| http://larouchein2004.net/pages/speeches/2002/020501webcast.htm The Middle East Blow-Back Effect by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. May 1, 2002 The following is an edited transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a Washington, D.C. seminar and international webcast on May 1, 2002 : My subject today is focussed on the question of the horror show, in the danger to civilization, which is expressed in the Middle East crisis. And also, to indicate the possibilities of solution for that crisis. However, the Middle East crisis is not a crisis of the Middle East; nor was it created in the Middle East; nor is it the creation of protagonists in the Middle East. This is a world crisis, which, for various strategic reasons, has exploded in the Middle East, threatens to spread out throughout that region, and threatens, under present circumstances, to bring an end, for generations to come, to civilization, worldwide, as we have known it.Some of the things I will say today, which are not generally said publicly, coincide with the views of many of the people from around the world--not only critics in the Arab sector, but others, in Europe and elsewhere. But nonetheless, no one else says it, no one else in a position, with the voice to make it heard, says it publicly. As you know, if you've looked at your Congressman recently, in the United States, and have watched him going away, and you look at their back, in your mind's eye, you see a sign on their back: “Space for rent.” This is the general situation with the parties, in politics, in the United States today. So therefore, in the mud and slime of existing U.S. politics, in the confusion and chaos and insanity which comes out of the teleprompter which the President reads, and similar kinds of things, where is there a solution? Where is there a clear voice defining policy? Nowhere, in general. And no one from inside the United States. One of the problems here, which I will make a bit clearer today, is very few people, even in the United States, know what the United States is, and what its problems are. Many people would like to defend the United States, but they don't know what they're defending, and sometimes, they pick the wrong side, when they choose a cause. My job is to make that clear to you. We are now, globally--the context for this, which I will address first, and then I will come to the Middle East matter itself, later--the context for this crisis today, is that the world as a whole, especially European civilization, extended globally, is experiencing presently, the worst and most dangerous crisis in the history of Europe, since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. No crisis, including the wars of the last century, was as severe and dangerous to civilization as what you're seeing reflected in the Middle East crisis, today. This is the one crisis which could destroy modern history, for generations to come. And, as you see, we have no President of the United States. We have an elected President--not elected, probably, but inaugurated, anyway, despite all the misunderstandings, and whatnot. I think, actually, Al Gore inaugurated him, because Al Gore could have won the election in Arkansas, but he chose to ignore Arkansas, perhaps because it had something to do with Bill Clinton--and went to Florida instead, and threw the election away in Florida, where he had it won in Arkansas, if he'd not wasted his money on Florida. So, he actually gave the election to President Bush. And he is now a creature of the past, and let's hope he remains that way. But, the problem is--it goes deeper: That since 1964, with one exception, no President of the United States, has, on a matter of grave strategic importance, expressed the actual interests of the United States, except for one incident by President Reagan, on the SDI, in the early 1980s. Since 1964, since President Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights legislation, no President of the United States, with the one exception of Reagan's support of the SDI, has spoken in a manner which is consistent with the actual, fundamental interests of the United States. For example, you had the Suez Crisis: President Eisenhower acted in the interests of the United States, and he understood them. FDR's Post-War Vision Now, what I've described as the problem here: At the end of the war, after Roosevelt had died, the United States turned away, in large degree, from the commitments which Roosevelt had, from the path he trod, and from the postwar world we would have had, had he lived. Roosevelt, for example, was for the abolition of colonialism, immediately, at the end of the war. The United States emerged from the end of the war, as the only world power, as the only power, built out of the wreckage that was left by Coolidge and Mellon, from the Depression. There was no other power on this planet. And Roosevelt intended to use that power, as he told Churchill, to bring about a new system in the world, one not based on the 18th-Century policies of Adam Smith and the British, one not based on colonialism; but to use the power of the United States to effect the immediate liberation of all colonies. And to use the policies of the American System, the anti-Adam Smith policies, to rebuild, and build the economies of the world, with U.S. backing. That was taken down: Under Truman, colonialism was restored at the point of a bayonet, with the backing of the United States, and on the instruction of the British government. However, we