Obama's March 6 Executive Order:
Dictatorship for War
by Jeffrey Steinberg
March 9—With President Obama's declaration last week of a National Emergency as the result of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, the President has moved one giant step closer to declaring an outright dictatorship over the United States. Obama has put himself in a state of "pre-impeachment," declared Lyndon LaRouche on March 6.
His actions also moved the world precariously closer to a military confrontation between the United States and Russia that could lead to thermonuclear World War III. The biggest obstacle to war prevention, LaRouche further warned in discussion with colleagues on March 8, is the cowardice and Wall Street-induced corruption of the U.S. Congress, which is the main obstacle to Obama's immediate removal from office via impeachment or by invoking the 25th Amendment.
In a brief press statement late last week, Obama announced that the Ukraine crisis posed a direct threat to the national security of the United States, and for that reason, he was invoking a National Emergency via Executive Order. In that brief statement, and the Order that accompanied it, the President violated the law by failing to present any findings of fact backing his declaration of emergency.
According to senior U.S. intelligence sources, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had delivered their own recommendations and findings to the President and the National Security Council earlier last week, concluding that the U.S. did not have any direct strategic interests in the Crimean region of Ukraine, but that the Russians certainly did. The Chiefs noted that the United States had treaty obligations to NATO allies, but that Ukraine is not a NATO member. Russia has vital strategic interests in the Crimea, centered on its Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol, which is leased to Russia for the next 30 years, under a 1990s treaty with Ukraine. Sevastopol and the Black Sea are Russia's only access to the Mediterranean.
JCS Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey reiterated the Pentagon's view in a lengthy interview March 7 with PBS NewsHour. Dempsey emphasized that the Ukraine dispute must be resolved diplomatically, candidly warning, in response to a question from Judy Woodruff, that the crisis could lead to war. Sources have emphasized that, for the Pentagon, cooperation with Russia is vital to the planned U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan this year. Forty percent of the troop and equipment withdrawal is conducted along the "northern route" through Central Asia and Russia. There are other vital areas of cooperation, including the ongoing P5+1 negotiations with Iran, the war on drugs and terrorism, and the Syrian and North Korean situations, which require Russian-American cooperation.
Despite all of this, President Obama went ahead with his unconstitutional, dictatorial measure to declare the national emergency. This action by the President is consistent with his declaration, during his State of the Union address in late January, that he will rule by decree and Executive Order, even in situations where Congress has exclusive Constitutional authority. He has made good on his pledge to rip up the Constitution repeatedly since then, including in his re-writing of his signature Obamacare legislation without going to Congress.
Impeachment Mooted
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) walked out of Obama's State of the Union address and told reporters afterwards that he is considering filing impeachment articles against the President for his flagrant violation of the Constitution. On Capitol Hill, there are a half-dozen other Members who have made similar statements and threats over President Obama's repeated illegal actions, including the Libya war, the domestic warrantless spying on Americans, and his ongoing program to assassinate American citizens without due process.
In the past week, the President has not only upped the ante in Ukraine by threatening sanctions against the Russian government, sanctions which were actually incorporated into his Executive Order declaring a national emergency (without naming any specific Russian officials or economic actions). American warships have been ordered into the Black Sea, and American fighter planes have been dispatched to Eastern European NATO member-states as a further show of force/provocation against Moscow. It is well known that personal relations between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have hit rock-bottom in recent months, with Obama boycotting the opening ceremony at the Sochi Winter Olympics, and now cancelling all bilateral diplomatic and military meetings.
In his PBS-TV interview, General Dempsey made clear that, despite the formal cancellations, he is maintaining daily communications with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, to assure that the focus remains on a diplomatic solution and war avoidance. This has been the consistent approach of the JCS, including on the Iran negotiations. According to Congressional sources, Dempsey and the head of the Central Command, Gen. Lloyd Austin, played a pivotal role in convincing the U.S. Senate to delay voting on new sanctions on Iran—sanctions that would have sabotaged the ongoing P5+1 talks and led, almost inevitably, to costly and deadly military conflict with Iran.
As LaRouche has repeatedly warned, no sane American President would be playing nuclear chicken games with Moscow at this time. But Obama is personally a tool of Wall Street and City of London oligarchical circles who are desperate over the irreversible and imminent bankruptcy of their global financial system, and who are intent on looting the still economically viable regions of Eurasia. For the financial oligarchy, the splitting of Ukraine from Russia has been a 20-year project, which has now reached the moment of showdown. The imperial bankers are willing to run the risk of global thermonuclear extinction, rather than lose their power over global finance. This British willingness to bring the world to the point of thermonuclear showdown is predicated on the "credible" threat posed by the U.S. nuclear arsenal. And that is contingent on Obama remaining in office as their pliable pawn.
In the past week, LaRouche has been featured on four occasions on Russian nationwide news programs, delivering his warnings about the neo-Nazi character of Ukraine coup and the danger of thermonuclear extinction. By prominently featuring LaRouche—the leading proponent of Obama's impeachment and the reinstatement of Glass Steagall—the Russians are making clear that they are not going to back down to Obama's and London's threats.
In addition to the prominent featuring of LaRouche in the Russian media, the Russian international news outlet RT has featured new evidence that the entire regime-change project in Ukraine was illegal and was dominated by Western-financed neo-Nazi circles that are the direct offspring of World War II-era war criminals from the Stepan Bandera armed movement of Hitler collaborators. Last week, RT aired the audio tape of a conversation between EU Foreign Secretary Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Umas Paet on Feb. 26, in which Paet told Ashton that it was the Maidan protesters, not the Yanukovych government, who fired sniper shots, killing both demonstrators and police, that set off the armed insurrection leading to Yanukovych's ouster and the formation of a rump regime dominated by neo-Nazi groups, including the Right Sector and Svoboda.
The Maidan killings were conducted to sabotage the signed agreement between Yanukovych and the three opposition party leaders, and the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland, aimed at ending the showdown in Kiev with early elections, constitutional changes, and other measures to bring the crisis to an end.
While the Ashton-Paet tape has been widely reported in the Russian media, as well as by some European news outlets, the damning revelations have been covered up by the U.S. establishment media, allowing Obama to continue to focus attention on the Russian actions in the Crimea, ignoring the fact that the EU and the Obama Administration have backed a neo-Nazi coup on Russia's border.
Both Russia and China are viewing the events in Ukraine as indicative of a larger Western plan for strategic encirclement and regime change in Moscow and Beijing, further driving the world towards war of extinction.
As the trans-Atlantic financial system moves ever closer to a moment of total blowout, the desperation of the London-Wall Street nexus grows, and serves to further underscore that, only by removing Obama from office and reinstating Glass-Steagall—an action that would instantly bankrupt the Anglo-Dutch-Wall Street oligarchy—can war be prevented. Without the pressure on Congress from the Wall Street banksters, Members of Congress could be expected to rise above their current paralysis and move directly for impeachment.
Recent comments of Russian National Railway Corporation head Vladimir Yakunin to Russian news media indicate that the Russians are well aware of this possibility. Yakunin identified the source of the crisis in Ukraine as an "international oligarchy" which is hell-bent on confrontation.
Obama's ouster pulls the plug on that oligarchy and is the key to mankind's survival past the coming days and weeks.
