I’ve found, when in conflict, it can be helpful to consider things from the other point of view. This works best if you can, using imagination, immerse yourself in your opponent’s perspective.

For example:

I am a terrorist. I live in the desert and I hate America.
I am well financed and sophisticated. I watch TV.
In the half-decade since 911, I have been obsessing about ways to attack America. But, despite my sophistication, I have failed to notice that America’s southern border is an enormous, and completely open....

...desert.

Our government assures us that, by spending massive amounts of money, and furiously whittling away at The Constitution, they have successfully prevented terrorists from entering the United States.

Our government also assures us that, despite spending massive amounts of money, and furiously whittling away at The Constitution, they cannot prevent millions of starving immigrants, and countless tons of illegal drugs, from entering the United States.

So, we have succeeded in keeping out terrorists, but have failed in keeping out immigrants and illegal drugs. It seems to me, that well financed and sophisticated terrorist groups could manage to land anywhere in Central or South America, disguise their weapons as a load of marijuana, and then waltz across the border anytime they wished.

This apparent contradiction is the result of differing needs from the two main power structures governing The United States. The political and the bureaucratic.

The political power structure is elected, and terms are limited. They must curry enough favor with the citizenry to get re-elected. They want to appear as powerful and competent as possible and one hundred percent effectiveness is always desired. The perception of completely solving a problem is a big feather in their caps (and helps insure continued Power for their Party).

Therefore, they have succeeded in keeping out terrorists.

The bureaucratic power structure is not elected. In order to insure long and fruitful careers, bureaucratic agencies must show themselves to be needed. Complete success means looking for another job and so, one hundred percent effectiveness is not desired

Therefore, immigrants and illegal drugs continue to flow into the United States.

So, we can keep out sophisticated and well financed terrorists, but we cannot keep out homeless and starving Mexicans, and countless tons of illegal drugs.

Interesting, huh?

Due to the obvious presence of illegal immigrants and illegal drugs in our country, I’m going to have to believe the bureaucrats on this one.

The War on Terror is purely political. The enemy does not exist.

I realize the money is gone forever, but could I have my rights back now?

Please?

Peace,
Bob Bennett
Lick Skillet, Alabama

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself”
Responding to Comment #61858 by Sosodomite
I think there may be an angle relating to fear that is being over looked. A great deal has been written and implied about the role of fear since 911. But a curious reader has to search the back shelves of internet offerings to begin to understand the substance of Roosevelt’s visionary statement. Many years ago I had the opportunity to attend a lecture that Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying” and “On Grief and Grieving” gave at Cornell University. After 911, I searched and searched the internet for information on dealing with mass hysteria. I assumed there must be some analysis of how people deal with fear that was analogous to the stages Kubler-Ross identified for dealing with death and grieving. I had no luck.

It wasn’t until I accidentally came across a 2002 article on fear in Discover Magazine at my local grocery store that I learned about the role the amygdala, an almond shaped gland in the brain, plays regarding how we react to perceived threats. I’ve added “Amygdala” to my Google Alerts. Since 2001, especially due to the much wider availability and use of fMRI scanners, the available information on the influence of the amygdala has increased significantly. Much of it is academic and much of it is not directly related to mass hysteria. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that the behavior of many people continues to be controlled, and I mean controlled, by the way their amygdala reflexively imprinted their memories.I am persuaded that the fear reaction is not cognitively chosen, but as the Discover Article and other material indicates an instinctive happening beyond one’s control. It also appears that desensitizing a behavioral response to fear is not at this time a simple task. I have no way of knowing whether all, some or no fear mongers actually understand the impact of what they are doing, are intentionally manipulating the population as the ubiquitous Goebbel’s quote implies, or simply miserable fearfulness in search of company. If any of you are interested in the fear resonse, I suggest spending a little time learning about the amygdala. You may also learn something about yourself.

Here are two YouTube examples. One for the flight response and the other for the fight response. Note both responses are faster than cognitive thought.

Flight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coOCZcwKt-M

Fight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp4g8mIKHfo&mode=re lated&search;=

It is a giant leap for Zbig to hop from ‘democracy is not compatable with empire so the American People must be convinced by whatever means’ (yes, I am paraphrasing from one of his tomes) to a Zbig that is ranting about the improper use of terror to distort America and her Peoples and be a detriment to Democracy!

