IT’S UNACCEPTABLE

“In order to have an intelligent foreign policy you need an intelligent public,”  

Zbigniew Brzezinski said on CBS This Morning (2-14-12), discussing political strategies in the Middle East.  Brzezinski is a Polish American Political Scientist and served as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, 1977-1981. 

Currently, he is the Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C., and he is also a counselor and trustee of the Center For Strategic & International Studies or CSIS.  

Brzezinski went on to say that while America is not really losing its power, it is not growing its powers as fast as some other countries are growing, such as China, Russia, Korea, India, and others.  And, for a US President to emphatically state in a national broadcast that a leader has to go, he damn well better have a plan ready to go in order to make that happen or (which is actually my creative license) risk losing a standing ovation from the audience of the world.  The US is ill-equipped to wage another war in Syria or in Iran.

But, what really got me thinking was when Zbigniew explained that saying an action is unacceptable is different from being willing to back up that statement.  And, if the President is willing to back-up an “it’s unacceptable” statement then the US gains respect in the world theater but again, at what cost.

Over the last few years when I have been dealing with the public in my “for profit” education places of employment, I recall most everyone from the Regional Directors to the Campus Director to the faculty to the students all saying, “it’s unacceptable;” in fact, it was stated so often by so many that I became immune to the “threat,” taking it not as a “threat” at all but simply some kind of pseudo intimidation.

BTW,  ZB is also quoted as saying in 2008, that it is easier to kill a million people than to control them.