Will the U.S. Strike Iraq?
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.This article was written on July 23, 2002, for the Turkish magazine Yarin. Subheads have been added by EIR.
At the moment I am writing this, there are chiefly three conflicting sets of policies respecting a projected military assault on Iraq by the combined forces of the U.S.A. and Britain's Blair government.
The first faction is building for a probable, August, September, or early October attack on Iraq. This is a policy currently led by political ideologues associated with the U.S. Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz, with U.S. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, and with Bush Administration advisor Richard Perle.
The second view, shared among many high-ranking professionals in the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, and continental Europe, is that the first group's plans for a early such war represent recklessly incompetent planning, and would be a war whose aftermath would be either a disaster for the U.S.A, or, simply an unjustified, costly, and reckless folly. This group is prepared to support that war, if it occurs, but would probably do so despite their belief that it would be a terrible piece of folly.
I am among those of a growing number, who express a third view. I view the drive toward an expansion of Prime Minister Sharon's efforts to expand the attack on the Palestinians into larger areas of the Middle East and beyond, as a reflection of that so-called "Clash of Civilizations" policy for a war against Islam which has been developed by Bernard Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel P. Huntington.
Objections along the lines of the third group have been stated prominently in significant parts of the leading press of the U.S.A. and Europe. Daily contacts with leading circles in most relevant parts of the world, show that, presently, sympathy for the third view is spreading among leading circles in, or close to many among the world's governments. Many among such circles see and condemn the U.S. drive for war as the Bush Administration's reaction to the accelerating financial collapse now in full swing in the U.S.A. and other parts of the Americas, as in Europe and Japan. Some state their objections publicly; others only privately.
Not all in the third group would adopt my argument exactly; but, the views among us would converge on agreement that the U.S. ideologues' drive for an early war on Iraq, is a foolish idea, which must be prevented, if we are to avoid probably terrible consequences for civilization as a whole.
Financial Breakdown Driving War
This drive toward general, prolonged warfare, was set into motion by the escalating international financial crisis which was in the process of breaking out during August 2001. That financial crisis was not the cause of the military policies now aimed at the Middle East; but, the worsening financial crisis, combined with the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, set the military operations into motion. The military operations launched by the U.S.A. in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 are based chiefly on what Samuel P. Huntington and his associates, such as British Arab Bureau veteran Bernard Lewis and former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, had been pushing as a proposed "Clash of Civilizations" war against Islam.
Continental Europe's reluctance to support such a war, is combined with tough opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's pro-war policy from inside the United Kingdom itself. Nonetheless, it were unlikely that the war could be prevented, unless two leading factors inside the United States itself are brought under control. First, as long as the U.S. government continues to deny, hysterically, that a full-scale global financial crisis is occurring now, the present Bush government will continue to be obsessed with the idea of using a foreign war as a way of distracting the U.S. population's attention from a now visibly onrushing financial crisis situation. The second factor is the influence of a pair of Senators, Republican John McCain and Democrat Joseph Lieberman. These Senators, and their allies, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, within the Bush Administration, are the principal source of pro-war pressures on President George Bush.
However, the war is not yet inevitable. First, the international financial system is in the terminal phase of a general international financial collapse. A collapse of the U.S. mortgage bubble, combined with the collapse of one or more key financial institutions, would unleash an economic crisis of the sort which would disrupt both the political and the economic ability of the Bush Administration to launch and sustain an invasion of Iraq. Second, such a financial eruption, combined with a loss of the McCain-Lieberman circles' influence over both the Democratic and Republican parties, would be sufficient to change current Middle East war-policies.
I believe that this drive toward a "Clash of Civilizations" war can be stopped before the trend toward the continuation of such a war becomes irreversible. I am acting accordingly, from inside the U.S.A. at this time. I explain.
First, the onrushing collapse of the present world monetary-financial system is inevitable. The events of the past several weeks, and the grandiose measures taken jointly by governments and central bankers toward the close of the week, may have brought the world to the brink of a banking catastrophe. A continuation of this past week's mobilization of governments and central bankers in the attempt to stall for time, may have made conditions much worse than if they simply let the system go, and implemented the emergency measures I have proposed for preventing a financial collapse from turning into an economic collapse as well.
The Lieberman-McCain Record
The following are matters of public record. Publishing that published record at this time, would be sufficient to topple Senators McCain and Lieberman from the positions of strategic influence inside the U.S.A. today. The reports of these facts are now in the process of being circulated in millions of copies throughout the U.S.A. Briefly, those facts are the following.
Both Senators have heavily documented, crucial connections to the traditional organized-crime networks in the U.S.A. and Canada. For example, McCain's personal wealth came through connections to the notorious whisky-bootlegging and racketeering networks of the Bronfman family and Meyer Lansky. Lieberman's promotion from relative obscurity, to the U.S. Senate, occurred in 1988, through the combined efforts of a leading U.S. pro-fascist, William F. Buckley, in cooperation with both a notorious Cuban-exile network in Florida, and Michael Steinhardt, the son of a leading racketeering boss of Lansky's network. Both are integrated, on the public record, into the circles of the so-called "Mega" group, a crowd of billionaires grouped around the Bronfman interests and Michael Steinhardt.
For example, all of my leading enemies inside the Democratic Party are associated with that combination of billionaires traditionally associated with organized crime interests. This group within the Democratic Party leadership, is associated with what is called the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which was founded by the same Michael Steinhardt associated with the "Mega" circle, and with Buckley, and the Florida ruffians. This "Mega" group, together with its assets currently inside the Bush Administration, is the hard core of the political pressure for launching a Middle East war against Iraq and other targets, as early as the August-October interval.
Prior to the mass-circulation of these facts, Senator Lieberman was the most influential elected official within the Democratic Party, and a leading pre-candidate for the year 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination. Now, that is changing. No man who has been proven to have obtained high office through the combined backing of the extreme right-wing William F. Buckley, Buckley's backer from the Bronfman-Lansky families Michael Steinhardt, and Florida-based Cuban veterans of Cuba's former, Meyer Lansky-controlled Batista dictatorship, could be considered as a leading liberal candidate for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination.
The mass exposure of the existing evidence against both McCain and Lieberman, will have predictable political effects on current U.S. policy-making. This will have an early impact on the heated U.S. Congressional and other election-campaigns, for the early November elections. It will have a useful effect on both the present U.S. Congress and the Bush Administration.
The combined impact of the great world-wide financial collapse, now in progress, and the breaking of the grip of the "Mega" crowd on the administration's policy-making, will push the U.S.A. toward closer coordination with Europe on global economic issues.
Already, the number of voices, in Europe and the U.S.A., calling for a return to the methods of 1933-1945 President Franklin Roosevelt, signals the possibility for building a bi-partisan U.S. coalition around returning to the successful economic-recovery methods of the 1945-1965 period of U.S. cooperation in the reconstruction of post-war Europe. No U.S. President wishes to go down in history as a new President Herbert Hoover. Breaking the grip of the "Mega" crowd over U.S. strategic policy-shaping, if that succeeds, would break up the McCain-Lieberman bloc's power over U.S. foreign policy. If that succeeds, there will be new politics in Washington, D.C., and, probably, a new bi-partisan U.S. policy-shaping combination.
The situation is very dangerous, but, at least, there is visible reason to believe this danger could be overcome.
