RIP Zbigniew Brzezinski

superbeets · May 26, 2017

[h=1]'I love you dad. Hail to the Chief': Morning Joe Mika pays tribute to father Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser during the Iran hostage crisis, after he dies aged 89[/h]

Zbigniew Brzezinski, 89, died Friday at a hospital in Virginia
News of his death was announced by his daughter, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski served as President Carter's national security adviser
Brzezinski pushed the US to forge closer ties with China and helped broker peace between Israel and Egypt
He was also at Carter's side during the fall of the Shah and the Iran hostage crisis

superbeets · May 26, 2017

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, has died, his daughter, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, announced on Friday.
He was 89 years old.
News of Brzezinski's death was announced by his daughter, who posted an image on her Instagram account showing her father with two of his granddaughters.
'My father passed away peacefully tonight,' Mika Brzezinski wrote on her Instagram account Friday.
'He was known to his friends as Zbig, to his grandchildren as Chief and to his wife as the enduring love of her life.
'I just knew him as the most inspiring, loving and devoted father any girl could ever have.

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Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, has died, his daughter, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, announced on Friday

superbeets · May 26, 2017

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News of Brzezinski's death was announced by his daughter, who posted an image on her Instagram account showing her father with two of his granddaughters

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Mika paid homage to her dad on Twitter, posting an image of her parents from years ago

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'We love you, Dad, and will always be grateful for the love and devotion you showed us all,' Mika tweeted late Friday

'I love you Dad. Hail to the Chief.'
Brzezinski died at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia on Friday, according to The New York Times.

superbeets · May 26, 2017

Mika Brzezinski's fiance and Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, also paid tribute to the former NSC chief.
'Dr. Brzezinski fought tirelessly to bring freedom to his homeland of Poland,' Scarborough tweeted on Friday.

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Brzezinski is seen on the left sitting next to then-President Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office in 1977. Carter is sitting opposite former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir

'He was a fierce Cold Warrior against Russian aggression.'

Scarborough added pictures of the American and Polish flags side by side.

Brzezinski was known for his intellectualism as well as a fierce anti-Soviet disposition.

He rose to the pinnacle of the American foreign policy establishment when he was named national security adviser under Carter.

Brzezinski helped topple economic barriers between the Soviet Union, China and the West.

And he helped Carter bridge wide gaps between the rigid Egyptian and Israeli leaders, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, leading to the Camp David accords.

But the Carter years were also defined by the Iranian hostage crisis, which came to symbolize the administration's failures and frustrations.

superbeets · May 26, 2017

Brzezinski was the man who advocated for the disastrous rescue attempt of the hostages, when eight commandos died before ever reaching the Iranian capital of Tehran in April 1980.
In recent years, Brzezinski took part in proceedings designed to bring the former Soviet republics into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Born in Warsaw and educated in Canada and the United States, Brzezinski was an acknowledged expert in Communism when he attracted the attention of US policymakers.
In the 1960s he was an adviser to John F. Kennedy and served in the Johnson administration.
In December 1976, Carter offered Brzezinski the position of national security adviser.
He had not wanted to be secretary of state because he felt he could be more effective working at Carter's side in the White House.
Brzezinski often found himself in clashes with colleagues like Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
For the White House, the differences between Vance and Brzezinski became a major headache, confusing the American public about the administration's policy course and fueling a decline in confidence that Carter could keep his foreign policy team working in tandem.
The Iranian hostage crisis, which began in 1979, came to dramatize America's waning global power and influence and to symbolize the failures and frustrations of the Carter administration. Brzezinski, during the early months of 1980, became convinced that negotiations to free the kidnapped Americans were going nowhere. Supported by the Pentagon, he began to push for military action.

Carter was desperate to end the standoff and, over Vance's objections, agreed to a long-shot plan to rescue the hostages. The mission, dubbed Desert One, was a complete military and political humiliation and precipitated Vance's resignation. Carter lost his re-election bid against Ronald Reagan that November.
Brzezinski went on to ruffle the feathers of Washington's power elite with his 1983 book, "Power and Principle," which was hailed and reviled as a kiss-and-tell memoir.

"I have never believed in flattery or lying as a way of making it," he told The Washington Post that year. "I have made it on my own terms."

The oldest son of Polish diplomat Tadeus Brzezinski, Zbigniew was born on March 28, 1928, and attended Catholic schools during the time his father was posted in France and Germany.

The family went to Montreal in 1938 when the elder Brzezinski was appointed Polish consul general. When Communists took power in Poland six years later, he retired and moved his family to a farm in the Canadian countryside.

At his new home, the young Brzezinski began learning Russian from a nearby farmer and was soon bitten by the foreign policy bug.

Brzezinski's climb to the top of the foreign policy community began at Canada's McGill University, where he earned degrees in economics and political science. Later at Harvard, he received a doctorate in government, a fellowship and a publishing contract - for his thesis on Soviet purges as a permanent feature of totalitarianism.

Frequent trips to Eastern Europe and several books and articles in the 1950s established Brzezinski as an expert on Communism, and by the 1960s he'd begun to attract the interest of policymakers.

Throughout his career, he would be affiliated with moderate-to-liberal groups, including the Rand Corp., the Council on Foreign Relations, Amnesty International and the NAACP.
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