In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said on Sunday that President Obama’s scrapping missile defense was the right thing to do. The George W. Bush Administration’s defense missile shield project had been based on “a nonexistent defense technology, designed against a nonexistent threat”.
This, however, become an irrelevance next to Brzezinski’s more provocative assertion: Washington has to shoot down Israeli jets over Iraqi airspace if they are en route to attack Iran. This would be an example of US assertiveness to ensure the success of engagement with Tehran and Middle Eastern states. It would be a marker of a “strong strategy” backed-up with decisiveness, lacking in US foreign policy.
Transcript:
Is the Obama administration decision to end the missile-defense program the right one?
Well, let me first of all say that my view on this subject for the last two years has been that the Bush missile-shield proposal was based on a nonexistent defense technology, designed against a nonexistent threat, and designed to protect West Europeans, who weren’t asking for the protection.
KING: I want to begin with the economy. I get out of Washington every week for the show, and we’re in Connecticut and Rhode Island this week. And I knew I was going to be seeing you, so I asked 20 people: “What would you ask if you had the privilege that I have at this moment?” Eighteen of the twenty, eighteen, asked a variation of…
There will be no less than five interviews with Barack Obama aired today, as each news network scramble to make its face-time “exclusive” on issues from health care to race to Afghanistan. NBC’s Meet the Press is the first to put its full interview on-line, with highlights on Afghanistan, health care, and race and political debate.
Praise be to God, Who created people to worship Him, ordered them to be just, and permitted the wronged to mete out fair punishment to the wrongdoer.
American people: This address to you is a reminder of the causes of 11 (September) and the wars and consequences that followed and the way to settle it once and for all. I mention in particular the families of those who were hurt in these events and who have recently called for opening an investigation to know its causes. This is a first and important step in the right direction among many other steps that have deliberately gone in the wrong direction over eight barren years that you have experienced.
Speaking on CNN, Jimmy Carter, the US President from 1977 to 1981 and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, made a gentle but challenging contribution to the debate over the release of photographs of detainee abuse (“”I don’t agree with [President Obama], but I certainly don’t criticize him for making that decision”) and an investigation of the Bush Administration’s torture programme: “What I would like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law. And then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this week, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, reviewed the Middle East peace process. He declared that President Obama found himself between two options/schools of thought: Israel’s official perspective of delaying the peace with Palestinians, by presenting the Iranian danger as the priority of “existential threat”, and the demand for a two-state solution.
For Brzezinski, the outcome of Obama’s speech in Cairo on July 4 will be the turning point in US policy. It will ether foster a solution or, in its failure, ensure the peace process will be stuck for a long time. Thus, the US must make it clear to Israelis and Palestinians that this is the last chance for peace in the region, particular as the tension with Iran is worsening.
Brzezinski believes Israel must withdraw from occupied Palestine and must be pushed to share Jerusalem and stop the expansion settlements. In return, Israel must be assured that it does not have to accept any Palestinian refugees via a “right to return”. Otherwise, a polarization would continue, with Palestinians seeing no alternative outside Hamas.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, spoke on MSNBC’s Morning Joe
about North Korea’s recent nuclear test. He underlined the importance of a multilateral approach, given that the US is still involved in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Brzezinski warned that a military strike against North Korea would get the US stuck in the Far East. Instead, he put hope in Chinese involvement in a diplomatic initiative, since a prudent China does not want a war next to its borders and North Korea’s foreign trade is primarily with and through China.
Video and Transcript: Colin Powell on Face the Nation.
On Sunday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation. The interview is the latest round in an ongoing battle with other Bush Administration officials, notably the former Vice President Dick Cheney, over national security issues, the Republican Party, and attitudes toward President Obama.
SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. On this Memorial Day weekend, former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell is with us in the studio this morning. Thank you, General. It has been quite a two weeks, as you know. It was on this broadcast that your old boss and colleague, Dick Cheney, accused this administration of putting the nation’s security at risk.
In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said on Sunday that President Obama’s scrapping missile defense was the right thing to do. The George W. Bush Administration’s defense missile shield project had been based on “a nonexistent defense technology, designed against a nonexistent threat”.
KING: Mr. President, thank you for joining us.
Praise be to God, Who created people to worship Him, ordered them to be just, and permitted the wronged to mete out fair punishment to the wrongdoer.
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