Zbigniew, Where've You Been?

Zbigniew Brzezinski's piece in today's Washington Post is stuff to think about. Z goes to great lengths to point out that the "War on Terror" is primarily a tool designed to augment a culture of fear. Z argues this tool enables ever more questionable activity by the US Government, and it makes the US voters ever more complacent.

In the end, Z argues that the USA's go-it-alone approach to this so-called war has been at the core of the greatest current national security threat. Z is spot on - more so than than most Americans will ever know, since most of them rarely or never leave the USA, and most of them limit their information sources to US-based media. That US voters would want to know so little about the perceived (foreign) sources of the ubiquitous terror threat is amazing, but apparently quite true. So a good piece, thanks Z.

Where he loses me is at the end, where Z urges that America stop the hysteria and paranoia and instead be true to its traditions. Has Z been living in the US during much of the last 40 years? (Think USSR, China, East Germany, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Kuwait, Afghanistan again (for different reasons), Iraq and Iraq, Iran again (for different reasons), Korea again (for different reasons), Venezuela, etc. - and that list is just off the top of my head at midnight.) Because only a lengthy absence from the country - or a dogged limitation of information sources to the US media - could enable a thinking person to put both of these urgings into the same paragraph and miss the irony. There may be more work to do than Z realizes.