Dateline: October 8, 2015 | http://www.mintpressnews.com/exporting-revolution-zbigniew-brzezinski-on-trial-at-the-un-general-assembly/210126/
WITH A SPECIAL ADDENDUM DOCUMENTING CBS NEWS PROPAGANDA FOR THE MUJAHEDEEN
What should we say about a country that continually mounts huge criminal operations around the world behind a curtain of smug hypocrisy?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: Demonstrably one of the great malignant figures of the current era, an unrelenting, unreconstructed warmonger and fanatical anti-Russian. A cancer at the core of US foreign policy. The gallows is too good for this criminal. But now he obviously escaped it. (CSIS, flickr)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]uthor's Note: In light of Brzezinski's death, and the continued US strategy of arming extremists and "revolutionaries" in order to topple independent governments, my previously published article "Exporting Revolution: Zbigniew Brzezinski On Trial At The UN General Assembly" is particularly relevant.
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Brzezinski's career involved certain innovations in US Foreign Policy which have had disastrous results. The most recent fallout has been the bombing in Manchester, carried out by one of the "Libyan revolutionaries" funded by the USA to topple Gaddafi in 2011, and supported by NATO bombs.
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Toppling independent governments by arming extremists and terrorist, Brzezinski's innovative method of carrying out US foreign policy, is not simply a matter of history. Its deadly impact continues. The article is reposted below.
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Brzezinski's career involved certain innovations in US Foreign Policy which have had disastrous results. The most recent fallout has been the bombing in Manchester, carried out by one of the "Libyan revolutionaries" funded by the USA to topple Gaddafi in 2011, and supported by NATO bombs.
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Toppling independent governments by arming extremists and terrorist, Brzezinski's innovative method of carrying out US foreign policy, is not simply a matter of history. Its deadly impact continues. The article is reposted below.
BY CALEB MAUPIN
Though never mentioned by name, the shadow of the 87-year-old loomed large over the U.N. General Assembly, with the U.S. and its allies defending or glossing over his quiet strategy of destabilization and the rest of the world’s leaders decrying it as a “policy of terror.”
UNITED NATIONS — President Barack Obama’s remarks to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 28 (2015) defensively addressed critics of U.S. foreign policy:
“It is not a conspiracy of U.S.-backed NGOs that expose corruption and raise the expectations of people around the globe; it’s technology, social media, and the irreducible desire of people everywhere to make their own choices about how they are governed.”
Yet it is no secret that the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy have been funding dissidents and violent protest movements around the world for the past five decades, hoping to create instability and regime change. And although Zbigniew Brzezinski was not mentioned by name at the recent U.N. General Assembly, the shadow of the 87-year-old global strategist was cast over the body’s proceedings. As the U.S. and its allies attempted to defend or gloss over the existence of the policies that have become Brzezinski’s legacy, rising opponents of the United States around the world loudly castigated them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin compared U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration to that of the former Soviet Union, saying: “It seemed, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called democratic ones, continues.”
He described the results of U.S. support for so-called “revolutionaries” in Libya and Syria:
“Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation: do you realize now what you’ve done? But I am afraid no one is going to answer that.”
Drugs, Saudi money, and CIA revolutions
[dropcap]Z[/dropcap]bigniew Brzezinski’s ascent to the height of power as a crafter of U.S. foreign policy can be largely attributed to the U.S. defeat at the hands of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. After years of bombing and war that killed millions of Vietnamese people, along with over 58,000 U.S. military fatalities, the U.S. was forced to withdraw from Southeast Asia. In light of this historic defeat, the strategy of all-out war — with B-52 bombers, napalm, and troop deployment, utilized in the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts — was reconsidered.
During his presidency, Jimmy Carter pardoned those who had fled to Canada to avoid military conscription, welcomed Chinese President Deng Xiaoping for an extended tour of the country, and attempted to present a new image of U.S. society to the world. During his presidential campaign, Carter described himself as a student of Brzezinski’s, and he later welcomed the well-known Polish-American strategist to the White House as his chief adviser.
Brzezinski’s strategy consisted of utilizing the CIA in place of the Pentagon, and creating instability and chaos to topple governments that defied Washington. As Russian President Putin recently noted, Brzezinski consciously worked to copy the rhetorical style and foreign policing messaging of the Soviet Union, and portray the United States, not as imperialist, but as “aiding revolutionaries” who fought for “human rights.”
