05-29-2017, 08:32 AM
(05-29-2017, 04:18 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-28-2017, 07:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(05-28-2017, 02:18 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-27-2017, 06:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Zbigniew Brzezinski. I'll miss his generally-wise commentary.
You do realize that it was his ideas about Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet occupation that led to our current situation with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. He was as much of a destructive asshole as Kissinger was for pretty much the same reasons.
Unintended consequences can be horrible. Malign intent can do incomparably worse.
If you want to push culpability back, then you can blame the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It would have been best to leave that one alone since Afghanistan is also known as the "Graveyard of Empires". Carter screwed up because if he had learned the economics of Mises and Rothbard and understood the history of the region he would have known that Soviet occupation would have brought down the the Soviet Union anyway without the entertaining consequences we face today.
He is still culpable for giving bad advice.
Mises and Rothbard are not mainstream figures in the liberal world. Diplomacy does not rely upon economic ideas from fringe groups. People at most pick and choose between libertarian doctrines as fit their agendas. Giving all power to a 'free market' capable of doing anything to anybody because the power of economic elites engenders some vile behavior. Libertarianism would lead quickly to a pure plutocracy in which the rich would be allowed to do what they want because economic inequality and lack of recourse by people who own nothing would put the poor at the cruel whim of people devoid of conscience.
It may be paradoxical, but Brzezinski was one of the first mainstream figures (this was in the early 1980s) to recognize that the Communist order was doomed. I read the book, and it made sense. In reality, trends away from Marxism, rediscovery of religiion, and failures of the official economies doomed Communist rule or Marxist-Leninist economics. What is left of hard-line Communist rule with a highly socialist (Marxist-Leninist) economy is now... North Korea. Even if Communist Parties remain in charge in China, Cuba, and Vietnam the Parties have abandoned Marxism-Leninism if not dictatorial rule. I forget the title.
We all have our values. Economic gain is not worth mass human suffering.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.