Meet Obama's Foreign Policy Adivsors

[On Democracy Now, independent journalist Allan Nairn and American Conservative correspondent Kelley Beaucar Vlahos]

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Obama's top adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski gave an interview to the French press a number of years ago where he boasted about the fact that it was he who created the whole Afghan jihadi movement, the movement that produced Osama bin Laden. And he was asked by the interviewer, "Well, don't you think this might have had some bad consequences?" And Brzezinski replied, "Absolutely not. It was definitely worth it, because we were going after the Soviets. We were getting the Soviets." Another top Obama person.

AMY GOODMAN: I think his comment actually was, "What's a few riled-up Muslims?" And this, that whole idea of blowback, the idea of arming, financing, training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, including Osama bin Laden, and then when they're done with the Soviets, they set their sights, well, on the United States.

ALLAN NAIRN: Right. And later, during Bill Clinton's administration, during the Bosnia killing, the US actually flew some of the Afghan Mujahideen, the early al-Qaeda people--the US actually arranged for them to be flown from there to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim/NATO side.

Another key Obama adviser, Anthony Lake: he was the main force behind the US invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti.

Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, who not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in '91 that you and I survived, he was--I happened to see on Indonesian TV shortly after that--there was General McPeak overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of US fighter planes.

Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both Clinton and Bush 2, a key--he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government--in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

Another Obama adviser, Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official, she wrote the introduction to General Petraeus's Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. That's the Obama team.