LAROUCHE ON AFGHANISTAN
British Push U.S.A. into Asia Land War
In April 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy held a meeting with Gen. Douglas MacArthur at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the retired general was in residence. In that meeting, and in a subsequent longer private lunch at the White House in July 1961, the young American President took in the sage advice of one of America's greatest living soldiers. According to numerous accounts of the two sessions, including an April 30, 1964 interview with Robert Kennedy, the by-then-slain President's brother, General MacArthur impressed on Kennedy that the United States should never allow itself to be drawn into a land war in Asia.
Shortly after the second Kennedy-MacArthur session, the President told one of his National Security aides, Walter Rostow, that he had been convinced that it would be folly to risk sending American ground troops to Southeast Asia. To put deeds behind his words, the President instructed Rostow to cancel orders, already cut, to deploy 10,000 Marines from their base in Okinawa, to Vietnam.
The following year, in the Summer of 1962, President Kennedy's Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. David M. Shoup, made a fact-finding visit to South Vietnam. He returned and reported to the President: "Under no circumstances should the U.S. become involved in a land war in Southeast Asia."
The die had been cast. President Kennedy, despite intense pressure from some of his top advisors, including Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, determined that General MacArthur was right. He would not fall into the British trap of a land war on the opposite end of the Earth.
Now, another young American President, Barack Obama, is facing the same pressures from the same brand of advisors, to dispatch an additional 45,000 American troops, on top of the 68,000 American troops already deployed in Afghanistan. This time around, the President is being pressured to plunge America deeper into a land war in Asia by some of his top generals, including the Central Command chief, Gen. David Petraeus (USA), and Gen. Stanley McChrystal (USA), the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the author of the recently leaked 66-page commander's assessment.
On Sept. 26, General McChrystal delivered his formal request for up to 45,000 additional troops, to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
This time around, President Obama is being urged to avoid the Asia land-war trap by his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton explicitly drew the parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan, according to a news report on Sept. 23 in the London Financial Times.
From the very outset of the Afghan imbroglio, Lyndon LaRouche has invoked the words of General MacArthur, to argue against the United States being dragged into the British "Great Game" trap of Asian land wars. During a discussion with colleagues on Sept. 19, 2009, concerning what he termed "the fundamental issue of Afghanistan," LaRouche offered the following warning:
What we've had, is, the United States has been destroyed, in a large degree, since Franklin Roosevelt; but it was also tried earlier, by getting the United States into wars—land wars in Asia, and other places, but essentially land wars in Asia, has been the post-Roosevelt-period attack.
So therefore, we're now fighting a land war in Asia.
We say, land war in Asia is a crime against humanity. We say, the issue of land war in Asia, was the reason that [President John F.] Kennedy was killed! Because he opposed launching a major land war in Asia, and for that, he was killed! And he was killed by international circles, which were tied to the British, but came through the French and Spanish-speaking side, in what was done in Dallas.
And so, we say, land wars in Asia are the chief device by which the British induce the United States, to shoot itself, not only in the foot, but the head. Therefore, we're against land wars in Asia. And when we look at the thing from that standpoint, we see that there never was a good reason for getting the United States into land wars in Asia.
Our War Is with the British Empire
Our war is with the British Empire. Or what we call the British Empire. And we have no other reason for war against anybody else, except defensive wars against attacks, by other forces. But we're suckers, because we're constantly drawn in by the Brits, into destroying ourselves for the greater glory of the British Empire, by getting into land wars in Asia!
You look at this thing in 1966-1967, and you look at it from the standpoint of: Kennedy was trying to revive the U.S. economy, from the damage done by previous circles, and got involved in a number of things, which just set him up. And on the question of the land war in Asia, he dug his heels in and said, "No!" He said, "No" to McNamara; he said no to all these other creeps. And they killed him! For that! Then we got into a land war in Asia! Because [President Lyndon] Johnson was afraid they were going to shoot him, too. And, we were going into that until 1975, in Indo-China.
Now, we got into a couple of Iraq wars, a land war in Asia; we're dragged down into a permanent land war in Asia, called the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is orchestrated by the British; and that's a central feature—we are involved more, mentally, in the Arab-Israeli thing, than in any actual war that we're directly involved in! Our mentality is controlled by that! Look at the way the Congress behaves, look at the way the politicians behave. A land war in Asia, is the ideology by which we are corrupted and destroyed!
So, now, you get into this kind of thing, where they want a compromise, on land war in Asia. And some people want to compromise with Obama on land war in Asia. So you have a "McChrystal Standstill," while the war goes on, an ulcerated war. And you have all this thing about "who's our enemy?" We operate on a list that we got to defend the United States against our enemy. We have really one enemy! That enemy is the British Empire!
That's where the problem arises: The failure to see the historic issue here—it's in our Constitution—the issue between a credit system, which is our Constitutional system, and a monetarist system, which is an imperialist system. That's been the issue! That's been the issue internally, between Wall Street, for example, and this banking issue and so forth. The monetarist issue as against the credit system issue: The question of the U.S. sovereignty as a republic, as opposed to being part of a patchwork—of imperialists sowing together a patchwork.
The Korean War
Later, in response to a question about the Korean War, LaRouche said:
It was provoked, but it was done to try to destroy Douglas MacArthur. Because the British had lost World War II to Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific. And on top of everything, Australia had taken the position of the United States and MacArthur, against the position of Churchill, on this whole area.
Then you had Truman, and Churchill induced Truman to drop two nuclear weapons—the only ones we had, and they were experimental models—on Japan! A Japan which was already defeated! And for this purpose, Truman and Churchill and company, postponed the peace settlement, which had been negotiated through the Vatican, with Japan, with the Mikado, in order to have the opportunity to drop two nuclear weapons on the civilian population of Japan—in order to take the credit of this [the victory in the Pacific] away from MacArthur. MacArthur, in a sense, was then destroyed, in his influence, deliberately, under the Truman Administration, on behalf of Churchill, through the Korean War.
And that's one of the reasons that was taken into account by MacArthur, exactly that history, in advising President Kennedy no land war in Asia, for the United States!