Brzezinski directed the Carter administration to adopt the strategies he had pushed for within the Johnson administration and other presidencies throughout the Cold War. He bragged in a 1998 interview that he created “the Afghan trap” for the Soviet Union, funding violent religious insurgents to battle the People’s Democratic Party when it took power in Afghanistan.
In order to make U.S. support for the Afghan forces less obvious, Saudi Arabia was utilized as a middle man. A wealthy Saudi construction firm heir named Osama bin Laden became a key organizer of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, quietly taking U.S. money and weapons while loudly denouncing the “decadence” of Western society and calling for a return to Salafist Islamic society.
Unlike the Vietnam War, U.S. efforts to destabilize and eventually depose the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were widely popular around the world. This can be credited to the efforts of U.S. media. It was documented by the New York Post and the Columbia Journalism Review that CBS News went so far as to air fake battle footage boosting the image of mujahadeen. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, the first U.S. journalists granted permission to enter Afghanistan after 1979, described the coverage of the Afghan war in Western media as a “Ramboesque struggle of holy warriors against the evil empire.” The less romantic and glamorous aspects of the war, like 2 million deaths and 6 million people fleeing the country as refugees, were ignored.
Most of the leftists who had protested the Vietnam War in the U.S. and Europe were attracted to the romantic Che Guevara-esque image of “holy warriors” in the Afghan mountains. Meanwhile, the minority of radicals who denounced the mujahedeen were labelled “Stalinists” and “Soviet apologists.” With the excuse of “Soviet aggression in Afghanistan,” Carter was able to reinstate draft registration for young men across the U.S., boycott the 1980 Olympic Games, and increase military spending.
Speaking to MintPress News, Sara Flounders, co-director of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, noted that U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was not, as is widely believed, a response to Soviet action, saying: “It should be remembered that Brzezinski bragged that U.S. intervention pre-dated Soviet’s 1979 assistance to the Afghan government.”
When asked about whether he regretted aligning with bin Laden, Brzezinski replied:
“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”
Brzezinski was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981, and continued to play a prominent role in setting U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan administration. During this period, the U.S. continued Carter’s Afghan policy, and also supported the violent insurgents who battled against the Sandinistas. U.S.-aligned media portrayed the CIA-trained forces in Nicaragua as “freedom fighters” as they slaughtered entire villages. Saudi Arabia again functioned as the “middle man,” transferring money and weapons to U.S.-aligned anti-government fighters in Nicaragua.
“The extension of Brzezinski’s murderous policies of massive destabilization, arming reactionary religious mercenaries and warlords, and inflaming sectarian, tribal and cultural differences in Afghanistan is now standard U.S. policy,” Flounders observed.
Another tactic utilized for Brzezinski’s projects in Nicaragua and Afghanistan was the trafficking of narcotics. Heroin poppy fields sprouted up across Afghanistan, and cocaine was processed through Central America. It is widely proven that U.S. intelligence was involved in securing their allies’ ability to participate in the drug trade in order to generate additional funding, and further destabilize Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
Brzezinski’s continuing impact on Central America and Afghanistan is by no means small. Though poppy fields were suppressed by the Taliban during the 1990s, since the 2002 U.S. invasion, Afghanistan has become the heroin capital of the world. U.S.-aligned countries in Latin America such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras remain plagued by the “narcos” and violence surrounding the drug trade, carried out almost exclusively with U.S.-made or -imported weapons. Further, Flounders noted, “In the past 35 years these divide and rule tactics have created millions of refugees in Central and Western Asia and North Africa.”
Beyond Latin America and Central Asia, Brzezinski advised the CIA and its National Endowment for Democracy as it went to work in Eastern Europe, courting alienated youth. The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983, as Gerald Sussman of Portland State University explained in his study of the organization: “Unlike the CIA, NED’s extensive operations abroad create opportunities for political operatives who need not assume underground lives and identities.” The NED functions as a private entity, though its actions are completely directed by the CIA, and it works to promote the economic interests of U.S. corporations.
Under Brzezinski’s direction, young artists and writers who criticized the socialist Warsaw Pact governments were funded and promoted, escalating alienation as part of a process that eventually culminated in bringing down governments. The result was economic ruin in most of Eastern Europe, as somewhat stable Marxist-Leninist regimes were replaced by the rule of organized crime, and the rise of drugs and sex trafficking under new pro-Western regimes. Under the control of Western banking institutions, the standard of living rapidly dropped throughout Eastern Europe during the 1990s.
The instability and extreme poverty resulting from Brzezinski’s policies does not end with the destruction of the targeted “rogue state.” It continues indefinitely, ensuring that no stable source of opposition to Western economic dominance can emerge.
Brzezinskism in the 21st Century?
Brzezinski’s tactic of heavily funding and arming anti-government forces and then promoting them in international media with rhetoric about “human rights” is now a permanent staple of U.S. foreign policy. Governments that dare maintain economic and political independence from the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund are routinely targeted by U.S.-directed “human rights organizations” and NGOs, such as Freedom House Inc. and the Albert Einstein Institute, among others. While labor unions in the U.S. grow weaker and face less legal protections, funding from the U.S. props up anti-government labor unions in defiant regimes across the world.
As has been extensively documented by WikiLeaks, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars on funding anti-government fighters in Syria, as have the U.S.-aligned regimes in the region. Religious extremists from as far away as Malaysia have found their way to Syria and joined the anti-government killing spree. The result is a global refugee crisis and humanitarian disaster that has left over 250,000 dead, as money and weapons continue to flow over the Turkish and Jordanian borders.
Libya is in a state of ruin since the U.S. and NATO bombed the country in the name of supporting a U.S.-funded and armed group of “revolutionaries.” It has been revealed that U.S. intelligence forces have been working with Jundallah terrorists to destabilize Iran, in addition to the existing relationship between U.S. officials and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran. (Also known as the MEK in its Persian acronym, it was recently delisted by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.)
Like the Russian President, Cuban President Raul Castro touched on Brzezinskism in his U.N. remarks, saying:
“The militarization of cyberspace, and the covert and illegal use of information and communications technologies to attack other states is unacceptable, as likewise is the distortion of the advancement and protection of human rights used with a selective and discriminatory approach to justify and impose political decisions.”
He was likely referring to the recently exposed U.S.-funded plot to create a Cuban version of Twitter to coordinate anti-government protests.
During his recent visit to the U.S., Chinese President Xi Jinping defended China’s new laws restricting the activities of foreign-backed NGOs, saying: “So long as their activities are beneficial to the Chinese people, we will not restrict or prohibit their operations… On their part, foreign NGOs in China need to obey Chinese law and carry out activities in accordance with the law.”
In his U.N. remarks, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro channeled his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, by offering bold condemnation of U.S. regime change:
“Is Libya a more stable country economically, socially? Is it a united country? Is it a country? Is it a country at peace? And who will pay for the crimes in Libya, and Iraq and Afghanistan? Who will acknowledge them? And Syria? It seems one of those horror films made in Hollywood. A policy of terror, a horror movie: the terrors of war.”
President George W. Bush’s unilateral direct military attack on Iraq in 2003 was wildly unpopular throughout the world. Within the ruling circles of the U.S. many clearly hoped that a shift back to Brzezinski-style “soft coups” under a commander-in-chief named “Barack Hussein Obama” could restore credibility to the U.S. However, aside from Western Europe, the world seems to be equally outraged by these policies. As the Obama presidency draws to a close, Brzezinskism, like Bushism, is now loathed by people across the planet.
In his address to the U.N., Maduro went on to express what millions of people around the world are feeling:
“No one in this world has the right, by the Charter of the United Nations or by any right, to judge, prejudge the political regime of another country or to pretend to overthrow the regime of any government or system in the world. No one is entitled to that.”
Is an American journalist and political analyst. Tasnim News Agency described him as "a native of Ohio who has campaigned against war and the U.S. financial system." His political activism began while attending Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. In 2010, he video recorded a confrontation between Collinwood High School students who walked out to protest teacher layoffs and the police. His video footage resulted in one of the students being acquitted in juvenile court. He was a figure within the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. Maupin writes on American foreign policy and other social issues. Maupin is featured as a Distinguished Collaborator with The Greanville Post. READ MORE ABOUT CALEB MAUPIN HERE.
ADDENDUM BY FAIR (Fairness in Reporting)
Biased Afghan Coverage at CBS
Print Media Protect Rather
[dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite mainstream journalists’ claim of strict objectivity in covering the news, they make exceptions: Some stories are covered without even the pretense of neutrality. Dan Rather and CBS News, for example, adopted a cause throughout the 1980s–that of the Afghan mujahedeen. Sloppiness in the advocacy of that cause created a recent scandal for the network.