did have a system that worked somewhat. The postwar monetary system, which had many features of Roosevelt's policy continued in it, was a very successful policy, for about 20 years, until about the middle of the 1960s. The United States prospered, in a continued recovery, despite all the mistakes of Arthur Burns' influence on President Eisenhower, and so forth, the United States prospered economically. The conditions of life for most citizens improved. Opportunities increased. The same was done in Europe, with U.S. cooperation, with the ideas of Jean Monet of France, who was an admirer and collaborator of Franklin Roosevelt. The same thing happened in Japan, and to some degree, in South and Central America. But the period then, even despite Truman, and under Eisenhower, and despite his mistakes, was a period of progress for most of the world. Then, it suddenly changed. The change came after Eisenhower's death. And it became worse, and worse, and worse. Here's what happened: Look back at the history of the United States. The United States was a creation of Europe. That, after the period of religious wars, from about 1511 to 1648 in Europe, the hope of building a modern sovereign form of nation-state in Europe had gone into the rubbish pile, into the ditch. So, on the basis of the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, there was an effort to begin to build up sovereign nation-states in Europe. However, the rubble left over from the religious wars, and from the feudalist interests, and things of that sort, prevented this from being successful in Europe. So, during the course of the 17th Century, and especially the 18th Century, more and more of the intellectual leadership of Europe, from many countries--France, from England, from Russia, included, from Germany--focussed on the United States, or what became the United States, as the hope of building, in North America, the kind of republic which European civilization had aspired to build on the basis of the wreckage of the Roman Empire and feudalism. These people concentrated on us, educated our people, imported their people to assist us in building this republic. And we built, what is still, to this day, in terms of its constitutional design, the only true sovereign nation-state republic on this planet, which was described by Lafayette as a “temple of liberty and beacon of hope for all mankind.” Which it was. And which it does remain, at least in the wishes, if not the reality, for many people today. We are still a power--we don't deserve it, but we are. That is, we have the capacity, as a nation, because of our historic authority--not because of our present government, or our recent habits--but because of our historic authority, to intervene in world affairs, not as a dictator, but as a moral influence and a power, to cause things to happen for good, which otherwise could not happen. The case in the Middle East is typical of that: If the President of the United States would find the gumption and the wisdom to intervene in the Middle East, this horror show would stop immediately. Not because the United States has the physical power to suppress what Sharon is doing, but because if the United States took that position, then the nations of Europe who want that result, would rally to, and cooperate with the United States, other parts of the world would rally to and cooperate with the United States, and the entire world, or most of it, would, as if one crushing blow, stop this murder in the Middle East now, and bring about peace. Our problem is: How do we bring that about, with this President, this inaugurated President? And that's what I want to lay before you today. The problem exists--I'll turn to the problem, the worst manifestation of it. Solutions exist, at least on paper, as ideas; I've worked since 1975 to try to bring about Middle East peace, and looking back on that period, over 25 years, I made no mistakes: What I said then is valid today. What others did to the same or similar effect is valid still today. What has been lacking is the will and the authority to put that into place and into work. My concern is, therefore, how do we implement the solution realistically, not how do we simply propose, once again, a solution that I and others have been proposing, rightly and justly, for over 25 years. The `Perpetual War' Faction This is the problem: At the end of the war, the same forces which hated Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, seized control in the United States--not totally--those of us who had returned from the war wouldn't have put up with it. We had remembered the war; we had been uplifted by Roosevelt and what he represented; many of us had rediscovered the legacy of the American Revolution in our history. We wouldn't have put up with it. But, we became fat, and lazy, and corrupt. Men returning--remember, 16 million of us, were in military service during the war, at the high point. We returned after approximately five years in U.S. involvement in this war to start families, or to build families. Married couples would decide to have children at about that time. We began to move into suburbia, as in these Levittown shacks out there, in the potato fields outside of New York City, to build up suburban life, and other kinds of life. Women, who had had their husbands in the war, said, “No, you've got to do everything to catch up for five years of lost time. We've got to make the babies now. We've got to have the schools for them now. We've got to have a house now. We've got to have this now.” And, they had a kind of “now generation,” which became the Baby Boomer generation. They went to universities, not to get knowledge, but to get a job, a better job. And so, they became corruptible. And so they were corrupted. I saw it all. I hated it then. I hate it more today, when I see what the outcome was. What happened in the United States was, a certain faction, whose legacy is the Confederate States of America, typified by the Nashville Agrarians, led by a virtual member of the Confederacy, William Yandell Elliott, united with certain financial circles in Boston, in New York, and Washington, and elsewhere, to conceive of an anti-Roosevelt world, an anti-Franklin Roosevelt world. Their conception was this: If the power of the United States could be joined and controlled by the power of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain, then, we could create an English-speaking world empire, modelled somewhat on the Roman Empire, but with British-financier characteristics, as opposed to Roman characteristics. Then we could rule the world, we could put military force to work, to control nations in the way that Ancient Rome had controlled nations with its legions, and its policies, and religious wars, and ethnic wars. This policy became known, in the course of the 1950s, as the “utopian” policy. It was a policy of leading banking firms and law firms, accounting firms in New York City, and in Washington, D.C., and in Boston. These people were conjoined with a faction inside the U.S. military, centered around the buildup of the Defense Department, around what became the RAND Corporation, became the various foundations which dominate United States policy-making today. So these foundations and financier interests and law firms and so forth, together with a certain faction in the military, set out to transform the United States and the world, on a model in the distant past, on the tradition of the Roman Empire--an English-speaking world, largely, and also modelled, in military policy, on both the Roman legions, and also, the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Waffen-SS. The Change in Military Policy So, the change in direction occurred then. What happened--the changes in military policy? You had the firing of MacArthur, who was the best commander the United States had in World War II. He conquered more territory, with fewer losses, both to U.S. forces, and to their Japanese opposition, over a shorter period of time, relatively speaking, than anyone else in modern history. Probably, the most successful military commander in modern history. He became the overseer, so to speak, of Japan. And he did not have to use nuclear bombs on Japan--he'd never use them. This came from London and Washington. Truman decided to drop the bomb. There was no military need for dropping those bombs. Ever. Japan had been successfully blockaded by an aerial and naval blockade. And Japan, which depends upon imports of raw materials for its existence, the United States, principally, had so effectively blockaded Japan from the air and the sea, that the military faction, which was still in opposition to the Emperor Hirohito's determination to surrender, would have to give up soon. So the U.S. policy, in the Summer of 1945, under MacArthur, was not to drop bombs. The policy was to sit. Not to attack a defeated nation. Standard military policy: Never attack a defeated enemy--you might start a new war. But Washington was not happy. The utopians were not happy. They wanted to use those bombs. They had intended to drop them on Berlin, if Berlin had not surrendered by the end of June 1945, Berlin would have been obliterated, with one or two nuclear bombs. That was U.S. policy. But Berlin surrendered. Hitler surrendered--or, didn't surrender, but the Germans surrendered. They couldn't use the bombs. So, they said let's drop them on Japan. They dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of the reasons they dropped them, was to take the credit for the victory away from Douglas MacArthur, because the issue was military policy. Douglas MacArthur represented the traditional military policy of modern civilized society, the policy of the United States, the policy of Lazare Carnot of France, who was one of the great revolutionaries in making modern military policy, the policy of Gerhardt Scharnhorst of Germany. This was the military policy of the United States, especially after Lincoln's victory. MacArthur represented that policy. President Eisenhower, with all his wavering on some political-economic issues, nonetheless, represented that same tradition and that same policy. What happened? The firing of MacArthur, which was ordered by the financier interests of London and New York--it was a set up--resulted in what? A no-win war in Korea, which has not been ended, in fact, to the present day. The issue about Korean policy is: The President of South Korea, with the encouragement of President Clinton, at a certain point, proposed a new policy for the Koreas, for the effective reunification, as a process of cooperation between North and South Korea. But the Korean War continued to the present day. And those who still put North Korea on the list of the “Axis of Evil” are actually expressing that determination to have a perpetual war in Asia, called Korea. They probably would like to do it in Indochina, where they did make a perpetual war, based on the precedent of Korea, after the successful assassination of President Kennedy. What