Obama's Troubling Policy Advisors
Tue Feb 05, 2008 at 11:09:48 AM PDT
Obama advisors like Zbigniew Brzezinski give cause for concern. Brzezinski has been an eminence gris in US politics for almost half a century, beginning with the Kennedy administration. Brzezinski presently serves as an international advisor to several major US/global corporations, and is president of Z.B., Inc., a firm that advises corporations and financial institutions on international issues. Brzezinski was a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller to protect the interests of global capital.
Further, on domestic policy Obama advisor and globalist Austan Goolsbee says globalizationis responsible for only a "small fraction" of today's income disparities.
More on why I think the Obama campaign is tarnished by having the hawkish Brzezinski and the Yale Bonesman Goolsbee as policy advisors below...........
Brzezinski might be familiar to some from his years of service to presidents beginning with Kennedy. He then became even more familiar due to his association with Carter's disastrous foreign policy. Brzezinski href="http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html"knew that the official date of US aid to Afghani Mujahadeen was 1980, after the Soviet invasion. However, he also knew a secret that he had helped administer as national security adviser.
Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
As to Brzezinski's attitude towards his participation in the intervention, bold mine:
Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
snip........
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Brzezinski was born in Poland into a diplomatic family (his father formed the Candian Polish Congress after the Soviet takeover of Poland) and is a rabid Russianophobe. I leave it to readers to decide whether or not Brzezinski used balanced judgment in his assessment of the aid to the Mujahadeen, some of whom may now be found among the ranks of Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The other advisor who makes me question the Obama advisory team is an economist. According the the New York Times, for which he writes, "Austan Goolsbee is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He is advising the campaign of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the Democratic presidential nomination."
Goolsbee is another free trader. From the article cited above, "60 to 70 percent of the (US) economy faces virtually no international competition." With 70 percent of our economy based on consumer purchasing, that begs the question as to the impact of international competition. Of course, America's 18.5 million government employees have little to fear from free trade; so do auto mechanics, dentists and many others. However when we are outsourcing everything from software engineering to auto parts manufacturing, the rest of us have reason for concern.
Goolsbee is reported to have told Obama not to back a compulsory freeze on home mortgage foreclosures to help the struggling middle class in the current depression crisis, as demanded by former candidate John Edwards. Hillary Clinton has advocated a one-year voluntary freeze on foreclosures. Obama has offered counselors to comfort mortgage victims as they are dispossessed, citing the 'moral hazard' of protecting the public interest from Wall Street sharks.
The two advisors gave me pause, Brzezinski for his hatred of Russia. He has been referred to as Obama's Rove. The conservative Economist blog enthused (bold mine):
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, blames all three post-cold-war presidents for wasting America's moment of supremacy. In his recent book, “Second Chance”, he praises George Bush senior for his handling of the collapse of Soviet communism with “delicacy and skill” but gives him only a B grade for failing to exploit the victory in Kuwait in 1991 to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. He gives Bill Clinton a mediocre C for his vacillation. George Bush junior gets an unforgiving F for his “catastrophic leadership”. The most powerful image of America, says Mr Brzezinski, is no longer the Statue of Liberty but the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Unless Mr Bush's successor takes urgent steps to restore America's political and moral standing, he says, “the crisis of American superpower will become terminal”, and the epoch of American dominance will be shortened.
The Economist also has commentary on Professor Goolsbee. From the Economist:
Judging by the advisers surrounding him, Mr Obama may end up with more market-oriented ideas elsewhere too. While the Clinton economic team is run by experienced practitioners, Mr Obama relies on his Senate staff and a growing group of young academics, all of whom have impeccable neoclassical credentials. At the centre is Mr Goolsbee, a 37-year-old public-finance whizz.
A critique of this approach concludes that neoclassicists:
have the idea that economics is a physical rather than a social science that has nothing to learn from other disciplines. They cling to the notion that their models are not tainted by the subjectivity that confuses other social sciences. Chicago School affiliate George Stigler once scornfully remarked that “without mathematics, we’d be reduced to the caviling of sociologists and the like.” The 1969 introduction of the Nobel prize in economics – which Stigler won in 1982 – seems to have fueled these delusions of grandeur.
snip.........
Critics of neoclassical economics chuckle at the the idea that its precepts can withstand the rigor of the scientific process. They argue that Homo economicus – the theoretical self-interested ‘everyman’ that economists base their analyses on – is a misrepresentation of human nature. The model does not account for structural factors and altruism, and assumes rather ambitiously that peoples’ choices are guided by perfect rationality.
The reliability of this and other neoclassical economic models would be irrelevant to the wider world if the prescriptions of Stigler and his ilk were confined to the halls of academia. But the Chicago School had an enormous influence on governments and helped set the tone for the era of fervent free-enterprise boosterism, market liberalization and privatization that swept the globe during the 1980s and 1990s. Their thinking has also helped shape the International Monetary Fund and World Bank directives that have only managed to widen the gap between the rich and poor.
I don't think Brzezinski and Goolsbee add to the potential for a more progressive government. My conclusion is that they add to the potential for continued US involvement in warfare on the foreign and domestic economy policy sides. These two make me very wary of Obama's foreign and domestic policy, and indicate a center/right tilt that could hamper our economic recovery from the disatrous Cheney/Bush policies.
