How To Lead the United States
Out of Its Current Tragedy
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
The following is Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's opening statement and some of the question-and-answer dialogue which occurred during a press availability for the candidate in New Jersey on May 21.
In the period from the time of Solon of Athens, through the death of Plato, there was a development in Europe, centered on Athens—but to some degree also, on what was called Magna Graecia, the southern part of Italy where a Greek civilization existed—in which there was a certain high point of development. This development is actually the birth of what became modern civilization.
However, this civilization failed, at that time. It failed notably in the case of the Peloponnesian War, which was this long war of Greece against its former allies in Sparta; which began, with Athens and the Athens alliance and extended to southern Italy, to Magna Graecia; a war which was begun under Pericles of Athens, continued under his successor, the notorious Thrasymachus. As a result of that, Greek civilization disintegrated, not entirely—its residue didn't disintegrate—but Athens, which had been the leading part of civilization at that point, worldwide as far as we know, disintegrated. It continued in a Hellenistic form, in the wake of the success of Alexander the Great, but it degenerated. It degenerated into what became its successor—the Roman Empire, which was decadent, and evil, from the beginning.
Now, what is happening now in the United States, is similar to that. You had—in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece—you had this development, typified by the rise of what was called the Eleatics, by the Sophists, and by the followers of Aristotle. And this tradition continues to this day.
What has happened now to the United States: The United States, which led the world out of the risk of a fascist world order in World War II, began to degenerate in the post-war period. Our degeneracy of the United States, today—our cultural degeneracy—is analogous to what happened to Greece under Pericles and Thrasymachus: that we have become Sophists. People are no longer concerned with truth. We put spin on everything. They're concerned with popular opinion. They believe lies. You have to be seen "believing." And this has gotten us into this kind of mess.
The Persistence of Fascism
The second part of this story, is that the Nazi system, which began to disintegrate after the battles of Stalingrad and after the United States victory in Midway Island against the Japanese fleet, in which Nazi Germany was ultimately doomed: Some people in Nazi Germany, around Hermann Göring, decided that Hitler was a nut; and they were determined that the Nazi system would survive, as a tradition, survive the defeat of Germany in the war. These people entered into collaboration with certain people in the United Kingdom and the United States: people with names such as, Harriman, Morgan, du Pont, Mellon—who had originally supported Hitler in bringing him to power in Germany, but for strategic reasons, supported Roosevelt against the Nazis during the war.
At the end of the war, once Germany was being defeated—for the final defeat was on the way—these guys, typified by Allen Dulles, brought the Nazi system into the Anglo-American system. This became the Anglo-American right wing, typified by that pig, President Truman—who we got rid of, and replaced him with Eisenhower, who gave us a period of relative peace.
But then, when Eisenhower left office, Kennedy was not capable of understanding or dealing with the situation. They killed him. And once they had killed Kennedy, they moved with the war in Vietnam, the Indo-China War. Under this period, there was a deliberate cultural corruption of the United States, called "contemporary liberalism" today. It's generally accepted ideology today in the United States. It's the reason why neither of the political parties, as parties, are capable of solving the problems before us. Only someone who recognizes the same problem that happened to Greece under Pericles, the same kind of moral corruption which has gripped our institutions today, would avoid the destruction of worldwide civilization today, led by the self-destruction of the United States.
What you're seeing in Iraq: You're seeing fascism, in the form of Cheney. Cheney's policy was perpetual warfare; it was perpetual nuclear preventive warfare. The wars we've seen in Afghanistan, what we've seen in Iraq, are intended to be extended, against Syria—by January; if Bush were re-elected, and Cheney was still his Vice President, we would be attacking Syria by January of this coming year. We would be putting nuclear weapons, bombing the sites of the power stations in Iran. We would be dropping nuclear weapons on sites in North Korea. The planet as a whole would degenerate, in a way comparable to the way that the Greek civilization underwent a partial degeneration into a relative dark age, as a result of the Peloponnesian War.
The problem is, that we have no standard of truth generally accepted in the United States, today. Or, in European civilization generally today. Truth has been destroyed, especially over the past 40 years—the idea of truth—in favor of what's called opinion: popular opinion, or what's called "spin." The press lies, the major press lies. The major political figures lie! The judgment is based on, "Don't tell the truth. It will get you into trouble. Work within popular opinion. If you want to accomplish something, argue for it, from the standpoint of generally accepted popular opinion."
So, now we come to a point, in which we have a war in Iraq which can not be won. Because it's not a war in Iraq. It's a war against civilization. It's a war on the part of some people who intend to create an English-speaking world empire, a new Roman Empire, of the British and the United States. The idea is to eliminate all of the nation-states, to do the same thing the British Empire has done since 1763: Play the nations of Europe and other nations against each other with struggles to neutralize them, so they will not be a challenge to the empire. And foolish nations agree to be played by that game.
The U.S. Constitutional Opposition
Now, I come along. The advantage is, here in the United States, we have—the United States is the only place this problem can be solved. Because, if the United States were to act upon certain elements of its tradition, its Constitutional tradition, we could intervene, and rally most of the nations of the world to cooperate with us in getting out of this mess.
You have institutions in the United States, in the intelligence services, in the professional military, and others, who typify powerful influences inside the Executive branch of government, who have friends in the Legislative branch of government, and within certain institutions within society. These circles tend now to agree with me, at least in the direction I'm taking. My course of action is to provide an element of cohesion and leadership among these circles in the United States, especially around the Executive branch—the opposition to Cheney and to what poor Bush represents, in the Executive branch. These circles are capable of recognizing that the existence of civilization depends upon acting, to get rid of what Cheney represents, and to find a peace in the Middle East (or, so-called Middle East), which is being used as a cockpit to destabilize the world.
The key aspect of this, which is often misinterpreted, is this question of petroleum. In the preparation for what became known as World War I, by Edward VII, the King of England—and even when he was Prince of Wales, before he was actually King—the idea came, of taking the area of southern Mesopotamia, now called Kuwait, and making it a personal property of the King of England. The purpose was to take the oil, which was the richest source of petroleum at that time, available petroleum, from the Gulf, and grab that petroleum, to use it as a way of equipping the British military fleet, the naval fleet, with oil-burning vessels, which would be superior in their mobility to coal-burning vessels; and to use this as a factor of strategic control.
Once that was established, the British then conceived ... making the world dependent upon consumption of petroleum, by eliminating alternatives to petroleum as a source of cheap power. (It's not actually cheap power. You haul it all over the world. It costs more to carry it around, than it does to produce it.) All right.
So therefore, the Middle East area, which has the richest and cheapest source of supply of petroleum, probably has at least 80 years' supply for the world as a whole, from the Gulf and adjoining areas. You take the area from Iraq down to the Gulf and beyond; that area contains at least 80% of 80 years' worth of the world's petroleum supplies. Therefore, by making the world dependent upon petroleum, and putting it in the hands of what's called the London marketing cartel, which controls this—it's not the Arab world that controls it, it's the London marketing cartel, which controls the way oil is sold around the world—then you have the grip on the world.
What is happening right now, is that the world financial system is collapsing. It's doomed. Nothing can save the present world monetary-financial system. It's finished now. Just a question of when it goes over the cliff. It's going over. At this time, they're trying to prop up the financial system, and the best way to prop up the financial system was to use hedge funds to gamble on a rising price of petroleum. In other words, the profits on investment in petroleum, the petroleum stocks, on financial markets, is the major source of impetus for profits in the world system as a whole. It is not the price of production at the source of petroleum production, which is the problem, the problem of the inflation—we're now over $40 a barrel.
That is not the price of production. It's not OPEC, that is responsible. It is the London marketing cartel, which is using the margin of profit, on the basis of an increase in price on the contracts per barrel of oil, which is now using this as the major prop of the world financial system: the U.S.-British-dominated world financial system.
We are now in a hyperinflationary spiral, which is in the process of blowing up. Just give an example: At about $20 a barrel of petroleum, presuming no hedge-fund intervention, the price of petroleum around the world, at $20 a barrel, would not be a threat to the stability of the world economy. At $30 a barrel, it's a problem. At $40 a barrel, it's a crisis. One more crisis and $50 a barrel, and the whole system will blow up. But, this is caused entirely by this hedge fund speculation in this area.
So, that's the nature of the problem.
