But Gen. Zinni’s current affiliations are even more interesting, given his severe criticism of the President’s actions in the War on Terror and the liberation of Iraq. It seems the General is a Distinguished Military Fellow on the Washington, D.C. staff of the Center for Defense Information www.cdi.org. The mission statement for this organization is:
dedicated to strengthening security through: international cooperation; reduced reliance on unilateral military power [emphasis mine] to resolve conflict; reduced reliance on nuclear weapons; a transformed and reformed military establishment; and, prudent oversight of, and spending on, defense programs.
A quick glance of the list of people on CDI’s Board of Advisors includes such great military thinkers and left wing activists and donors as:
- Ben Cohen - Founder, Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., South Burlington, Vt.
- Paul Newman - Motion Pictures, Los Angeles, Calif.
- Joanne Woodward - Actress-Director, Westport, Conn.
An assessment of CDI during the height of the Cold War highlighted its founding and core philosophy:
Formed in 1973 as a project of the tax-exempt Fund for Peace(FFP). CDI and its sister FFP projects - the Center for National Security Studies(CNSS) and the Center for International Policy(CIP) - are spin-offs from projects initiated by the Institute for Policy Studies(IPS), the Washington-based , internationally active revolutionary think-tank.
CDI’s military members include former military officers, intelligence officers and academics who share attitudes of harsh antagonism toward the U.S. national defense, the U.S. military, the NATO alliance and American foreign policy.
CDI’s former military officers were frequently quoted by the Soviet propaganda organs to legitimize their attacks on NATO and U.S. defense forces as trigger-happy dangers to peace. Although CDI states it "supports a strong defense but opposes excessive expenditures or forces," it has opposed every major new U.S. weapons system developed during the past two decades - from the B-1 bomber and Trident submarine to cruise missiles, neutron warheads, and stealth bomber - as upsetting the U.S.-Soviet strategic balance while at the same time minimizing the Soviet military buildup.
To this day, CDI maintains an office in Moscow, Russia staffed by a Mr. Ivan Safranchuk, who is described as a "well-known nuclear analyst in Russia." The purpose of the Moscow CDI office is to provide "the Russian media and public with independent, unfiltered information about U.S.-Russian security relations, from nuclear policy to NATO environmental issues."
This begs the question: What would motivate a retired four-star Marine general to join such an organization as this?
That retired Gen. Zinni would fall in with this bunch makes perfect sense after a stint at CENTCOM that included half-measures against Saddam’s regime and disaster relief operations as his claim to fame. It’s a shame that he can’t see the failure of the false policy of containment and sanctions that were right in his own backyard, but it’s a scandal that his critique of the current war can’t get beyond the subtle anti-Semitic complaints against people who actually wanted to take action to solve the problem. |