Le Nouvel Observateur's Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Published 15-21 January 1998
Translated by Jean Martineau
I. Comment: The US & European States are still using Brzezinski's Muslim terrorist strategy!by Jared Israel
II. Interview with Brzezinski
[Posted 6 September 2004]
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- Comments -
Below is our translation of an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski. It is important for three reasons.
First, it flatly contradicts the official US justification for giving billions of dollars to the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, namely that the US and Saudi Arabia were defending so-called freedom fighters against Soviet aggression.
Not so, says Brzezinski. He confirms what opponents have charged: that the US began covert sponsorship of Muslim extremists five months *before* the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He says that after President Carter authorized the covert action:
"I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets."
Second, the interview is instructive concerning so-called "conspiracy theory." To be sure, there are plenty of nutty theories out there. And of course, there are plenty of just plain wrong theories. But as Brzezinski demonstrates, the US foreign policy establishment did, for want of a better word, conspire. Even as they claimed to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly fomented it *as a weapon of policy.*
And they lied about what they were doing, pretending they were helping freedom fighters resist an invasion. In other words, deceit on two levels.
One must ask oneself: if the US foreign policy Establishment used Muslim extremism as a weapon once, how can one argue *in principle* that they would not use it again?
We say they *have* used it again; that they have used it continuously; and that we are seeing the fruits of this policy. Most recently we have seen the real essence of the Brzezinski doctrine in the horrendous events this past week in Russia (culminating in the school attack) and Israel (the double bus bombing).
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Lying with dollars
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Brzezinski and his protégé, Zalmay Khalilzad, set up a corporation in 1985, funded by the US congress, to train the mujahideen to sell reporters the lie that the mujahideen were freedom fighters and victims of aggression:
[Excerpt from Associated Press dispatch starts here] My emphasis
Headline: U.S. Provides $500,000 So Afghan Rebels Can Tell Their Story
AP, September 16, 1985, Monday, PM cycle SECTION: Washington Dateline
By JOAN MOWER
WASHINGTON
Guerrillas in Afghanistan are about to get money from the United States government for a public relations campaign intended to bring their struggle against Soviet troops to the world's attention.
The money will train Afghan rebel journalists to use television, radio and newspapers to advance their cause. Reporters will be given mini-cameras to photograph the war inside Afghanistan.
"It is the goal of this project to facilitate the collection, development and distribution of credible, objective and timely professional-quality news stories, photographs and television images about developments in Afghanistan," said a notice in the Federal Register. The program will be overseen by Uncle Sam's own propaganda arm, the U.S. Information Agency. Congress appropriated $500,000 to hire experts and may provide more later.
In making the money available, Congress all but instructed USIA to consider an organization like Friends of Afghanistan, a new group whose board includes former Carter administration national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, known for hard-line anti-Soviet views.
USIA has solicited proposals, due Sept. 25.
Friends of Afghanistan includes other American foreign policy luminaries such as Lawrence Eagleburger, a former undersecretary of state, and Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, a Columbia University political science professor and some-time paid adviser to the State Department on Afghanistan.
[Note from Jared Israel - Eagleburger played a prominent role in first Bush administration in demonizing the Bosnian Serbs.]
[...]
Afghan rebels, called the Mujahadeen, have been battling 100,000 Soviet troops who have occupied the rugged, mountainous country since December 1979.
[...]
[Excerpt from Associated Press dispatch ends here]
The Associated Press referred to Khalilzad as a "some-time paid adviser to the State Department on Afghanistan." This was in the late summer of 1985. Less than three years later Tass, the Soviet news agency, reported that Khalilzad was delivering the mujahideen an important message from the State Department. Khalilzad told them that the State Department would continue to support them a) only if they could consolidate control of Afghanistan and b) only if they maintained an attitude of implacable hostility to the government in Kabul. In other words the US ordered the mujahideen *not* to make peace:
"'The United States has told the Afghan guerrillas that it would support them in an effort to form a provisional government if they consolidate their control of most of the country and meet other criteria,' the newspaper New York Times today quoted State Department officials as saying. A top State Department official made it clear that the government must oppose 'the soviet-backed regime in Kabul' and said that the USA did not 'accept the legitimacy' of the authorities in Afghanistan. The relevant message was delivered to the rebels in the Pakistani city of Peshawar last week by Zalmay Khalilzad, a special adviser on Afghanistan to under secretary of state Michael H. Armacost..."[-- To Support Afghan Counter Revolutionaries New York; The Russian Information Agency ITAR-TASS, May 6, 1988, Friday]
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Applying the techniques developed in Afghanistan to Bosnia
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Brzezinski's interview has tremendous importance today. According to a Dutch intelligence report on Bosnia, in the early 1990s Pentagon intelligence worked with the Saudis and Iranians to bring weapons and mujahideen terrorists - the 'Afghan Arabs' - into Bosnia to indoctrinate and lead Alija Izetbegovic's Muslim extremists in fighting the Bosnian Serbs. [1]
The same terrorists had been used against the pro-Soviet side in Afghanistan. Once again the media lied, claiming the Bosnian Serbs were fighting to destroy the Bosnian Muslims (i.e., genocide) when they were in fact defending their communities from the mujahideen, and were allied with a large group of moderate Muslims. [2]
This picture appeared in the London Times on December 11, 1995. The caption reads: "One of the Bosnian Army's Muslim brigades marches through Zenica in a demonstration of strength by 10,000 soldiers." Note that according to the Times these 10,000 troops constituted only *one* of "the Bosnian Army's Muslim brigades..."