So, we have an intertwined relationship, between a war policy—a nuclear war policy, a world imperial nuclear war policy, by Cheney and what he represents, behind him—you have at the same time, the same financial group, which is behind the Cheney phenomenon is playing this other game with a wrecked financial system. So, we now come to a point, that the entire world financial-monetary system is in the process of collapsing.
And in this process, they've unleashed a way of trying to control the planet in the long term, the way the Roman Empire did: by perpetual warfare. Perpetual warfare, which can not be conducted today by conventional warfare methods, but only by aid of nuclear warfare. And therefore, since Israel was created as a nuclear power in the Middle East, for this purpose of destabilization, we're now trapped into a nuclear warfare scenario, as the controlling scenario.
The only way we'll get free of it, is by getting rid of what Cheney represents. That also means, overturning those in the Democratic Party, who are tailing what Cheney represents, who are not exposing it, who are not fighting it. And therefore, only those forces in the world, which recognize that the United States could lead a way out of this problem, and only those in the United States, who recognize that we in the United States have the responsibility of providing that leadership, could avoid a collapse of civilization into a dark age right now.
My Unique Role
My problem is that I'm relatively unique, in terms of political figures actually leading that process. And you see in the reaction of many parts of the so-called Arab world, and others—to my proposal on the alternative, on a doctrine—there are many parts of the world which are prepared to act in support of what I propose.
That's the seriousness of the situation. Whatever these clowns say about my candidacy, whatever they say about what is inevitable in political candidacy—that is reality. And it's the way the system reacts to that reality, not to the polls, which is going to determine the way this situation goes. They can choose against me: They can lose everything. We all lose everything. But, we've now seen, with the response to my proposal on the Doctrine, that, if my influence in the United States is accepted—which will only happen under conditions of perceived monetary-financial crisis—under those conditions, there is a way out. And much of the rest of the world is prepared to cooperate with the United States, on that basis, including Europe.
So, that's the situation. It's not a simple kind of problem, which you hear talked about in the news media. This is reality. And reality is not what happens from time to time, under ordinary circumstances. Reality is what happens in times of crisis, when civilizations themselves are threatened with collapse. We are now at a breaking point, of potential collapse of a world civilization. This has happened several times before. It's threatened now. Sometimes we escaped from that threat. Sometimes, we did not.
The question is, are we going to escape from that threat? Or, are we not? And that's what my candidacy represents. That's what the issue is.
Questions and Discussion
Q: My name is Brother Leroy from WHCR [radio] and my question relates to one of the last points that you made: You said, sometimes we have escaped from these crises. An example in history, of having escaped from the crisis?
LaRouche: Most recent was the case of Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt saved the world from fascism. If Hoover had been re-elected, then the policies of the United States, under Hoover, would have been a continuation of the same ones that were going on in Europe, under the Germans. Then we would be living, today, in the aftermath of a Nazi world system. It was Roosevelt that saved humanity from that.
Earlier, the United States was saved from extinction by Benjamin Franklin—or what became the United States. And after that, by Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln. These were revolutions. They were called revolutionaries. Roosevelt was a revolutionary, even though what he did was nothing but uphold the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln was a revolutionary, but he did nothing but defend the intent of the Constitution. Franklin was a revolutionary, but he expressed the opinion of the highest levels throughout Europe, of civilization.
So, we have had, in European experiences, that kind of thing. For example, we had a dark age in the 14th Century, in Europe, as a result of this Norman system, the Venetian system. We had a rescue from that in the 15th Century, with the birth of the Renaissance. But, then, beginning 1480, with the rise of this fascist Tomás Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor in Spain, we had a process of attempted breakup of civilization by Torquemada. We had a plunge from 1511-1648 into religious war throughout Europe, which we were saved from by the Treaty of Westphalia.
So, we've accosted this thing, in all known history of European and adjoining civilization, of periods of crisis. In times of crisis, sometimes leadership and people come together, and take an action, with great difficulty, which saves civilization, and may take it a step upward.
The basic problem we have, is, as far back as we know, mankind has been engaged in a struggle to free us from a condition, in which some people—a relative few—hold the rest of the people in a condition of virtual or actual slaves, as human cattle: either herded cattle of the type that 80% of the people of the United States are today; or, as hunted cattle, as we treat the people of Southern Africa. That's the whole thing: The slave system is an example of that. What is that? They went in there, they killed a lot of people, they hunted them down. The Spanish called them "animals." They said, "They're not human. Therefore, we have a right to take them captive, like we take wild animals captive. We kill the strong ones, the old men, the tough ones. We keep the young women and the children. We put the young women and the children into slavery."
That's herded and hunted cattle. The rest of us, who are not hunted down that way, were herded. We're not allowed to know anything. We're not supposed to be "taught things" above our station.
It's like the whole fight in the Reconstruction period, the fight around education—away from Frederick Douglass's policy that the person is free, to the extent their mind is free; to the extent their development has reached a highest enough level, so they are part of society. They're thinking members of society. They're free! And once free in their mind, they'll be free in their body. It went the other way: You can be free in your body, as long as we enslave your mind. And therefore, the educational policy, was "let's not educate the freed slaves above their proper station in life." The educational policy in the United States, today: "Let's not educate our children above the expected kind of employment they're going to have." And that's how we've destroyed ourselves.
So, it's always this kind of struggle: The struggle against the tradition of some people holding other people, as herded or hunted animals. And that's what's happened to the lower 80% of our people in the United States today, the lower income brackets. In these times of crises, civilization will degenerate, unless someone, in the form of leadership, intervenes and arouses the people, awakens them to a great struggle to fight against this tradition of treating human beings as cattle.
So, we win and we lose. And the most important thing you can do with your life, is find yourself in the midst of a great crisis, like this one, and to be able to act in such a way, that you turn the tide, away from destruction into something good....
The LaRouche Doctrine
In response to another question, LaRouche elaborated on his LaRouche Doctrine for peace in Southwest Asia.
LaRouche: You have an impossible situation. You have a general so-called Middle East war, which is a result of a long phase of orchestration of events in the region; and more specifically, what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which a new game came into play. And the first Bush Administration played a more cautious role. What Cheney, at that time, as Secretary of Defense, was a bastard—but they checked him. Then, later, under the new Bush Administration, at a later point in the crisis, this guy went loose. And we now have unleashed, as I said, this policy of perpetual warfare, preventive nuclear warfare: an imperial policy! This is not an issue of Iraq; it's not an issue of Afghanistan, it's not Syria, it's not Iran. It's global intent. One by one, with the threat of nuclear warfare, to bring these nations into imperial submission.
This creates a situation which we see in Iraq, which from a military standpoint, was insane. Now, in other countries, Cheney would use nuclear weapons. For various reasons, they did not use nuclear weapons yet, at least not—except for one incident at the airport, outside Baghdad, where there's a question about what was done there. They did not use nuclear weapons.
But against Iran, the intention is: nuclear weapons. Either nuclear weapons used by the United States, or by Israel. And the alternative is an Israeli attack on Syria, or a U.S. attack on Syria, in January. The alternative, is either an Israeli—dropping of Israeli nuclear weapons on the oil stations and the nuclear stations in Iran; or the U.S. doing it. Or, the U.S. dropping nuclear weapons on sites in North Korea.
We're leading an imperial thrust, at the time that the international monetary-financial system is collapsing.
Now, what this would mean: The United States can not conquer the world. We're a degenerate culture, at the end of our skein, under the present system. Therefore, all this can mean, is U.S. superiority, military superiority, in this way, could lead the whole planet into nothing but a new dark age, of asymmetric warfare.
Under those conditions, you have to respond in a special way, which is what I've done. We know that, my knowledge of the Middle East, and my role in the Middle East gives me a special position: That I can be trusted. I'm the only leading U.S. figure, who can be trusted, and that is a view shared by many people in the region; it goes back over a quarter of a century, more than a quarter-century. So therefore, I have to use that, to state a policy as my policy, for what I've defined as Southwest Asia, as a policy which the United States should support, once it's determined that certain representative institutions in the region, accept that kind of doctrine, that approach.
The second thing that's required, is that Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian question be resolved, or be put into a form which is assuredly resolvable, immediately. Otherwise you can not bring unity, in effect, for this purpose into the region.
That's my policy.
Now, this involves a number of complications, which I've alluded to in my remarks here today. Because of the sophistry in the situation, the Israeli-Arab conflict is of a special nature: It's based on—it's very similar to the religious warfare in Europe between 1618 and 1648. There is no way in which an ordinary conflict negotiation would work. A long period of cultural-religious warfare in the region is not something you can negotiate away, "like that." You therefore have to introduce a commitment, like that that was introduced by Cardinal Mazarin, in the case of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Therefore, we must bring the concept of the Treaty of Westphalia into play in that region.
Now, what the problem has been, since I first became involved in this problem in this region, on the Israeli-Arab and related conflicts in the Middle East, has been that, you could not succeed in getting an economic development program adopted as the basis for negotiating a solution. Because the Treaty of Westphalia was based on each nation, each person in conflict, must agree to commitment to the "advantage of the other": That is, must agree to give primary concern to the welfare of the other. That if the parties that have been warring, will commit themselves to the welfare of one another, then you can have peace. And that's the only way you get peace in this kind of warfare, religious warfare.
Now, the issue here, becomes water. You fly over the whole region, you see sand, sand, sand, sand. You see desert. There's lots of territory, but there's no development. There's not sufficient energy, despite the fact petroleum's all over the place. There's not sufficient water. The Israelis have been taking water from the Jordan, from the Litani region, and from the area of Syria. They've been stealing all the water. There's not enough water to meet the requirements of the population inhabiting the area. Therefore, without an energy policy, without a power policy, a power-development policy, without a hydroelectric policy, without a water policy in general, without a growth policy in the region, there is no way, to provide true "advantage of the other," through development.
Israel has nuclear power, it has nuclear weapons. But, it doesn't have any nuclear power to take care of its own territory, as well as around it. There's no power. There's not enough water. There's no desalination program, on a scale needed for the population, also.
So therefore, to deal with this, you have to have a commitment, to peace through development. You have to have agreement among most of the powers of the region—this includes Turkey, which is a positive factor here; you have to include Armenia; you have to include Azerbaijan, as a stability factor, as well as dealing with Iran. You must dealing with Syria as a state. You must deal with Egypt as a leading state. You must give a sense, that we are giving security, to an implicitly increasingly insecure set of states in the region. Every one of these states, so-called Arab states, are threatened with destruction, chaos, where government exists today, unless this changes.
Therefore, you have a situation, where we know we have to hang together, and work together, otherwise, we're all going to go Hell together. Under those conditions, when that perception comes across, and where there's a commitment to the solution, I believe that you can get a solution, which you can otherwise not get.
Britain's Imperial Game
Q: Would you go back, and touch on the embracing of the Nazi way of civilization—I'm paraphrasing what you said, I've been taking notes on that—this is when the individuals in Nazi Germany saw that they were going to lose, and they made a determination that the Nazi way of life would survive. How was that effected here. Because, you mentioned that it was embraced by individuals on this side. They already had a relationship.
LaRouche: Um-hmm. Like Joe Kennedy—the father of Jack Kennedy—was a Nazi! That simple! That's why Roosevelt dumped him.
Now, the point was this: It goes back to 1763, when the British Empire first emerged at the Treaty of Paris, as a victory at the close of the so-called Seven Years' War in Europe. So, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system became, essentially, an empire. From that point on, this imperial group, the Anglo-Dutch imperial group, was determined to have the British system, the Anglo-Dutch system, emerge as a world empire: a permanent world empire, as successor to the Roman Empire; at that time under the leadership of Lord Shelburne, who was about 28 or 30 when this occurred, who became the leader of this process.
Since that time, the British played a game, always in the interest of the Venetian-style, financier oligarchical system, to play the nations of Europe, and other nations, against each other, in such away that nothing would arise from Europe which would be a challenge to the permanent power of this imperial power, based in London. At the same time, the determination was made—again, in 1763—that there would be no nation formed in the English-speaking colonies in North America. That's the general history of the thing.
That struggle is going on to the present time. The system exists. The system also exists inside the United States. What this evolved into, in the course of the 20th Century, was the idea of a large British Commonwealth, which would include the United States, as a major part of the British Empire. In other words, the United States became the physically leading element of the intended British Empire—run from London, but with the power of the United States behind it. The center of this was largely in two areas: It was in the New York bankers, such as Morgan, Mellon, Harriman, du Pont and so forth; and in the Southern Confederacy, the legacy of the Confederacy. These two forces together represented the idea of the empire.
