PRESS RELEASE
Restore Iraq's Constitution
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Nov. 28, 2003 (EIRNS)—Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., the second-ranking candidate, in popular financial support, for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, issued the following statement on withdrawal of U.S. forces from the presently, catastrophically deteriorating situation in Iraq.
The continued floundering of my putative rivals on the matter of U.S. military disengagement from Iraq, prompts me to issue the following statement. This statement is intended to help them clarify the presently confused states of mind which nearly all of them have expressed publicly on this subject, so far, and is also intended to signal to President George W. Bush, Jr., some of his immediate options for liberating the President from the sucking quagmire into which Vice-President Cheney's brutish, anti-constitutional blundering and fraudulent interventions have plunged the nation and its military forces.
1. My Proposal
I propose that the U.S. take, immediately, three clear steps toward withdrawing from its presently indefensible, and rapidly worsening position in, not only Iraq itself, but the Middle East as a whole.
- Declare the intention of the President of the United States to be, to cease the U.S. military occupation of Iraq at the earliest feasible occasion, and to notify the UN Security Council of the U.S. intention to reopen the matter of Iraq's earliest restoration to sovereignty in its affairs, and of the U.S. government's solicitation of UN Security Council assistance in bringing about this desired state of affairs.
- Abandon the foolish attempts to craft a new constitution for Iraq. Promote the restoration of the outstanding, historically rooted Constitution of that nation, foreseeing the establishment of a provisional government under that Constitution as rapidly as feasible. New-fangled concoctions tainted by the lurking presence of the notorious Chalabi, will not bring peace, but only nourish endless asymmetric warfare, and needless numerous deaths suffered by U.S. forces deployed to play the role of targets in an endless, all-day shooting-gallery.
- Free the notable Tariq Aziz from captivity immediately, that he might assume his obvious, and internationally respected role of influence as the most typical representative of the ecumenical spirit of Iraq's constitutional sovereignty.
2. The Present U.S. Situation in Iraq
The hope of avoiding the recent escalation of popularly-based asymmetric warfare, ended with the instructions to cease cooperation with the Iraq military in the urgently needed reconstruction. Through the costly effort to replace that military's role as a stability and engineering force, by tens of billions of U.S. dollars dumped into the coffers of the corporate friends of George Shultz and Vice-President Cheney, combined with continued dallying with the notorious Chalabi, the U.S. government wrecked any possibility of success of the mission which had been newly assigned to Paul Bremer at that juncture.
By abandoning its obligation as an occupying force for the efficient reconstruction of the nation it had conquered, the United States has, for the present time, lost, by aggravated default, all credibility for directing the internal affairs of the occupied nation. By turning the occupation of Iraq into a carpetbaggers' pork-barrel raid on both the U.S. Treasury and Iraq itself, the U.S. role has been degraded, by the overreaching influence of Vice-President Cheney, from the pathetic to the emetic.
Now, as a result of the policies foisted upon the Bush Administration by its usurpatious Vice-President Cheney, hatred against the U.S.A. has become a unifying force for asymmetric warfare, not only within Iraq, but the adjoining region as a whole. Nothing has done more to revive the rapid growth of terrorism throughout the region, than the follies which Vice-President Cheney's continuing overreaching influence have wreaked in this deteriorating situation. This situation is, on principle, far worse than the folly the United States suffered in the 1964-1972 Indo-China war. We must therefore remove the U.S. military forces' futile role as a sitting target for that mounting hatred. Get out, and get out now!
The evidence is, that were I presently the President of the United States, the peoples of the Arab world would trust a reasonable proposal made by the United States. Unfortunately, I am not yet President. Under the current, Cheney-tainted Administration, or under any among my current rivals, there is no chance that the U.S. government could credibly sustain its position as an occupying force. Therefore, for lack of a U.S. President with relevant qualifications, we must get out, and let the UN Security Council step in where both the present U.S. Administration and the Democratic National Committee have each failed so miserably thus far.
