This article appears in the March 31, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this article]
THE U.S. INVASION OF IRAQ
Twenty Years Later:
The LaRouches Were More Than Right
Twenty years ago this month, a U.S.-led military coalition began a war against the Republic of Iraq. On March 19, 2003 the shock-and-awe bombing campaign began; on March 20 the invasion phase began, involving 160,000 troops from mostly the U.S. and UK, and also Australia and Poland. This aggression, killing thousands outright and causing mass death through destruction since, was based on the lie that the government of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche each addressed the strategic circumstances and import of this terrible assault, at the time of its launch, in their presentations to a pre-scheduled Schiller Institute international conference. The event was held March 21-23 in Bad Schwalbach, Germany, with the title, “How to Reconstruct a Bankrupt World.” The 600 attendees from 45 nations experienced a lesson in statecraft and forecasting par excellence.
Lyndon LaRouche:
Iraq War as Classical Tragedy
In his opening day keynote address to the conference, titled “Physical Geometry as Strategy,” Lyndon LaRouche characterized the Iraq War as a classical tragedy, and with uncanny prescience warned of disastrous consequences were the war not stopped, with the end game being global war. Twenty years later, he is proven to have been absolutely right. The opening of his address follows.
“There is a combination of farce and tragedy in progress in Washington, D.C. It’s a kind of Shakespearean farce, in which the President is playing the role of King Lear, and the Vice President that of Lady Macbeth. But this is a very serious matter. Sometimes fools will do what others will not do, and sometimes, he who wishes to have a great crime committed, finds a fool to do it, because he won’t shrink from it, because he doesn’t know any better. Like this poor President, who sincerely does not know what he’s doing. Has no idea what the reality is, in which he’s operating.
“What we have to understand is that, in this tragedy, as in all Classical tragedies, in all true tragedies in history, the root of disaster is not leaders of the people. It is not leading institutions. It is the people themselves, who bring disaster upon themselves, by selecting leaders, or by supporting leaders, who are the agents of that disaster. That’s what the Greek tragedy teaches. That’s what Shakespeare teaches. That’s what Schiller teaches. That’s truth.
“Therefore, when we come to a time of crisis, the people must, first of all, examine themselves, and when studying the misleaders, they must look inside themselves, and find the error by which they become complicit in the evil work done by those leaders.”
Later in his speech, LaRouche referred back to his January 2001 forecast for the incoming Bush administration and looked into the future targeting of China as part of the intent in launching the Iraq War:
“What I forecast, in my broadcast, on the 27th of January of 2001, was that, we are in a situation today, where, by the year 2000, the United States was already in a hyperinflationary mode—that is, the rate of money being printed, or issued in other ways, to roll over bankrupt financial assets, was such that we were in a hyperinflationary spiral. That meant that the postwar system, especially the system of the post-1971 floating-exchange-rate system, was now at an end phase: It was doomed. Nothing could have saved this financial system, then or now. The IMF in its present form, cannot survive. If it does survive, then the human race won’t survive.
“So I said, then, in January, that’s where we were. Therefore, we would expect, given what the Bush Administration is, what forces were involved, that we have to expect, not only a depression, an accelerating depression, which has accelerated, in fact, since then—it was already in process earlier. But that we had to look for the occurrence of a Reichstag-fire-like event, a terrorist event, which will be used as a pretext, to bring in emergency government into power in the United States, which would then launch war, or a warlike posture, in order to attempt to control the political situation, by worldwide warfare, rather than facing the economic crisis.
“Now, there are some people who think that the war against Iraq is a war against Iraq: It is not a war against Iraq. It is a war against the pretext of Iraq, to start a world war. The purpose behind this is a world war, not an Iraq war. If you don’t stop, there is no “after” Iraq war. The Iraq war will never end. The destruction of Iraq may occur within the next days or weeks, but the Iraq war will never end because you will be going into another war, under an administration which is totally committed to a worldwide fascist imperialism. I’ll make clear what that is.
“Therefore, we must stop it. This war is not inevitable. Its continuation is not inevitable. We must stop it. Those who say, let’s accept an inevitable war, and try to clean up afterward, are fools. There is no afterwards. There’s only a continuing war. You could expect the bombing of North Korea to occur, almost automatically, in the context of this, if it’s not stopped. And it won’t stop there. Iran is on the target list already. And this war could spill into Iran, already. The war would explode throughout the Middle East, if it’s continued. It cannot be stopped, unless the war as a whole is stopped.