During the 1990s, pictures like this were as rare as hen's teeth in the Western media. Why? Because they graphically demonstrated that the media was lying when it claimed that the "Bosnian Government" was moderate and multiculturalist and so on.
The white costumes these troops are wearing are the uniforms of Middle Eastern mujahideen, not Yugoslav Muslims. The Bosnian Muslim troops wore them because they had been indoctrinated by Muslim extremists, including mujahideen imported by Iran, Saudi Arabia and other extremist states, with the participation of Pentagon intelligence. In the early part of the Bosnian conflict (up until January 1993) Zalmay Khalilzad, the protégé of Zginew Brzezinski, was in charge of strategic planning at the Pentagon. [3]
In Afghanistan (as Brzezinski proudly states) and then in Bosnia, the US sponsored Muslim terror even as the State Department was officially condemning it. Because ordinary people would never support such a policy, it was sold to the public as support for freedom fighters (Afghanistan) or as defense of abused Muslims (Bosnia.)
By the late 1980s Brzezinski's protégé, Prof. Zalmay Khalilzad, was the top strategist of the Afghan war.
Under the administration of Bush, Sr., Khalilzad was in charge of strategy at the Pentagon. We have substantial evidence that it was under Bush, Sr., not Clinton, that the US began assisting the mujahideen in Bosnia.
So, in both cases, we have Brzezinski's protégé directing the use of Muslim extremism as a weapon against a secular state, with the media misrepresenting the nature of the fight. The Brzezinski Doctrine in action.
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2001: Brzezinski's protégé Zalmay Khalilzad was appointed Senior National Security Director for Southwest Asia, the heartland of Muslim extremist terror...
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Want some food for thought? From May 23, 2001 until November 27, 2003, Prof. Khalilzad was "Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues, National Security Council." Southwest Asia covers the area from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, including Iraq and Iran; it includes most of the Middle East and extends to Georgia. See White House map at
http://www.politicsol.com/terrorism/maps.html
* Khalilzad was in charge of US policy on the ground in Afghanistan before and during the 2001 war. He then personally chose the Afghan government. It was under his watch that the US and Iran cooperated in convening a top level conference to give Afghanistan a government based on Muslim religious law. Now he's Ambassador and Special Envoy to Afghanistan. [4]
* Even while Khalilzad was in charge of Afghanistan he was also the key man on the ground before, during and after the invasion of Iraq. He was in charge of political relations with Iraqi exile politicians and the Iranian and Saudi governments up until the fall 2003. A crucial period.
* His area of official responsibility included Georgia during the period when the US was intensifying the financing and training of the Georgian military. Russia accuses Georgia of aiding the Chechen terrorists.
So Brzezinski has been the key hands-on strategist, the leader on the ground, in a vast area plagued with Muslim extremist terror during most of the so-called war on terror. Oops - did I say Brzezinski? Sorry; I meant Zalmay Khalilzad...
Regarding US-Iranian cooperation to use Muslim extremist terror in Bosnia, see "How the U.S. & Iran have Cooperated to Sponsor Muslim Terror," at
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm
Also see 'Articles Documenting U.S. Creation of Taliban and bin Laden's Terrorist Network' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/doc.htm
Regarding Brzezinski's protégé Zalmay Khalilzad, see
http://emperors-clothes.com/archive/khalilzad-facts.htm
For more on the calculated creation of a Muslim extremist apparatus in Afghanistan in the 1980s by the US and Saudi Arabia, see the Washington Post's analysis at
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/anatomy.htm
The Brzezinski interview follows.
-- Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor's Clothes
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Brzezinski's Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur: Former CIA director Robert Gates states in his memoirs: The American secret services began six months before the Soviet intervention to support the Mujahideen [in Afghanistan]. At that time you were president Carters security advisor; thus you played a key role in this affair. Do you confirm this statement?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the Mujahideen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.
Le Nouvel Observateur: Despite this risk you were a supporter of this covert action? But perhaps you expected the Soviets to enter this war and tried to provoke it?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: It's not exactly like that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene but we knowingly increased the probability that they would do it.
Le Nouvel Observateur: When the Soviets justified their intervention with the statement that they were fighting against a secret US interference in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. Nevertheless there was a core of truth to this...Do you regret nothing today?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Regret what? This secret operation was an excellent idea. It lured the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you would like me to regret that? On the day when the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote president Carter, in essence: "We now have the opportunity to provide the USSR with their Viet Nam war." Indeed for ten years Moscow had to conduct a war that was intolerable for the regime, a conflict which involved the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire.
Le Nouvel Observateur: And also, don't you regret having helped future terrorists, having given them weapons and advice?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: What is most important for world history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? Some Islamic hotheads or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Le Nouvel Observateur: "Some hotheads?" But it has been said time and time again: today Islamic fundamentalism represents a world-wide threat...
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Rubbish! It's said that the West has a global policy regarding Islam. That's hogwash: there is no global Islam. Let's look at Islam in a rational and not a demagogic or emotional way. It is the first world religion with 1.5 billion adherents. But what is there in common between fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, moderate Morocco, militaristic Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt and secularized Central Asia? Nothing more than that which connects the Christian countries...
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Source: http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm