The following is an edited transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a Washington, D.C. seminar and international webcast on May 1, 2002, sponsored by LaRouche in 2004, his Presidential campaign committee. His full speech may be found at www.larouchein2004.net.
My subject today is focussed on the question of the horror show, in the danger to civilization, which is expressed in the Middle East crisis. And also, to indicate the possibilities of solution for that crisis. However, the Middle East crisis is not a crisis of the Middle East; nor was it created in the Middle East; nor is it the creation of protagonists in the Middle East. This is a world crisis, which, for various strategic reasons, has exploded in the Middle East, threatens to spread out throughout that region, and threatens, under present circumstances, to bring an end, for generations to come, to civilization, worldwide, as we have known it.
Some of the things I will say today, which are not generally said publicly, coincide with the views of many of the people from around the world—not only critics in the Arab sector, but others, in Europe and elsewhere. But nonetheless, no one else says it, no one else in a position, with the voice to make it heard, says it publicly. As you know, if you've looked at your Congressman recently, in the United States, and have watched him going away, and you look at their back, in your mind's eye, you see a sign on their back: "Space for rent." This is the general situation with the parties, in politics, in the United States today.
So therefore, in the mud and slime of existing U.S. politics, in the confusion and chaos and insanity which comes out of the teleprompter which the President reads, and similar kinds of things, where is there a solution? Where is there a clear voice defining policy? Nowhere, in general. And no one from inside the United States.
One of the problems here, which I will make a bit clearer today, is very few people, even in the United States, know what the United States is, and what its problems are. Many people would like to defend the United States, but they don't know what they're defending, and sometimes, they pick the wrong side, when they choose a cause. My job is to make that clear to you.
The context for this, which I will address first, and then I will come to the Middle East matter itself, later—the context for this crisis today, is that the world as a whole, especially European civilization, extended globally, is experiencing presently, the worst and most dangerous crisis in the history of Europe, since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. No crisis, including the wars of the last century, was as severe and dangerous to civilization as what you're seeing reflected in the Middle East crisis, today. This is the one crisis which could destroy modern history, for generations to come...
Using Israel as a Tool
You have, for example, in Israel, you have a group—people will sometimes say, the Israelis run the United States, through the Zionist Lobby. That's not true. The utopians run Israel through their asset, which is the followers, chiefly, the followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, who is not only an avowed fascist, whose movement, the Betar, was a fascist movement in the Mussolini sense, but a Jabotinsky who publicly offered to support Adolf Hitler's government, if Adolf Hitler would come to the term of dropping anti-Semitism.
So you had in Israel, coming more and more into power, especially in the late 1970s, you had the emergence of a fascist power, centered around the party called the Likud, who are fascists—and actually, there's no difference between fascist in the generic sense and Nazi. It's just a matter of colors and details. So we created this thing in the Middle East. We had created—the British and we had created in the Middle East—a situation of perpetual warfare, as a way of managing the Middle East.
This thing started in two ways: It started with the British during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when the British were determined to intervene in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, by finding some inside influences inside the Ottoman Empire to control the destruction. And they took the area of Palestine as one of the areas, key areas, for this intervention.
Then, toward the closing decades of the 19th Century, the time of the British Admiral, Admiral Fisher, the British had decided that they were going to have a war, a jolly war, a jolly world war, in which the British Navy would reign supreme. And to this end, they decided that what they would do, is build the so-called Dreadnought Navy of Fisher. And with this Dreadnought Navy they would power it, not with coal, but with petroleum, with oil. And that's when they stole the oil at the head of the Gulf. And it became the personal property of the King of England, later the Queen of England, and was then called British Petroleum, at a later point. One of the biggest assets of the British monarchy.
They decided then that the entire oil-bearing region of the Middle East would now become a basis for their control of world petroleum and world energy supplies, for strategic purposes. And therefore, the object was to take and chop the people into little pieces, to play one against the other, to create parties and factions against each other, and thus control this area of the world, which is of strategic significance. It is the junction point of Eurasia and Africa. It is the junction point from the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean. It is implicitly, and has been historically, the strategic pivot of the world. So to control politics in this region of the world, was the strategic objective of the British Empire, and became, under Wilson, and under Coolidge, became the strategic objective of what became the Anglo-American Empire, in fact. And that's the genesis.
For this purpose, they needed to create a destabilization factor in the Middle East. Now initially, as you recall, the Israeli, the Jewish settlement in the Middle East was limited, and it generally involved a certain degree of cohabitation among Jews and their neighboring Palestinians, among whom they settled. But somebody said, that's no good, so they organized a movement to create some atrocities against the Jewish settlers in Palestine, and the Jewish settlers, through some Russians who were sent to them by the head of the Secret Police of Russia, Colonal Zubatov, created what became later the Haganah, the defense organization, which was sent in there by the Russian Secret Police from Odessa, in response to the provocations which were orchestrated through British circles, anti-Jewish provocations, so the Jewish defense effort against the provocations which the British organized, became the basis for creating the seed of a permanent Arab-Jewish conflict in this part of the world.
And thus, by playing this and similar kinds of things, to play parts of the Middle East against each other, in order that the outside force, the imperial force, the Anglo-American force, would control the region. And thus control, not only, then, the petroleum interests, which were crucial, but to use the petroleum interests as a key part in controlling the world, not only the navies, but the world in general—and also to prevent other things from happening. To create a factor of permanent destabilization in the strategic pivot, the Middle East, which connects Africa, and Eurasia, which connects the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. That's where the problem lies.