Now, these forces, coming out of World War I, the Versailles Treaty, created a system that wouldn't work. They knew it. So, a group was assembled, called the Synarchist International, which created every fascist force on the continent of Europe, between 1922 and 1945. So, this was a unit, which was integral to the Anglo-American interest. The Anglo-Americans were the people that put Hitler into power in 1933. But then, toward the middle of the decade, they decided that they didn't want a German dictator of the world. They didn't dislike fascism. They just didn't like to have it German-speaking, instead of English-speaking.
So, for that reason, forces behind Churchill turned against people like Joe Kennedy, Lord Halifax and company, who wanted Hitler, who were friends of Hitler and Göring, who wanted an alliance between the British and Hitler. But other forces, including Churchill, united with Roosevelt against this. The reason they united was, they said: We are not going to have a continental European-based world fascist system.
So therefore, we had an Anglo-American alliance, around Roosevelt, against Hitler. But, as soon as 1942, after Stalingrad was obvious, and after the ensuing events at Midway in June, where the U.S. Navy defeated the Japanese, which meant that the Nazi empire was doomed—not immediately, but in the long run—at that point, Göring and company began to move. And they decided that this nut Hitler would go on with the war—they couldn't stop that—but they were going to prepare to create something which would come out of the war as a rebirth of their system.
Now, all the way through, the Göring circles were closely tied to Anglo-American-Dutch and so forth financial interests. That is, there were common stock companies, which were holding companies, which were owners of the Nazi system, industrial system, and owners also of part of the American system. In July 1944, when the doom of the Nazi system was obvious, militarily, after the breakthrough at Normandy, these guys moved. And they moved through a guy who became—who's an enemy of mine, but a guy who also became an enemy, François Genoud. François Genoud, in Switzerland (who became one of my notable enemies during the 1980s), was the go-between between the Nazi interests and Allen Dulles, who brought this Nazi system inside the U.S. system, and the British system.
So, Truman was the realization of this. Truman was, in effect, a Nazi! The President of the United States, a Democrat. And Truman and the British launched the so-called Cold War policy. This was moderated by Eisenhower, because Truman brought us to the edge of nuclear war. And, once the United States knew, that the Soviet Union had developed a thermonuclear weapon—deployable—the United States said to Truman: "Retire, buddy! You're finished." And they brought Eisenhower in, who was opposed to that kind of policy.
Then, when Eisenhower retired, Allen Dulles and company went back with the same process, unleashed the Missile Crisis, killed Kennedy, and moved on to the Indo-China War—and the transformation of our culture into this so-called post-industrial degeneracy we have today.
Two Forces at Play in U.S.
Q: So that, based on that, at that time of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower—there're two forces at play? There're two forces at play: the ones that represent—that Dulles represented; and the ones who would say, "No, this is enough. Enough is enough."
LaRouche: Or, more—"got to get rid of it."
Q: Okay. But, there are two forces at play. One, you laid out, was the Anglo-Dutch financial piece. Who was the other one?
LaRouche: That's us. I mean, in this country, in our institutions, in our traditions, we have a Constitutional tradition, which is not just us living today. It's something we have from the 18th Century and earlier; it's a cultural tradition which we have, which is transmitted from generation to generation.
And, you find that people in our government; that is, in the Executive branch, either retired or serving, as military—not Boykin or Miller, but more sane people—that these sane people, certain people in our intelligence services; Colby was like that. Colby was a mixed bag, but Colby was, in a sense, on my side.
So, you had people who were devoted to the American tradition. Because we think of ourselves as being responsible for this country. We're responsible. I mean, the country needs some leadership. We have to be the repository and supply of leadership, to help pull the people together, to defend our nation.
Q: That group was outflanked in 2000. It was outflanked.
LaRouche: Well, in part. Because Clinton is a complication. Gore, yes; Gore's a terrible character. But Clinton is probably one of the brightest political figures we've had, in high office. But he belongs to this generation. And, he's very bright. He can actually think—unlike many of politicians of the type we have running loose today. They can't think! They really can't! They can scheme, but they can't think. But he can actually think conceptually. But Clinton believes the mystique of his generation. That's his weak point. So, what happened in 2000—what was outflanked was me: What you had, is you had a bunch of racists who excluded me from the election campaign.
And that kept off the platform—in other words, if I had not been excluded, the way I was excluded that year, Gore would have been elected. But it would have been largely to my credit. And, we, Clinton and so forth, and others, would have preserved control over the governmental process. We'd have saved the country. But, when Gore—the damned fool—blew the election, with his nonsense, then you had this Bush thing!
The fascists took over! And Bush is nothing but an idiot, the young Bush. But Cheney and company, and what's behind him, took over. And they were on their way, as I said—as I said in January, before Bush was inaugurated: It was inevitable, because Bush is stupid, because the Administration's party is stupid, we're going into the worst financial crisis, which is already coming on. And because of this, we have to expect that some Hermann Göring is going to do something, like setting fire to the Reichstag, in order to bring about dictatorship in the United States—and that happened on Sept. 11, 2001.
That's the issue.
Now, we've got a point, that I was right. Many people in the institutions recognize that I was right. They don't control the parties, but they are part of our system. And they recognize I was right. And you now have a fight to get rid of Cheney, which happened, because we did it. We haven't got rid of him, yet.
'An Idiot on the Wrong Side' As President
Q: The reason I said "outflanked," is that, it appears as though that group plays power centers within power centers. Within the Pentagon, there's a power group that "answers" to Cheney. And, there is, I think in the State Department—I call them "power centers"—and that they have effectively outmaneuvered the structure that has been in place; but that today, behind the headlines, it appears as though there is a struggle. That there's a struggle within the military, or the military against that group—
LaRouche: Yeah, right.
Q: There is something going on.
LaRouche: Start—look at the way our Executive branch is structured. Under our Constitution, the Executive branch has an importance which does not exist in any other country in Europe. Doesn't exist. Those are parliamentary systems. Ours is a Presidential system. Under a Presidential system, under a Constitutional Presidential system, it is the Executive branch that acts. Now, the Presidential system doesn't act too well, if you have an idiot as President. We have an idiot who's on the wrong side as President. I don't know what side he's on—I don't know if he knows what side he's on.
But, nonetheless, the people who are in the Executive branch—or, like me, who are outside, but part of it—we represent, like professors who are no longer in, or that sort of thing, we represent a core of the Executive branch's Constitutional tradition in the United States. What I did, was I concentrated—while people were trying to play other games—I said, "The only way you're going to stop this crap: You've got to mobilize and assemble a hard core of the professional Executive branch of government, to act with concerted influence and force, to induce the institutions of the country to react, to change this."
And that's what we've done. You see it all over the press. We've spilled the beans. We couldn't act immediately, because you can't raise a coup against your own government! But, we moved to influence—to expose, to expose, to expose, to make clear. And we have, so far, succeeded, and events have confirmed that. So therefore, we have, today, a force inside the United States, which is fighting, against this nonsense. And these are the people, if I were President tomorrow, these are exactly the people I could depend upon, as a President, to move things!
What I'm trying to do on this doctrine, on the Southwest Asia Doctrine, is: If people in this part of the world agree with what I propose, and many do, then the institutions of the United States know, that this is the way to go. We move in. We change things. We make an agreement with the people in this area, on a new policy for the entire Southwest Asia region. And we know it'll work; we can make it work. We just have to get Cheney and company out of the way. I think that, even with idiot Bush we can handle it. Because his daddy and company would recognize how dangerous the situation is, and they probably would support it.
So, we could probably get the Executive—even with this idiot, the incumbent President of the United States—to say, that this is policy. If the President of the United States instituted an Executive Order, stating it was this policy—this doctrine is policy of the United States—then we have a deal. Then we can move. We can disengage the troops immediately. Put the country back in the charge of the Iraqis. We can get out of this mess.
But, the problem we immediately face—once you do that, then you got to say, "What are you going to do about Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" And, you've got to find ways—and there are ways to deal with it. You've got to be flexible, somewhat, but you know what your objective is: Your objective is to bring a durable peace agreement, between the two forces.
