This statement appears in the April 26, 2002 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LaRouche Tells Bush:
Do Not Repeat Bill Clinton's Mistake!

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

April 14, 2002

President Bush has but one problem which he must face personally, if he is going to escape successfully from the "lame duck" trap being set for him currently by both the Lieberman- Brzezinski cabal, which is doing just that intentionally, and also the manifest majority among his relevant current advisors, who are doing it out of stupidity.

He must dump every consideration but standing before a mirror, to ask himself, "Forget the election-campaign. Do what neither Senator Lieberman or Al Gore would be capable of doing: Think like the kind of President our Constitution implies." Remember President Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis. It would help the President to see his available pathway more clearly, if he would tell Ari Fleischer to dump the current White House line on Bill Clinton's performance.

Clinton expressed excellent intentions, but he failed on four leading counts, four counts on which he acted more like a sponsor and lawyer for Ehud Barak's career, than as the President of the U.S.A. First, he entangled himself in Barak's career publicly. Second, when Barak set the President up as a patsy, Clinton swallowed it. To this he added two fatal mistakes which helped to make Ariel Sharon's currently ongoing, Nazi- Warsaw-Ghetto-like operations against the Palestinians possible. First, he evaded the fact that no peace between Israel and Palestine would ever become possible, without a major economic-development program based upon massive desalination and related water development programs. Second, when Chairman Arafat had been ready to sign on the dotted line, so to speak, the President publicly blamed Arafat, rather than Barak, for blowing up the Camp David negotiations, by bringing the issue of redistributing Middle East religious sites, such as Holy Mountain, thus creating the circumstances under which Sharon unleashed the present campaign of religious warfare and radical-right-wing Likud ethnic cleansing policies, into the situation.

Clinton's biggest blunder of all, was his fatal error of allowing himself to be put in the position of presiding over a negotiation over Middle East religious sites, thus helping Sharon set the stage for unleashing a form of religious warfare in the Middle East which threatens to enflame most of the world.

No inaugurated President of the U.S.A. should ever permit any political or personal pressures to cause him to forget the unique meaning of the words "President of the U.S.A." among the governments of the world. President Eisenhower typifies the quality of President who made a decision of that quality in the matter of the Suez Crisis. A President must put his political career at total risk, if need be, if he must take that risk by making a Presidential, rather than a partisan political or career decision, in any moment in which the nature of the constitutional office of President is a stake. Such a moment, such a decision, hovers before President Bush right now.

Our Federal constitutional government is historically unique among the nations of the world. In spite of the several existential crises which our system of self-government has suffered, such as that of 1932-1933, it has never been necessary to disturb the principles of our Constitution, especially as this pertains to our Executive Branch, with its implicit constitutional personal powers and responsibilities of the President. The assurance that this will continue to be the case, depends upon the degree to which the incumbent President, as a person, is able to recognize that it is to that Constitution and its implications, that he must be faithful, above all other possibly conflicting considerations.

The President who can say "No. Do not push me to cross this line," even when virtually all his advisors and constituents are pushing him, is a true President, whenever that decision is based on Constitutional considerations inherent in that office.

The present Middle East crisis is such a point of decision, one of several most crucial such tests which are now piling up to confront the recently inaugurated President. The United States' most vital strategic and related interests, including the interests of our European partners, requires an immediate historic intervention establishing a just peace in the Middle East, meaning an immediate establishment of the Palestinian State under its currently elected head of government, Arafat. If President Bush makes that decision right now, it will happen, since the President's decision as President will set into motion the other forces, around the world, which would produce that result. Indeed, all things considered, the fate of the planet as a whole could depend upon just such a decision.

Admittedly, it has been a long time, perhaps since President Johnson on civil rights, that a U.S. President has acted in a crisis as a true President in the sense of our Constitution. It is time for President Bush to close and bar the doors, while he takes on one or two crucial decisions, working with a handful of the coolest heads from among those around him who are capable of thinking about Presidential crises in a Presidential, rather than partisan way.

I think that most Americans would rejoice to think that that is what is about to happen at the White House about now.

As for the rest of you, remember this. The office of President of the U.S.A. is the most crucial among our Constitutional institutions. You, as a citizen, must never lose sight of that fact. Whoever happens to be President, the Presidency as an institution must be protected, even against its own tendency for folly.

Any questions? That is what I am here for.