LAROUCHE ON AFGHANISTAN
No U.S. Troops; Shut Down the Drug Traffic
On Jan. 29, Lyndon LaRouche issued a policy statement insisting, as he had stated during his Jan. 22 webcast, that the United States should absolutely not send any troops to Afghanistan:
I see no reason for sending U.S. troops into Afghanistan. As I said: There's only one issue there of strategic interest, and that is the protection of the sovereignty of a government in that country. Because the problem does not lie in the country. The problem lies in those who have a market overseas for opium and heroin. Shut down the market! It's not something produced in a country for consumption by that country. It's a poison-your-neighbor policy.
It should be clear why I insist that there be no U.S. troops in Afghanistan, except in the case of assistance to the integrity of the government of Afghanistan in its own capital. The British are trying to get U.S. soldiers killed in a trap which the British themselves have set, with their role, as with George Soros, in promoting the international market in drugs. Anybody who works with Soros is really an enemy of the United States. But of course, knowing the youthful history of George Soros, we're not surprised by such things.
LaRouche went on to discuss what's behind the skyrocketing production of opium and heroin in Afghanistan:
It's because of the shipment of the crop to its market. That's what we have to get the attention concentrated on. That's the key thing. So, therefore, you have to destroy the system of drug pushing. And how? Well, take away their ability to distribute from that area. If they don't have a market, they're going to cut it out. Take the market away from them, which is where the Four Powers collaboration of the U.S., Russia, China, and India that I have proposed, comes into play, on that issue.
People define the question, they put up the wrong question, and naturally that's the best way to get the wrong answer. The question is not how do you control the drug production in a country. The question is how do you make the whole system inoperable. And that depends on the export of the drug.
LaRouche turned to the historic example of Britain's 19th-Century Opium War against China:
This was the characteristic of the Chinese operation by the British. They exported drugs from India, first of all, primarily to China. You had, at the same time, drugs from Turkey, which was a concession by the British, to their markets. So thus, the drug is not a characteristic of the population that produces the drug; the effect of it may be there, but the problem lies in the distribution of it internationally. It works like the WTO!
The issue is: You've got to shut down the market to which it is sold. And the Chinese had that idea, but the British came in with their military operation to prevent the Chinese from shutting down the market.
The opium was produced, for China, largely in India. But you were not going to solve the problem, therefore, by going to India on the question of the opium poppy. You were going to solve the problem by shutting down the market for the opium, which means the consumer.
So why send troops to Afghanistan? You're not addressing the problem. The problem is the distribution. And the problem is you need to have a system of sovereign nation-states with borders which are respected. Once you make the borders effective, then the drug trafficking doesn't work anyway—especially if you obliterate the financial side of it."
LaRouche also stated that Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right when he recently called for a dialogue with Iran. "We should talk to the Iranians about this drug problem, about securing the region against the drug problem," LaRouche said. "Iran will get on the bad side of the Saudis on this one, because the Saudis are in with the drug operation.
The U.S. should have a policy of shrewder imagination, and get out of the rut," LaRouche added. "Let's start thinking clearly about how we deal with these problems. We should be talking to Iran about our mutual interest in freeing the world of this drug pestilence. They are not blind on the issue of the 'colonial powers' involved. So why not take the best side of them, and give them a chance to get out from under this kind of situation they're subjected to?
