Zbigniew Zblows Smoke at Joe Scarborough

I got a little carried away commenting on another blog, so to justify the research time I’m repurposing the comment here. 🙂

At Politics After 50 (having been born in 1958 I think this is a great blog title), the author had this to say about the video clip embedded below:

I know this is old news, and I only just now watched this video to get the pleasure of seeing Joe Scarborough put in his fluffy, airhead, GOP-talking-point-parrot place by Zbigniew Brzezinski. But when I finally watched it, I learned something about the problems between Israel and Palestine from Brzezinski, so I thought I’d post this for anyone who hasn’t had a chance to watch it yet.

We may be about the same age, but clearly the anonymous blogger approaches politics from the opposite side. But I always want to have my assumptions challenged, and he had piqued my interest. So I watched the clip, which is embedded below.

If you’re interested but don’t care to spend 9 minutes watching, jump ahead to about 6:30. Or, just read the comment I posted on his blog:

Funny, after watching the clip it looks to me like Zbigniew Brzezinski was put in his failed-advisor-to-a-dithering-President-Carter place by Joe Scarborough.

The part of the clip where Zbig lowers the tone of the discussion by saying Joe’s understanding is “stunningly superficial” begins at about 6:30 into the interview. The statement by Joe that triggers Zbig’s childish outburst was this: “Let’s go back to 2000, Dr. Brzezinski. You and I both know Bill Clinton gave Arafat and the Palestinians everything…”

I wonder, would Zbig say Clinton’s understanding was “stunningly superficial”? Because here’s how Clinton described it:

[Bill Clinton said:] “The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism.”

Here’s another Clinton assessment:

President Clinton, and others who participated, put the blame for the failure of hte talks squarely on Arafat and the Palestinian negotiators. In 2001, Clinton told guests at a party at the Manhattan apartment of former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke that Arafat called to bid him farewell three days before he left office. “You are a great man,” Arafat said. “The hell I am,” Clinton said he responded. “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”

Sounds to me like Joe Scarborough had it exactly right.

5 thoughts on “Zbigniew Zblows Smoke at Joe Scarborough

  1. i have no words to describe Dr. Brzezinski’s total disregard for the facts.. even stunningly superficial doesn’t quite measure up. Obviously people believe what they want to believe even in the face of black and white facts! thanks for posting this link.. glad to have found your blog..

  2. Myra, I’m glad you found my blog, too — thanks for the comment and the support.

    gengen, thanks so much, it worked like a charm, I’ve got the Recent Comments in my nav column now. Here’s a little glitch — the five comments showing currently include one comment that I deleted as inappropriate (not to mention illiterate). If I click that comment, it takes me to the post where the comment used to be, but the comment itself is gone. Is there a way to delete the comment from the feed? It doesn’t seem to be possible from within the Blogger gadget.

    Your blog has lots of great blogging tips, I’ve bookmarked it.

  3. Scarborough is a “GOP-talking-point-parrot”? Wow, never thought I’d hear that.

    Zbigniew aside (the role he claims to have played in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could fill a few blogs), my impression of Clinton’s offer to Arafat was that it was either disastrously naive or a brilliant bluff. Either Clinton (and Albright) believed they could achieve peace by giving the Palestinians what they claimed they wanted, or Clinton (and Albright) knew what the Palestinians really wanted was the complete destruction of Israel, and offered to meet their claimed demands in order to call their bluff and prove that Arafat was nothing more than a terrorist thug.

    Now I can give Clinton the credit for being shrewd and clever enough for the latter plan, but Albright? No.

    Still, Arafat was nothing more than a terrorist thug, and any Palestinian group that follows in his path while publicly claiming to want anything less than the complete destruction of Israel has earned the doubt of the world’s leaders. Let’s hope the world’s leaders hold up their end.

  4. chris, I lean toward the “brilliant” explanation, although I don’t think “bluff” is quite the right word.

    As the Father of Modern Terrorism, Arafat has a lot to answer for. But in the words of Moshe Dayan (not a bleeding heart or a squish), “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” If the Israelis are ever able to achieve some semblance of peace in their own country, it will involve negotiations with Palestinians who have the blood of innocents on their hands.

    I’m not trying to imply Arafat should get a Nobel Peace Prize or anything (unfortunately, that ship has sailed, to the unerasable shame of the Nobel committee). But I think Arafat, after Clinton’s Camp David accord, had an opportunity go down in history as more than “just” a terrorist thug. I think it was squandered in part because Arafat could not control the hard-liners (or harder-liners) on his own side.

Leave a Reply to gengen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *