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A Polyphonic Dialogue of Civilizations: LYM at Historic Khatami Event

by Matthew Odgen LaRouche Youth Movement

On the day after Lyndon LaRouche's Berlin/Washington webcast speech Sept. 6, and five days before the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, at a moment when Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush are trying to spread a renewed sense of mass hysteria through the American population to whip up support for an explosive Middle East preemptive war, former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami made an historic trip to Washington D.C. As a voice of reason, in response to the Synarchist drive for a "Clash of Civilizations," Khatami called again for a dialogue among civilizations, a call which Lyndon LaRouche, too, had intervened with in the moments following the 9/11 attacks.

LaRouche's webcast speech on the previous day was an international dialogue among leaders from Eurasia and the Americas, on the subject of the next 50 years of mankind's cooperation for the economic development of the planet. The United States must provide the leadership to make this development possible, and it is in the figure of Lyndon LaRouche that these international leaders see the possibility for the reemergence of the "real America."

So, many of the 1,300 guests attending Khatami's historic event on Thursday, mostly members of the diplomatic community and religious leaders, were very happy to see 60 members of the LaRouche Youth Movement assembled in a chorus, greeting them with beautiful music and signs calling for a "Dialogue of Civilizations." Because of the tight security, this audience was lined up all the way down Wisconsin Ave., waiting to get through the security checkpoint, and had time to be engaged in long dialogues about LaRouche's ideas for peace through economic development in Southwest Asia.

Beginning our singing with a canon in three parts, "Dona Nobis Pacem" (Grant Us Peace), we sang in very clear counterpoint against the 200-person rabid mob protesting Khatami's visit to America, and calling for regime change in Iran. With signs saying, "LaRouche: Dialogue of Civilizations," "New Treaty of Westphalia," and "Make Water, Not War: LaRouche's Oasis Plan," there was a noticeably high level of recognition among the guests, of LaRouche's historic role in the Middle East peace process, including his proposals for the development of nuclear-powered water-desalinization technology as an economic driver for the entire region. This "Oasis Plan" had been a major factor in the Oslo peace agreements between Yitzak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. This was the theme of the banner we had: a big picture of the historic handshake between Arafat and Rabin, and a map of the Middle East accompanied by pictures of nuclear power, desalinization, and a maglev train. The words read: LaRouche's Peace Policy—Economic Development and Sovereignty. Under the pictures was a famous quote by Rabin: "History belongs to those with the courage to change axioms."

While President Khatami was speaking, we blanketed the area with literature, both a leaflet with the text of LaRouche's response to Rumsfeld, and the text of LaRouche's previous webcast. Approaching cars that were stopped at the intersection, we met one man who said, "I know LaRouche very well, and he's known me since 1975." And another man, from the diplomatic community from the Middle East, who was overjoyed to see the youth movement at the event, recognized one of the youth organizers as the person he was sitting next to the previous day at LaRouche's webcast!

As the event let out, the chorus assembled at the corner of the two intersecting streets, along the sidewalk being used by all of the guests leaving the event. Coming out of the historic speech of Khatami, the diplomats were obviously impacted; everyone recognized the gravity of events such as this at a moment when the world is confronting a dramatic turning point. The youth organizers confronted them with the somber reality that civilization faces the choice between potential global irregular war and a new Treaty of Westphalia. The chorus sang "Jesu, meine Freude," a motet composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, appropriate for this moment, because the original chorale melody had been written in the 17th Century as a celebration of the original Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War. This music communicated the commitment of LaRouche and the youth movement to true, lasting peace and a true dialogue of civilizations, better than anything else we could have said or done. In the minds of all of these diplomats and religious leaders, this sublime intervention, in the aftermath of Khatami's call for dialogue and reason, will now be the image associated with the name Lyndon LaRouche.