they've done in Iraq is a perpetual war. They went in and conducted a war against Iraq: The war has never ceased. Peace has never been declared. The war goes on. The Bush Administration went to a silly war in Afghanistan, which nobody but a brainless, militarily incompetent idiot would do. After what the Soviet experience in Afghanistan was, you'd never go in and do that again. A few tens of thousands of fighters, as long as they continued to be supplied, can pin down 200,000, or more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, permanently, the way the Soviets were pinned down. And it's happening, and will continue to happen. We're still in it. A perpetual war. We're about to reactivate the perpetual war in Iraq, against Iraq, throughout the Middle East. So the policy has been one of: Pick enemies, the way the Romans did, the way the Nazis did, and declare perpetual war. How do you fight perpetual war? By conventional warfare means? No. You fight wars of annihilation and intimidation. You force nations to submit to your will, the way the Romans did. These are the utopians. What they hated above all, is they hated the United States. It's a long tradition in the United States, which very few people outside our borders have really come to understand. Two Traditions You have two traditions in the United States. One, which I defend, which is called the American Intellectual Tradition. Something that Kissinger denounced on a number of occasions. And that is the tradition of those who founded this country and its republic. The idea of creating a modern nation-state, whose purpose was not to dominate the world, but in the advice of John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, to President Monroe, to create a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states, which was John Quincy Adams' recommendation to Monroe, on the case of the Americas, and was the basis for the so-called Monroe Doctrine. The United States was not in a position, at that point, militarily, to kick the Hapsburgs and the British out of the Americas. But Monroe said, and Quincy Adams said: The United States should be determined to build up its strength, to the point that it is able to kick the British and the Hapsburgs out of the Americas. And to allow the people of these countries, who aspired to their own governments, their own sovereignty, to enjoy a perfect sovereignty, under the umbrella of alliance with the United States. A community of principle for common purpose, but respective sovereignty, in terms of power. That was the intention of Franklin Roosevelt for the postwar period. It's my intention today. Let me just explain what this is, and then get on to this. The fundamental question which has to be asked--and it's not asked often enough, and sometimes our churches are the worst enemy of religion on this account: The foundation of Christianity, of Judaism, and Islam, is the concept of man, as created in the image of the Creator of the universe. This defines the individual as different than any animal. That each individual has, with the cognitive powers of reason, a power of creativity, which no animal has. And therefore, each human being is born good, or at least redeemable to good; and each human being is a life which is sacred in the eyes of the Creator because we embody the quality of the Creator. And therefore, the function of government must be, not to impose religion, but to recognize this as a principle of natural law: that government has no right to exist, except as insofar as it is efficiently committed to promote the general welfare of all of the people, and their posterity. And to honor the aspirations and achievements of those who have gone before us, who created the foundation upon which we are able to do good. That's the function of government. That's the meaning of the Preamble of the Constitution, which is the fundamental Constitutional law of the United States--the principle of the General Welfare--to promote and defend our sovereignty, and to promote the common good, both for our people, and in our relations among states abroad. That's our law. That's the American Intellectual Tradition. It's a European tradition in particular, a tradition of those who struggled to build the kind of society, which is free from what was characteristic of Roman society, in particular. Under Roman society, or under Mesopotamian dictatorships before, man was never free, because man was classified generally as a form of human cattle. And there were three kinds of cattle: There were the cattle that ran; there were the cattle that were captive cattle; and there were the wild cattle you hunted down. Now, the captive cattle, you raised like you raise cows. You cared for them; you fed them; you helped them to reproduce to the numbers you desired; but insured they did not reproduce to numbers in excess of what you desired. You'd kill them and slaughter them when they were no longer useful to you. That was economy. That's called agriculture. And, that was the kind of society. The majority of human beings were human cattle, under the subject of rulers who behaved like beasts. Now, some of these societies made significant contributions to culture, but they made them out of societies that were ruled in a bestial fashion, as if by beasts. Like the Roman emperors, for example; or the Byzantine rulers, for example; or the feudal system, for example; or the Hapsburgs of Spain and Austria, for example, with the exception of Joseph II, who did some good things. |