“China is one of the nations targeted by this war, which gives you some sense of what the dimensions are, what we’re up against.
“We must stop this war.”
Lyndon LaRouche’s full speech is available here.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche:
The Eurasian Land-Bridge, Not War
On Day Two of the conference, March 22, 2003, Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered her keynote titled, “The Eurasian Land-Bridge Concept, the Answer to the Strategic Crisis,” in which she identified the growing collaboration between Russia, China, India, and other countries as a hopeful force for the future. The opening remarks of her address follow.
“You all know that the war has escalated in a major way, last night, with probably 1,000 bombs and 1,000 cruise missiles. And, I must tell you, I feel sick: Because what is happening is mass murder, and the whole world is watching it.
“So, if Friedrich Schiller would be alive today, and he would look at this strategic situation, and the historical moment, what would he say? I’m sure he would say something like, ‘You foolish people! Don’t you see that Nemesis is about to strike? That there is a higher lawfulness, which will come back and haunt you for what you are doing?’
“The crime being committed is enormous. The presumptuous arrogance of the present war-party is paired with an enormous guilt, which nobody will take away from them. The defiance of truth and justice is so gigantic, that Nemesis will strike. The higher lawfulness of the laws of the universe will assert itself, given the fact that there is no case against Iraq, that there is no threat against any other country—not its neighbors and, for sure, not the United States. There is no proven link to al-Qaeda, and there was compliance, in the destruction of the weapons Iraq possessed. There is no UN mandate to use force. And therefore, given that all of these things are the case, this represents a war of aggression, which, as Lyn was pointing out, may trigger a global war.
“The doctrine of preemptive war, the incredible idea to use, in a first strike, nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons, if not stopped, means the end of international law and the return to barbarism. It could plunge the world into a Dark Age and international anarchy, which is why we have to work to reverse this, as quickly as possible.
“The crime of aggression is an international crime, even if the United States does not agree to the Den Haag [Hague] court; and therefore, it is subject to universal jurisdiction in the statutes of the International Criminal Court, and it should serve as a warning to all political leaders, not to violate the UN Charter stand on the use of force against another state, except in self-defense.
“After the Azores summit, it was very clear: Whom the gods want to destroy, they first drive mad. Because what you saw there was three madmen, one more crazy than the other. But, one can also be confident about one thing: That Thursday, March 20, 2003, the day the war started, will be historically known as the day the American Empire started to decay. Because, what we are seeing, is with all empires, that when they engage in such immoral acts, they are suffering from a moral and logistical overstretching which eventually will lead to their demise. And the only question is: How much damage will this empire inflict on the world, before it collapses?
“There are many historical comparisons, where empires behaved like that. One was Napoleon’s campaign into Russia, which ended with the known debacle, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed and only a few thousand came back. There’s another comparison, which is the fall of Classical Greece, which was described by Thucydides in The Peloponnesian Wars, the first major historical work, in which he described why, without any necessity—when Greece had conquered the Persian Empire, and it could have been totally happy, living peacefully thereafter—it had to decide to become an imperial power, subjugating its previous allies, and making them slaves and subjects; and then continuing the war against Sparta, and eventually the campaign against Sicily; and that was the point where the overstretching had reached its limit. And, that was the end of Classical Greece.
“We have right now, a moment where the world financial system, and more than only the financial system, is coming to an end. And, this blowout of the system would also occur if there would be no war. So, this is the end of the system.
“The only good news, in all of this, is that the alternative to the collapsing, old system is already coming together. The new alliance between France, Germany, Russia, China, India, Iran, and many other countries, who are uniting for the Eurasian Land-Bridge, is coming together. And, we are seeing now, a very advanced stage of something which Lyn predicted in his famous press conference on Oct. 12, 1988 in Berlin: Where he proposed that kind of cooperation, at that time, in its germ form; that the soon-to-be-unified Germany should use Poland as a model case to be developed with Western technologies, as a model for all the countries of the East.
