Speaking at Duke University on March 29, Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, said:

"If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran -- if that happens -- for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership."...

Brzezinski reserved his harshest criticism for the current president, George W. Bush, saying he'd helped cultivate "a self-paralyzing culture of fear" after the Sept. 11 attacks, squandered the government's credibility, and fed anti-Americanism in many parts of the world."

See: Ray Gronberg article (2007-03)