Control Of Obama: The real power behind the throne-to-be...

Eric Walberg - 7-23-8

It is hard to sort through the hype and heat of Obamania, but one  thing is clear: who's pulling the strings, argues Eric Walberg

As the United States election race enters the final stretch, Barack  Obama as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colours, much to the despair of anyone actually expecting any  change. His recent call to declare Jerusalem the undivided capital  of Israel, his denial of Palestinians' right of return, and his  support for a Bantustan Palestinian "state" which poses no threat to  Israel show how completely he has caved in to the Zionist  establishment on that issue.

As President George W Bush calls for early reductions in combat  troops in Iraq, Obama's position on Iraq - a vow to bring troops  home within 16 months, excepting a "residual force" - looks less and  less of a defining moment in his foreign policy. Whatever happens to  troop levels, there is no explicit talk of overriding the plans for  14 permanent bases.

Obama is toeing the line in Afghanistan, too. As NATO casualties  continue to mount, surpassing monthly Iraqi causalities as of June  this year, he is proposing - now seconded by McCain - that the  United States shift up to 15,000 more troops there from Iraq. Just  prior to his trip to Afghanistan, he wrote in a New York Times Op  Ed, "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence- gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission  there." Please, will someone show me the silver lining in an Obama  victory in November?

But then none of the above should come as any surprise to those  familiar with his chief promoter and foreign policy adviser,  Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, along with current (and likely future)  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has already entered history as  helping "suck the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire". These are the  words of President Jimmy Carter's Under-Secretary of Defense Walter  Slocumbe in March 1979, eight months before the Soviets were  successfully "sucked in", when Gates was CIA chief. The changing of  the guard, come November, will change nothing. US foreign policy has  a logic which transcends who sleeps in the White House.

What's especially ghoulish about all this is that there are five  Brzezinski offspring who are all onboard the Obama wagon: Mark  (director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security  Council under President Bill Clinton, and one of the prime movers of  the 2004 color revolution in Ukraine), Ian (currently the US Deputy  Assistant Secretary of State for European and NATO affairs and a  backer of Kosovan independence, NATO expansion into Ukraine and  Georgia and US ABM missiles in Poland), Mika (political commentator  on MSNBC whose interview with Michele Obama contributed to the  general media Obamania) and finally, Matthew (a friend of Ilyas  Akhmadov, "foreign minister" and US envoy of the Chechen  opposition).

Brzezinski's brand of anti-Russian, anti-Muslim geopolitics will  dominate a future Obama administration. In Second Chance: Three  Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, published last  year, he lays out his New World Order agenda without so much as a  blush. Apparently, there is a global political awakening going on,  the goal of which is "dignity". Not economic development, not the  alleviation of poverty, not national sovereignty against the IMF and  World Bank. Just plain old dignity, though Zbig's brand of dignity  is the kind attained through secession, balkanisation, and the  creation of weak statelets for each ethnic minority subservient to  the US. Think: Kosovo and - if he has his way - Chechenia. Neo- Wilsonian demagogy in the service not of peace but of US world  domination, encirclement of Russia and control of the Arab world.

Zbig said in endorsing Obama: "What makes Obama attractive to me is  that he understands that we live in a very different world where we  have to relate to a variety of cultures and peoples." Obama's  alleged global approach and trans-ethnic, trans-racial allure are  right out of Zbig's university textbook, or rather Second Chance,  which will be the manual for the Obama campaign and presidency.

Obama is literally a second chance for Brzezinski: having destroyed  the Soviet Union and shattered the Warsaw Pact, he now wants to  dismember the Russian Federation itself and put the finishing  touches on Afghanistan as an impregnable US military base against  China, Russia... the list is endless. Perhaps Zbig is dreaming of  restoring Greater Poland circa 1600 - from the Black Sea to the  Baltic, all controlled by petty szlachta aristocrats like... the  Brzezinskis?

The Economist blog put it best: "A new brain for Barack Obama! It's  78 years old and it still works perfectly. It belongs to Zbigniew  Brzezinski, the peppery ex-national security adviser to Jimmy  Carter."

The messianic idealism of the Obama campaign has not been seen since  the days of another Brzezinski creation - Jimmy Carter, who made him  national security adviser with disastrous results. Brzezinski's anti- Russian obsession back in 1976 prompted him to foment the rise of  Islamic fundamentalism, which he touted as the greatest single  bulwark against Soviet communism. Tarpley argues that Brzezinski was  even a prime behind-the-scenes mover in the overthrow of the Shah of  Iran and installing Ayatollah Khomeini in power in Tehran. Brzezinski cared less about the Middle East and its oil than he did  about the need for a centre from which Islamic fundamentalism of the  most retrograde type could penetrate the soft southern underbelly of  the USSR. For Brzezinski, the space between the southern frontier of  the Soviet and the Indian Ocean littoral became an "arc of crisis",  and we have his handiwork to thank for the horrors taking place  there to this day.

The 1980 Carter Doctrine - that the US was determined to dominate  the Persian Gulf - is at the root of the first Gulf War, of the  present Iraq war, and of the possible war on Iran. Brzezinski's  grandiose schemes of world transformation caused a renewal of the  Cold War and gave birth to Al-Qaeda, and without Soviet restraint  the results could easily have been far more tragic than they turned  out to be. By 1980, disillusionment with Carter led to the nightmare  of the Reagan regime. But this was of little concern to Brzezinski -  a mere blip on his radar screen.

In 2008, we have an obscure Illinois senator, a neophyte with no  legislative achievements to speak of, but with a raft of utopian  promises, including solving the race problem once and for all. Recession, unemployment and an alarming rise in poverty are of no  consequence; a golden age is at hand thanks to his magnetic  personality. Since he knows nothing of foreign policy, these matters  will be competently managed by the Brzezinski cabal.

But there seems to be one slight hitch. Despite Obama's slavish pro- Israeli genuflections of late, he is still not trusted by the Jewish  lobby. Quite possibly because they know who the power behind the  throne-to-be is, and they can't stomach him, nor he them. Addressing  the AIPAC crew in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he  said, "They operate not by arguing but by slandering, vilifying,  demonising. They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an  element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt  at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel."

But then Brzezinski was a key player in Carter's 1978 Camp David  Accords, much loathed by the Zionists as giving up Sinai in exchange  for a cold peace with Egypt. Brzezinski is definitely not a hardcore  Zionist, though he's happy to allow the destruction of Palestine. Perhaps he is, under his suave exterior, still the quintessential  Polish anti-Semite, with a vision of the New World Order without  Israel at the centre.

If he can keep up the momentum, however, he may be able to outflank  the Zionists in Washington and bringing his horse first past the  finish line. They are on the defensive these days, what with spy  trials, even J Street Project, a Jewish lobby group that - gasp -  dares to criticise Israel. Is this, then, the silver lining in an  Obama victory?

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Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at  www.geocities.com/walberg2002/