Sounds like he is now employed by the same folks that brought us the Iraq Study Group.

Sounds like the neo cons and the old guard butting heads...again.

Fear is eradicated by knowledge and information, precisely what the Bush administration seeks to limit. They select the language and the topic. They never factored in the Web. We progressives own the Web and will pamphlet our way to “total information awareness”. Real fear is waking up as George Bush or Dick Cheney, not knowing if that was a car backfiring or the last sound you will ever hear.

#60851 by Stig Nilsson
You ask: “..or is it too late?”

It may not be too late, but in my mind, I envision us walking along a precipice; one more misstep and we go over the edge, beyond salvation.

Yet, here and there, courageous, far sighted people are taking small steps: moving towards neutralizing the Electoral College, whistle blowing in the Justice Dept., speaking out eloquently as you do ....

Ziggy finally realized the cold war is over. And its replacement has fumbled into a far hotter region. It’s a little late for backpedaling- but better late than never.

The coming war with the worlds muslims, all one billion of them, will be won by the slow strangulation of the US from its lifeblood- oil.

When the economy collapses from the scarcity of oil, the war will be fought here- among ourselves.

The Democrats have undermined America, they have acted in an unconstitutional manner that is, to me, PATHETIC!

If your afraid now, just you wait...if we SURRENDER, our situation is going to be a nightmare that WILL NOT go away!

Readers of the above feature should be interested reading this amazing report or essay, not published but leaked in 1967, a product of the Kennedy era.
The author identity was and is still the object of controversy.
The report can be downloaded from Internet and to facilitate your search, I have reproduced down, the table of content.

The Report From Iron Mountain
A Satirical Indictment of RANDthink
by Leonard Lewin

“The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers.”
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section 1: Scope of the Study
Section 2: Disarmament and the Economy
Section 3: Disarmament Scenarios
Section 4: War and Peace as Social Systems
Section 5: The Functions of War
Section 6: Substitutes for the Functions of War
Section 7: Summary and Conclusions
Section 8: Recommendations
Footnote Section
Leonard Lewin’s self-review

If ...If Zbig has changed his stripes, I’m happy for him and for us since he gets face time on TV as a “credible” foreign policy expert. Before I welcome him with open arms, I’d be more comfortable if one of his books would describe how and when he changed from being a champion of Empire to a spokesperson for the post colonial and Empire eras. How many Iraqi’s had died before his epiphany? When did he learn that Super Power Goliath’s could be brought down by any David/Lilliputian whose dignity Zbig now respects with a minimum investment? When did he return to the Golden Rule from the 1% Solution of Cheney? I’ve been too disappointed by claims of “born again”, so I’m just suggesting before we climb on Zbig’s band wagon, we wait and watch to see whether he is serious or just a new student of Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work”, involved in political priming for a last hurrah appointment post November, 2008.

The poster calling him/herself “a voice from the wilderness” is correct.  Those who criticize Zbignew for changing his views should consider John Maynard Keynes’ response to a critic who ravaged him for reversing a position.

Said Keynes, “I admit that when I encounter new information, I change my mind.  What, may I ask, do you do with it?”

10 years ago when i bought my house,my street was occupied mostly by white rednecks. several of the rednecks still live here. i keep saying rednecks for a reason. the street has changed. we now have non english speaking people living in 9 of 14 houses. at least 4 of the families are moslems,you can kind of tell by the clothes the women wear. the children attend public schools and all speak english,even though the parents do not. as near as i can tell everyone in the neighborhood gets along very well. i don’t get any feel of fear where i live.

Just one question for those of you who slam Zbig’s change of heart ...

Would you rather have someone who’s willing to change their views with the benefit of history, or one who stubbornly stays the course, regardless of the realities on the ground?

http://www.JimmyCarterForPresident.com

This is my first web site; it’s clunky and not well organized yet, but I’m getting there.

I realized he’s 82. But he’s the only one I trust.

We are heading towards 16 years of a moral vacuum in the White House.  Even many of President Carter’s critics acknowledge his legendary honesty and morality.

He would tell us the truth about what’s going on, but nobody can fix it.  Only The People can do that, and Jimmy Carter could show us the way.

Bless you, Mr. Brzezinski.

