Brzezinski to US: Stop following Israel like a stupid mule

By Kevin Barrett

Leading US strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, unofficial dean of the realist school of American foreign policy experts, has drawn an unflattering picture of US-Israel relations.

In a speech to the National Iranian American Council, Brzezinski said, “I don’t think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. If they decide to start a war, simply on the assumption that we’ll automatically be drawn into it, I think it is the obligation of friendship to say, ‘you’re not going to be making national decision for us.’ I think that the United States has the right to have its own national security policy.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski

By denying any US "obligation" to "follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do," Brzezinski accurately implied that this is exactly what the US has been doing up until now. And by plaintively opining that "the United States has the right to have its own national security policy," the former National Security Adviser underlined the fact that since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, who secretly went to war with Ben Gurion in a doomed effort to abort the Israeli nuclear weapons program, the US has not enjoyed that right.

Brzezinski's assertion that the US is being led by the nose like a stupid mule by the Israelis is perhaps the most candid statement of its kind ever uttered in public by a high-level US strategist. Brzezinski's remarks reflect the mainstreaming of the arguments presented by leading US political scientists Walt and Mearsheimer in their book The Israel Lobby.

Indeed, Brzezinski has gone much further than Walt and Mearsheimer, who couch their critique of the tail-wags-the-dog US-Israel relationship in extremely cautious language. By laying it out so explicitly, Brzezinski is in effect joining the ranks of such scholars as James Petras and Grant Smith, who leave Walt and Mearsheimer in the dust as they boldly and accurately describe the outrageous, destructive, and quite literally criminal Israeli domination of the US (As Smith argues in Foreign Agents, the hundreds of thousands of members of the Zionist Power Configuration described by Petras are acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power; if the law were properly enforced, they would all be in prison.).

The strong words from Brzezinski, and the mainstreaming of similar sentiments, illustrate a growing backlash against Israel's ever-more-shameless, ever-more poorly concealed domination of the USA. The post-9/11 era has witnessed a rash of unbelievably arrogant Israeli actions, including:

* Benjamin Netanyahu's reaction to 9/11 (He triumphantly chortled that 9/11 was "very good," then hastily added that he meant it was very good for Israel.).

* Ariel Sharon's reaction to 9/11, "We Jews control America, and the Americans know it."

* Allegedly retired Mossad chief spook Mike Harari's huge victory party in Bangkok, Thailand celebrating the success of the 9/11 operation.

* The actions of newly-retired Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Barak, Christopher Bollyn's top 9/11 suspect, had come to the US for mysterious reasons after stepping down as PM in March 2001, and immediately after 9/11 all but ordered the US to declare a "war on terror" and invade Afghanistan and other countries - making him the first public figure to describe the "war on terror" response to 9/11.

* The Israel lobby's demolition of the Congressional career of 9/11-truth-seeker Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

* The Israel lobby's persecution of American Muslims including Sami al-Arian, who was imprisoned and tortured for the "terrorist" crime of supporting the Palestinians' right to defend themselves.

* The Israel lobby's persecution of Christian peacemaker Mark Siljander, who was sent to prison on trumped-up charges for the crime of telling other Christians the truth about Islam, and thereby undermining the Israeli's islamophobic "war on terror" narrative.

* The Israel lobby's increasing use of its organized crime assets to dominate American politics through blackmail, fraud, drug trafficking, money laundering, assassination, and other crimes.

* Israel's blatant intervention in US elections, including its use of organized crime in vote-fraud efforts - which may finally have failed in 2012 when Netanyahu imploded at the UN, and his hand-picked puppet Mitt Romney imploded in the final election results.

*Israel's ongoing attempts to drag the US into wars-for-Israel that damage US interests - including wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and elsewhere, as well as Israel's proposed attack on Iran.

*And finally, of course, Israel's ever-more-arrogant refusal to do what the US and every other country on earth insists it must do: Return to its pre-1967 borders and make peace with its neighbors.

Is the "stupid American mule" described by Brzezinski finally waking up?

Or, to use Anatole Lieven's animal metaphor, Is the dog finally noticing that "this is not a case of the tail wagging the dog, but of the tail wagging the unfortunate dog around the room and banging its head against the ceiling”?