The ugly part is that Jews and conspiracies go together. Every neo-Nazi website gleefully presents the theory as proof that the US really is ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) territory. The Liberty incident is on every antisemite and anti-Zionist’s list of reasons for hating Israel and the perfidious Jews.
Including Zbiggy’s.
So not only is this mamzer advocating that the United States of America shoot at aircraft of its ally, Israel — in order to protect the nuclear weapons capability of its enemy, Iran — but he is doing so in terms which evoke the darkest impulses in his American audience.
Technorati Tags: Brzezinski, USS Liberty, Israel, Iran
His invoking of the ‘Liberty’ is of course a way of doing what he has done for many years, smearing and undermining Israel in American eyes. It is not simply the positions he takes but his tone and attitude which I think indicate that his negative relation is not based purely on ‘objective evaluation’ but rather comes from prejudicial dislike.