Peace,
Bob Bennett
Lick Skillet, AL

Of course it was planned. The definition of terrorist is so vague in the so called “patriot act” that a kid shooting a stop sign with a BB gun is a terrorist.  Call on Congress to repeal this horrible act which robs Americans of Freedom and makes us less safe from actual dangers.
The war On Drugs was the blueprint for the War On Terror. It is a policy based on have truths and lies,allows the government to jail and investigate anyone ,it makes large sums of cash for those in the government and enables banks to get rich through money laundering, it cannot be won because it was never ment to end and it gives politicians an enemy to demonize so the public will be distracted from finding out the outright corruption of government . It also allows large corperations to collude with the government in robbing the American people and have the duped American public to support there own demise.
It is no accident that the original neo-con Nixon, followed by Reagun started the war on drugs.  Follow the money and the power.
Both of these so called wars are counterproductive and bad for the health of the American Nation.

i applaud zbig for speaking out and sounding like a loyal dissenter. I appreciate his support for president carters book and his critique of the israeli lobby aipac, he has also defended the president against the american jewish community as they have attacked him with anti semitic howls for his book on israels treatment of the palestinians. It does appear that zbig tells it with some clarity and is not succeptible to the intimidation that normally causes others to cower and not speak up. the war on terrorism is a war on our rights and priviledges here in america.

Well, Zbig… It was your idea in the first place (your book-"the Grand Chessboard") to have a Pearl Harbor-like event to catalyze the population into getting behind an invasion of the Middle East to control the remaining oil reserves.  You probably had a hand in 9/11 as well.  But your plan hasn’t gone too well now has it… Your belated concerns are disingenuous and pathetic.  What a jerk.

Zbig post epiphany is a pleasure to watch and read. I sometimes find myself wondering whether this is the same Zbig who dismissed the unintended consequences of our support of the muhajedin and Talaban in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation since he believes it lead to the fall of the Soviet Union. An those who read his book “Chessboard” might find little difference between his vision of controlling the center of the chessboard (Central Asia) and that of the Neocons.
I for one certainly prefer the current Zbig.

Today’s “terrorists” want REVENGE, RENOWN AND REACTION - which is exactly what what we gave them and are continuing to give them.  So, just exactly who is winning the “war” so far?

This is a very accurate commentary. If the current state of affairs was precipitated by mere incompetence, I would not worry so much. I believe, however, that the entire ‘culture of fear’, along with the propaganda of the the so-called ‘war on terror’, has been conciously planned and implemented by a relatively small group of political opportunists. The bottom line is who profits from this manufactured war without end? Follow the money trail, and pull the plug on this farse, and the blatant manipulation of the American people will finally end.

Mr. Brzezinski, all you point out is so.  While I feel is is long overdue somebody respected in the media comments it is rather odd how 3 not 2 gov. buildings sank into their foundations 9/11.  It is odd, quite odd, and building #7 was not struck by airplane, had no “faulty engineering,” and sank the same.  Do we speak of reality, or live fear ridden till somebody can manage their takeover.

This administration’s “War on Terror” has turned the land of the free and the home of the brave into a county chained to its fear, and our current president holds all the keys.  After all that has ensued, I have decided to speak out more, to let my congressmen know my opinions, to be unafraid of “what if.” I do not want to live behind walls and suspect evey member of another nationality.  I want to be brave, and thus, only die but once.

How can you make war on hate? The hate that drives most so called terrorists. Well let’s just strike that word terrorist. How about pissed off human being. I can look into bush and chenneys distorted mentalities and see why they are so afraid, and even the desire to exterminate the people who hate them. However if they had any common sense they would realize that every time one of their bombs destroys the lives of the actual ones who cease to become human beings and instantaneously become fragments of red meat hung on to the rubble that was once their homes. There are left the reminisce of the families, brothers, sisters, grandmothers, perhaps even children, although children usually don’t fair to well when a bomb goes off in their home. These people will spend the rest of their lives hating mainly bush, and also the military and politicians of this country. But not the people of this country, because it is common knowledge throughout the world that the majority of the people in this country detest bush and his evil war. So this is why Bush is so very frightened, I would be to if I had the majority of the people in the world hating me like he does.
Hate is also infectious, the people who share their roll as the expendable lower classes as seen through the eyes of people like bush, and see their brothers and sisters disrespected, tortured, denied the basic rights that any real human being is guaranteed, killed and raped and generally treated worse than animals, also become pissed off human beings who will spend the rest of their lives too with only the destruction of the ones responsible on their minds.
And this hate only intensifies.
This is why I cringe every time I hear the phrase “ Win the war on terror.” This is why bush will never win this war, if it must be called a war. I would prefer it not be called a war at all, this thing that is going on in Iraq Is a manifestation of all that is wrong with humanity in general, all rolled up in a bloody package.
The thinking people of this country are not afraid. Partly because we know that life in general is a precarious path, and have prepared ourselves for that and yes of course the “scary terrorists.” Well we know that they are simply our fellow human beings, and we also know that their hate at least is not driven by greed.

Zbig shows us what a reasoned, well thought out, response to 9/11 should have been, rather than the exploitation of that tragedy in an attempt to further the neocon agenda that we have seen. How many years will it take to undo the damage that the incompetents have done? Zbig, we miss your wisdom.

Unlike Americans, Iraqis have an experiential knowledge of history. They have been invaded and occupied dozens, if not hundreds of times, in the past two or three thousand years. Like the Viet-namese, they have no qualms about fighting a hundred year war against any occupier. Our timelines mean nothing to the Iraqis. They are fighting for their homeland and their beliefs. The longer we are there, the more we confirm the beliefs of the Jihadists who see us as just another infidel invader/colonizer. No matter how long we stay, we will always be foreigners. And the longer we stay, the more passionately the Iraqi people will hate us - and there will be more of them. And they won’t just be Iraqis.

There will be no decisive battles in Iraq. There will be no D-day, no Lexington, no V-day. We will just have more piddling wearing down. There will be no clear cut victory - for Iraq or us.

It would be easy to make the argument that the Soviet Union collapsed because of its sustained involvement in Afghanistan. Perhaps the question is “How long will we stay in Iraq?” The answer depends on how foolish and ignorant we are determined to be. Are we willing to bleed our economy and our national morale for, well, I don’t know what. The rhetoric about the “war on terror” sounds emptier and more Orwellian by the day. We are looking more and more like the vacuous imperialists of the not so distant past. Is there anything more unAmerican than that?

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” Douglas Adams

As smart and sobering as Zbig’s essay was, I sometimes wonder if it isn’t already too late. It seems as if America has turned a corner and begun its way down a path to--not “self-destruction” as Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson, and others think we have--but a path to incurable self-absorption.

We no longer seem capable of looking at the world through the eyes of the world, but only through our own eyes.  And our own eyes sparkle with our own interests, which in turn, are manufactured by corporate fascists, political zealots and military-industrial snake oil salesmen.

Other than that, things seem to be improving.

The National Paranoia
Mr. Brzezinski is giving me and other people of the 4:th world a reason to hope for a better tomorrow. We in our world that has no boundaries and is populated by the kind and considerate people will be happy to grant Mr. Brzezinski his informal citizenship expeditiously.
Who ever planned the 9/11 incident must be pleasantly surprised over the outcome… It released “The National Paranoia” which has caused the death of thousands of young men and women, sent the economy of the country down +3trillions in the red and made it’s inhabitants loose most of their civil rights. It has also created a gigantic new profession of “security inspectors” that are growing in numbers everyday. In a near future if this mental condition is deepening we will make everybody suspects and start reporting on each other….
To be kind and considerate in resent history would have meant that the people who suffered in the Nazi Concentration Camps would be given aid and comfort… but not on the expense of the Palestinians. 
The lesson is:” Be sure that it really is your land before you give it away”

It is my firm believe that the Israel/Palestinian conflict is the root cause of today’s horrible situation in the world.
It has forced a spiral of violence in the Middle East with Israelis and USA on one side and Palestinians and most of the Arab world on the other…. And its getting worse by the day because more force creates more counter force as it’s the law of nature. 

For the men and women in power who has loved to escalate violence until now please stop and consider what have been achieved ……
Why not be honest and admit past mistakes and try kindness for a change… or is it too late?

Of course Dr B is brilliantly correct so far as he goes. But the situation demands an analysis of the actual trivial economic damage and a minuscule number of deaths (3k) occurring on 9/11. In contrast, some 15K people are murdered in the USA every year. And some 50k are killed in traffic accidents annually.
From such puny harm, our society was set on its ear and we are suffering the profound sorrow of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and maimings. As well as hundreds of billions of precious treasure expended.
But more significantly, who was the evil genius who transformed a tragedy into an enormous catastrophe? Certainly not the brain dead Bush.