Rather: Showing his imperialist propaganda slip, par for the course among most US “professional journalists.”
Beginning September 27, a series of articles by Janet Wilson in the New York Post charged that Dan Rather’s CBS newscasts had repeatedly “aired fake battle footage and false news accounts” of the Afghan War. Among the charges:
Fakery: CBS presented staged “action-packed commando” footage in which Afghan mujahedeen performed as actors in sequences purporting to show rebel advances, such as blowing up electric lines leading to Kabul. Scenes of mujahedeen stalking enemy positions and blowing up a mine were acted out and filmed in the safety of a Pakistani training camp. A Pakistani Air Force jet on a training mission was presented as “a Soviet jet bombing Afghan villages.”
Invention: CBS News aired a segment in 1987 showing a bomb made to look like a toy allegedly planted by Soviet soldiers to injure Afghan children. The Post cited an unnamed BBC producer claiming the bomb-toy had been created for the CBS cameraman.
Distortion: On August 11, 1987, Dan Rather presented combat footage purporting to show what he described as “the biggest one-day defeat for Soviet forces since World War II,” killing 800 Soviet troops. In reality, the battle was small and didn’t involve Soviet forces.
The Post articles centered around Mike Hoover, a freelance cameraman responsible for much of CBS’s suspect footage. Hoover, a self-proclaimed mujahedeen partisan, saw himself more as a filmmaker than a neutral newsman (L.A. Times, 7/29/87). According to the Post, Hoover orchestrated war scenes and encouraged mujahedeen to exaggerate their victories. The Post found no evidence that CBS News knowingly aired false or fake news.
In 2003, during the ramp-up to war with Iraq, and in the jingoist fervor after 9/11, Rather was proud “to report for duty”, pledging total allegiance to the Pentagon’s actions on several late night talk shows. So much for the standards of impartiality, elementary professionalism or even simple decency of the mainstream media.
FAIR, which had long criticized CBS Afghan coverage, issued a statement attributing CBS‘s sloppy reporting (which consistently overstated rebel strength) to the network’s pro-mujahedeen sympathies: “CBS coverage often resembled partisan war propaganda more than reporting. Rather’s role appeared to be more that of a cheerleader than a journalist. Issues behind the conflict (such as Islamic fundamentalism and the role of women) were secondary to the ‘shoot-em-up’ war footage. Was CBS so hungry for footage of mujahedeen battle successes that it failed to closely scrutinize it? Did CBS make itself a tool of the guerrillas’ propaganda?”
Given the brutality of the Soviet occupation, it’s understandable that journalists might sympathize with those resisting occupation. But the TV networks profess to be neutral. FAIR questioned how long journalists would last at CBS–whether cameraman or anchor–if their coverage tilted towards insurgencies opposed by U.S. policy: the PLO, the FMLN in El Salvador, or even South Africa‘s ANC guerrillas. Of all the guerrilla movements in the world, it’s not surprising that the CBS anchorman became “obsessed” only with one receiving the unwaivering support of the U.S. government. “Afghanistan was Rather’s obsession,” remarked Richard Cohen, a former senior foreign news producer at CBS. (A Congressional Research Service report found CBS devoted far more coverage to Afghanistan than the other networks: 1986–CBS 55.2 minutes, NBC 28.8, ABC 19.7).
In covering the “CBS Afghaniscam” story, most TV beat reporters treated CBS reverentially, avoided obvious issues of bias and partisanship, and focused instead on narrow issues like Mike Hoover’s ethics or whether TV networks can trust freelance cameramen overseas. Few asked whether Rather’s pro-mujahedeen bias gave a green light to Hoover and others in the field, and caused a suspension of journalistic skepticism when the footage arrived.
Most reporters did little digging of their own, content to play it as a “New York Post Alleges/CBS Denies It” story. Several dailies, most notably the New York Times, layered teflon on CBS by repeatedly publishing the substanceless denials of unnamed network employees during the week CBS was supposedly not commenting on the matter. One of the Times‘ CBS sources (9/29/89) linked the charges to a Soviet “disinformation campaign” against Rather.
