[A-List] Embargoed Zbigniew Brzezinski Senate FRC Testimony

[Leigh Meyers <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

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TWN (The Washington Note) has secured testimony being offered by former 
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tomorrow morning in the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee at 9:30 a.m.

Brzezinski will be paired with former National Security Advisor Brent 
Scowcroft who will testify about their views on the strategic context of 
America's actions in Iraq.

This may be covered by C-SPAN but will also be available in full at 
CNN's Pipeline:

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITEE TESTIMONY -- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI
February 1, 2007

Mr. Chairman:

Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in 
Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. 
Undertaken under false assumptions, 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 impulses 
and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than 
reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a 
tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying 
regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody 
involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is 
likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of 
Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran 
involves 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 U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a 
"defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely 
America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging 
across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a 
protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. 
Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now 
being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, 
reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that 
context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the 
equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, 
and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated 
America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism 
was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced 
European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the 
resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but 
also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, 
most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an 
isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in 
strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi 
state; while Iran--though gaining in regional influence--is itself 
politically divided, economically and militarily weak. 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.
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More: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/zbigniew-brzezinski-calls_b_40115.html