“Then his proposal of the Productive Triangle in 1989, from Paris-Berlin-Vienna; our continuation of that proposal in ’91, when Lyn proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge; and naturally then the entire ’90’s our fight to make this Land-Bridge a reality.
“Now, this all is, indeed, a very historical perspective, because it has been on the table for a very long time. This idea of uniting Eurasia through infrastructure cooperation was already the vision of Gottfried Leibniz. And, it was, for sure, the content of the political cooperation between Count Witte of Russia and Gabriel Hanotaux of France, by the end of the 19th Century.
“Now, the fact that the British imperialists, especially through the evil manipulations of Edward VII, and the stupidity of the last two Tsars, and of Kaiser Wilhelm II, meant that this Eurasian collaboration was sabotaged. And that sabotage led to two world wars, and this is why the entire 20th Century was a century, essentially, full of tragedies.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s full speech is available here.
Emergency Declaration:
‘Stop the War Against Iraq!’
At the conclusion of the March 23, 2003 Bad Schwalbach conference, an emergency declaration was passed by participants from 45 countries: Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Cameroon, Canada, China, Congo, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Eritrea, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Iraq, Iran, Italy, Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Slovakia, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Following is the full text of the Declaration.
“Not only must the ongoing war of aggression against Iraq be condemned as completely illegal, and as an assault against international law—it must be stopped! It must be stopped because it opens up an era of anarchy and of return to the rule of ‘Faustrecht’ (right of the strongest); but this time, under conditions of the killing-power of modern weaponry, or even nuclear weapons. As Iraq is only the first target of such illegal imperial pre-emptive wars, this unfolding ‘Clash of Civilizations’ has to be brought to a halt, now!
“We are presently experiencing the end phase of a systemic collapse, financial and other, in which the post-war institutions, for example, the IMF, NATO and the European Union, are breaking apart. Therefore, let us create new institutions, which better serve the interests of the peoples and the nations of the world. Specifically, all those governments in the United Nations which have spoken out against the Iraq war, should come together now, and call for an emergency conference, to urgently reorganize the global financial system according to the guidelines for a ‘New Bretton Woods’, laid out by Lyndon LaRouche.
“The ‘Eurasian Union’ that has emerged as an ad hoc alliance against the Anglo-American unilateral war, should proceed to implement the needed alternative: the Eurasian Land-Bridge infrastructure program must become the locomotive for world development. Based on the principles of physical economy, these long-term infrastructure projects of some 25 years, financed by state credit generated by sovereign nation-state governments, can overcome the depression and mass unemployment. The Eurasian Land-Bridge is not limited to Europe and Asia, but is designed to extend through the Middle East into Africa, and across the Bering Straits to the Americas. In this way, we commit ourselves to repudiating once and for all the central banking, free trade, colonial-imperial order which leads to destruction and war.
“In order to stop this ‘Clash of Civilizations’, leaders of nations from around the world must act to bring about a change of policy in the United States of America. One lever for doing this is the U.S. Presidential election campaign; and here, above all, the candidacy of Lyndon LaRouche. A pre-candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Lyndon LaRouche is devoting all his energy to bringing the United States into this process of peaceful world reconstruction. This process spearheaded by Lyndon LaRouche—and not imperial war—is the true interest of America.
“We can only succeed in achieving peace and building a better world, if we consciously create a new Renaissance. The best way to do this is through a dialogue of civilizations among all nations participating in the great Eurasian Land-Bridge development project. This dialogue should focus on the universal image of Man as a cognitive being uniquely endowed with the gift of creative reason, which constitutes, therefore, the very basis for the notion of human dignity.
“The crisis in the United Nations Security Council over the Iraq war has revealed the need to enhance the currently inadequate concept of international law, by grounding it more deeply and rigorously in the concept of natural law. The relations among nations, as among individuals, must be in harmony with the laws of universal Creation.
“Mankind has probably never been in such an existential crisis as this. Every human being is called upon to grow morally, in order to take responsibility for the outcome of this historical moment. Ordinary men and women are called upon to take leadership. In an extraordinary moment like this, one cannot transfer the responsibility to existing institutions, which either contributed to the current tragedy, or did not prevent it. All people of good will, but especially the youth of the world, must produce the leadership necessary to guide the world to safety.”
The original press release from March 23, 2003 publishing the Declaration is available here.