Initially, unnamed CBS executives had promised the Times (9/29/89) and other journalists a “point by point” refutation of the Post charges as soon as their investigation was completed. Instead, CBS ended up issuing nothing more than a bland 87-word statement affirming the “integrity” of its coverage of “that distant war back then.” It admitted only the “unintentional use of a misidentified aircraft”–the Pakistani training jet standing in for a Soviet bombing jet. CBS made Mike Hoover available to reporters to deny some of the charges of staging, but most specifics–like the alleged toy-bomb and the misreporting of the “biggest one-day” Soviet defeat–were never addressed at all. Case closed.
When FAIR asked CBS spokesman Tom Goodman what had happened to the point-by-point refutation, he denied that such was ever promised, implying that the Times and other reporters had invented or misreported the promise. CBS‘s cover-up was made possible by the lack of follow-up by the same reporters who’d relied on unnamed CBS sources in the first place. Curious reporters would be pursuing the following areas:
CBS Knowledge of Hoover’s Dubious Reliability: After the 1985 article in Outside magazine discussed Hoover’s faking of scenes in adventure films, then-CBS News President Ed Joyce and Dan Rather exchanged memos about the cameraman, with Rather vouching for Hoover’s integrity. The memos were published by columnist Frank Swertlow in the L.A. Daily News (9/29/89). Swertlow reported (10/2/89) that a rival TV network refused to hire Hoover after he admitted staging Afghan battle footage. In 1987, CBS was notified that it had aired a Hoover story containing footage shot by an Afghan rebel as part of a USIA-sponsored project at Boston University. It’s illegal to air USIA footage in the U.S. (BU Daily Free Press, 9/30/87; Boston Globe, 10/30/87).
Pattern of Inflating Mujahedeen: When Rather inflated a small battle into “the biggest one-day defeat for Soviet forces since World War II” (8/11/87), Boston University Communications dean Joachim Maitre, a militant pro-mujahedeen partisan, pointed out that the skirmish didn’t even involve Soviet troops. Asked how CBS could have made such an error, Maitre told Extra!: “Perhaps wishful thinking was determining their interpretation.” The pattern continued post-Hoover with the 4-part series, “Afghanistan: The Soviet Failure” (CBS Evening News, 12/5-8/88), which suggested, as Rather put it, that it was “the beginning of the end” for the Kabul government.
Partisans With Cameras: Hoover was not the only partisan covering Afghanistan on retainer for CBS. Another was cameraman/journalist/right-wing activist Kurt Lohbeck, who when not dispatching stories to CBS, was testifying (2/25/85) before Congress, using his video footage to plead for more military aid to the “freedom fighters.” He set up news conferences for the mujahedeen leaders and introduced them to members of Congress. A declassified 1986 State Department memo orchestrating media appearances for an Afghan rebel leader visiting the U.S. referred to Lohbeck as “CBS Afghanistan specialist” and to Hoover as the person “who will contact Dan Rather.” A Wall Street Journal article by Mary Williams Walsh casting a critical eye on CBS reliance on Lohbeck and Hoover was squashed by Journal editors.
One CBS report now called into question is the documentary “The Battle for Afghanistan” (7/29/87), narrated by Dan Rather. CBS listed Mike Hoover as the “director/cinematographer.” TV critics were almost unanimous in marveling at the documentary’s “spectacular,” “unreal,” “movie-like” combat footage, while complaining about the fuzziness of the narration. Arthur Unger drew this conclusion for the Christian Science Monitor:
Most of the leftists who had protested the Vietnam War in the U.S. and Europe were attracted to the romantic Che Guevara-esque image of “holy warriors” in the Afghan mountains. Meanwhile, the minority of radicals who denounced the mujahedeen were labelled “Stalinists” and “Soviet apologists.” With the excuse of “Soviet aggression in Afghanistan,” Carter was able to reinstate draft registration for young men across the U.S., boycott the 1980 Olympic Games, and increase military spending.
Caleb, I posted your first articles to Opednews, and knew you were going somewhere. Did your debate hapen while I was away? Now, more than ever “‘Truth'” matters, and I think we’re working up to something across the progressive spectrum.
I ran up against Zbig nearly every day when I was briefly a speech writer for the Assistant Secretary for International Affairs (see Fulbright program), and literally watched him eat Carter’s pick for Russian specialist alive. A lot of people are going to feel a lot better going forward.