He knows the score; is very clear on the growing possibility of another provocation, but if he took the plunge and admitted publicly that 9/11 (as he knows it to be the case) was plotted not “...in distant Afghan caves,” but more likely in war-game rooms at Langley, Chantilly, Arlington or one of Blackwater Security’s offices, O’Reilly, et al would roast him like a Polish sausage and feed him to the rabble.

But Zbiggy’s had his hand in this game longer than the 911 coup plotters and his NWO ties are probably richer than theirs. He’s now working on the less-than-strangelove side of the schism trying to rein in the madmen without blowing the coverup, triggering the biggest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and precipitating a global financial meltdown. But, it’s getting harder by the day to keep the 911 genii in the bottle and eventually limited hangouts like this will be broadly acknowledged for what they are.

Like I really need input from somebody selected by the worst president in modern American history, maybe all of American history.  If ZB had his shit together, he would’ve gotten another gig after the peanut farmer.  No such luck.

Brzezinski is obviously correct that creating fear of terror seems to have been a main goal of the Bush-Cheney administration, the neocons and war profiteers.

The main question might be to ask if this was an honestly mistaken approach to take—or was it part of a well-thought-out plan to facilitate multiple agendas ... some overt and some covert.

Americans seem to be in danger from enemies foreign and domestic ... including from within places of power in our own society. For more on this, see:

‘Mistakes’ or ‘plans’ in Iraq, War on Terror?

By Steve Hammons
Columnist, PopulistAmerica.com
Populist Party of America
February 12, 2007

http://www.populistamerica.com/mistakes_or_plans_in_ir aq_war_on_terror

Bravo, Z.B. At leasr someone has intelligence. Z.B. realizes the hysteria is a herding technique by fascists to corall republics and democracies into fascist states.

That last paragraph in the article here could be a cue for some ‘08 presidential aspirant to rise above the all-too-easy and seductive politics of fear and campaign for the kind of rigorous national self-examination that a few people called for on 9/11/01 and for awhile afterwards....until all such voices were drowned-out by the baying hounds of WAR.  What Brzezinski does not address here, except as hidden in his faithful parroting of the official lies about the actual events of 9/11, is the very active and perhaps still growing presence of interests and forces (more than a few based here in the “homeland") who’ve staked everything on the installment and operation of this latest reign of terror disguised (Orwellian fashion) as “The War ON Terror.”

To lament as he does that the long-time rule of fear he himself propagated back in his day has now metasticized into its inevitable terminal configuration seems to this old Indian to be more than a little disingenuous.  Still, maybe it is better late than not at all that another Cold Warrior comes to see that atomic weapons aren’t the only deadly “geniis” uncorked by that also totally contrived confrontation.

And ‘Zbig’ is certainly right in his contention that this “wound” is, like the nuclear one, entirely self-inflicted.  This leaves unanswered, though, the critical question of whether a bunch of domesticated people suffering as well from a number of other serious and auto-administered afflictions can come up with whatever medicine it will take to heal theirselves. 

More and more of the hair of the dog that bit ‘em might make for good theater, but it probably won’t work worth a damn.  Us Indians have something that might.  Come see us if live long enough to realize that.

HokaHey!

Somewhere in the mid-1990s, as I came of age in a political sense, it occurred to me that I’m thankful to be an American, but not particularly proud.  Since the reaction to the events of September 2001, I’m not so sure if I can even be thankful anymore--I’m sure not proud; shameful would be more accurate.  I was indoctrinated throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s as a (public) schoolchild in California to believe in what this nation was supposed to stand for.  I am a very disappointed, betrayed citizen.  Lately it’s been seeming that either I leave my brain behind, or I leave my country behind.  I can’t live without my brain.

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a noble, courageous, patriotic and reasonable American statesman. It is sad that he and president Carter are not anymore at the helm in leading America in these times of crises. Instead we have pathetic bunch of leaders who stole two elections, lied, misled, brainwashed and brought fear and corruption to the land and are responsible for the wasted blood of untold thousands of Americans and Iraqis and billions of dollars in wasted treasure. 

By way of emphasis and summary, I am quoting the following words from this wonderful piece:

““War on terror” did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.”

So for the sake of the good of America and the world, brainwashed Americans should wake up, rebel against the new “slavery of fear” and tell Bush and gang that you suck!