The following assessment of the situation must be taken into account.
At a certain point in the recent U.S. war on Iraq, the Iraqi military vanished from the fields of battle, retreating, as a national militia in mufti, into a waiting position. When the United States ceased to coopt that militia into its proper role as a force for national reconstruction of its war-torn nation, the present U.S. Administration pushed the militia into reacting as the core of an asymmetric-warfare resistance movement against both the occupying U.S. forces, and also, any agency which made itself a cooperating partner of that occupation.
U.S. specialists should study the lessons of the Yugoslav resistance to Nazi occupation, as an introduction to the kinds of complexities which the U.S. military forces have incurred in their ill-fated occupation efforts within Iraq. The presently floundering, evasive General Wesley Clark, for example, like Madeleine Albright, still needs to learn that lesson.
Now, as a result, we have not only the millions of trained Iraq military reserves being rallied against our occupation, but a growing flood of volunteers from other places, all to the effect today, that the usurpatious acting President, Vice-President Cheney, is currently the principal source of the nourishing and spreading of the role of terrorism through West Asia and beyond.
3. The Existing Constitution of Iraq
The modern nation of Iraq was forged in its popular struggle against repeated British imperial occupation. The unity forged in those successive wars against imperial occupying forces, provided the basis for the existence of the extant Constitution of Iraq. The members of the U.S. Congress, among others, should actually read that Constitution, and absorb reasonably succinct summaries of the resistance warfare which prompted the Iraqi people to unify their nation around such a Constitution.
The present tendency of a Cheney-tainted U.S. Administration, to fragment the nation of Iraq into an array of pathetic, rival micro-states, can have no effect but to incite the kind of enduring hatred and contempt for the United States, throughout the entire region and far beyond, a pattern which we witness today in the presently worsening strategic situation created by the handiwork of, and toleration for the Israeli assassins of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.
A nation's constitution has no more authority than that embedded in the history of the struggle which brought it into being. The continuity of that authority must be repeatedly renewed by bringing the broad base of the population, including the economically poorest strata, into fresh affirmation of the crucial principles embodied in that agreement. For example, in former times, when the United States supported a national militia, and universal military service, this relationship affirmed and strengthened the reciprocal ties between the constitutional arrangement and the population in general.
A viable constitution of any modern nation-state republic, is not a financial contract to be drafted by unscrupulous law firms associated with lustful financial houses, but, must be, like our own 1776 Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of our Federal Constitution, an affirmation of universal principles of natural law. Iraq has such a Constitution, forged in struggle against oppression, and in the search for unity of common interest among the communities of which that fighting nation was composed.
The troubles which that Constitution had suffered, up to the outbreak of the recent U.S. war in Iraq, were not only tendencies toward usurpation of the powers of the state from within Iraq, but the meddling of international powers within the affairs of not only Iraq itself, but the larger region. Presently, since Sept. 11, 2001, within our own U.S.A., certain forces within the Congress, among the parties, and in the Executive Branch, have exploited a perception of crisis to undermine and virtually nullify crucial features of our own Constitution in the misused name of "emergency." How could such an Administration and party factions as those, be permitted to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude toward the recently toppled government of Iraq? At the spectacle of such official U.S. hypocrisy, the watching world vomits.
Today, Iraq is faced with the same kinds of constitutional challenges under which its presently outstanding Constitution came into being. Therefore, the U.S. Government were a fool, if it attempted, as it is now, to fix that which is not broken; to replace a true Constitution forged in history, with a pact drafted by crooked lawyers. Nothing better fits the situation in Iraq today, than that outstanding Constitution. That should be the opinion of the government of the U.S.A.
Meanwhile, now, as sometimes, the humiliation of one's own government, when done for the sake of freeing that government from self-destructive practices, is the most patriotic act of all. We should not be awed by scoundrels who, like Vice-President Cheney and his Richly-endowed I. Lewis Libby, wrap their wicked deeds in the name of "patriotism."