So what we face is not—this is not an Israeli question, it is not a Palestinian question. It is not an Arab question. It's a strategic question: Are we going to be able to live on this planet? Because if what is proposed now, the "Clash of Civilizations," of Samuel Huntington, of Bernard Lewis, of Zbigniew Brzezinski, of Henry Kissinger, and other swine—if these things are allowed to continue, this kind of war, which they've got young Bush tied into right now, then I assure you, given the realities of the economic situation, given the military realities, given the political realities, you will not have civilized life on this planet for generations yet to come: a dark age for all humanity.
Are we willing, are we morally capable; do we have a President of the United States who's morally fit to be President; who's capable of making the decision tougher than Eisenhower made on the Suez crisis? The principle remains the same. The same principled decision we had to make against Hitler, to fight Hitler. Are we sufficiently aware of our responsibility as a nation-state, as a nation as such, are we aware of our responsibility to protect the people of this planet and ourselves, our own people, from this kind of horror, or are we not? If we are, we will stop this thing right now...
The Warsaw Ghetto and Palestine
Now, let's look at what happened in the Middle East. Let's start with Warsaw, Warsaw 1943. Let's see what Sharon is actually doing, look at what we're up against. This is the title page of a report which is produced by a Nazi general of police, Juergen Stroop (Figure 4). Juergen Stroop was assigned by the Nazis, by Himmler, to go into Warsaw and clean up something which in 1943, the Germans, Nazis, wanted to clean up. Remember, the Nazis had taken those Jews they hadn't killed otherwise, in Poland, and they herded a great number of them as cheap labor, into Warsaw, into the Warsaw Ghetto. As a matter of fact, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were often chiefly occupied in producing things for the German military. In the Warsaw Ghetto, some people in the Warsaw Ghetto, decided to resist. And with a few carbines and pistols and ingenuity, they staged an effective resistance. At that point, the Nazis said: "How do we clean this thing out?"
And Stroop came up with a policy for eradicating the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, and killing all the inmates immediately, or sending them off to camps where they died soon after.
Then he sent a message to Hitler, "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more." And he published this report.
This is the Stroop report. This is what the Stroop report represents. Again, same thing. Warsaw. 1943. Jewish victims about to be killed. Sent off to concentration camps to die. 1943; Stroop report. Nazi. So forth and so on.
Now let's look at Palestine today. Think of the Stroop report. Palestine today. What's the difference? What's the difference? It has the same purpose, is to get rid—it's called the settlements policy, or the Eretz Israel policy of the Likud, which is the fascist movement in Israel. The idea was to make Warsaw Judenfrei—free of Jews. Now, it's to make the West Bank free of Arabs, of Palestinians.
So a few people resist, among the Palestinians. The tanks march in. The killing goes on. There's no difference. Moreover, as Ha'aretz reported, the way in which this operation was designed, which was done under Sharon's direction, designed by the Israeli Defense Forces command, was modelled on a study of the Stroop report. To study the problem which the Nazis faced in dealing with the Warsaw Ghetto, and to say: We have the same kind of problem here, in Israel today. We're gonna clean 'em out. The same kind of process.
And when the President of the United States refers to Sharon as a man of peace, I'm sure that Sharon feels insulted.
But the point is: Why, then, does the United States support this? It's not because there's a Zionist Lobby. As a matter of fact, you have some of the worst anti-Semites in the United States, are the so-called pro-Armageddon Christian fundamentalists. They're anti-Semitic. Anyone who comes from the southern part of the United States knows that. These guys were, these are the real anti-Semites in the United States. These are the real Nazis. They think like fascists, anyway. You think these guys like Jews? No! They don't care about Jews. They don't care about that. What they care about is their policy. They're saying, look, if you can get the Rapture next week, I don't have to pay my rent next month! I mean, it's that bad.
So, we have created a society of madmen in these so-called "thunder cults," these thunder religious cults inside the United States. They're crazy. Psychotic, in effect. Not in the real world. They have become a significant political force behind people like Pat Robertson in Virginia, for example. They're dangerous. This is the constituency, the constituency of hate, the Ku Klux Klan constituency. They have to have somebody to hate, somebody to kill. And they say, "Them A-rabs—look like black people to me." They do, don't they?
Look, I'm an old man. I've been around this country for a long time. I know what goes on in this country. I was training troops in the Army back during World War II. I know what we were sweeping in from southern parts of the United States. I know what they said. I had to deal with them. We've got that—that rot is deep in our country. And it's come forth. And it's used as a weapon. The purpose is to do what they're doing. You think these Nintendo games are some accident that crept up on us because of Hollywood? Yeah, Hollywood is doing it, doing that kind of thing—. No, this was done by the U.S. military. It was done intentionally, to do what? To create among our youth, stone killers who can be recruited to be sent in various parts of the world, and do there, exactly what the Israelis are doing there.
No, it is not the Israelis who control the Zionist Lobby, who control the United States. It is an Anglo-American faction of this type, which has an instrument inside Israel, called the right-wing Likud, typified by Netanyahu, who's more dangerous than Sharon is. These guys are the killers who are doing the work of the Anglo-American Roman Legion mentality in the Middle East.
What do these guys want? Well, Israel can not continue this operation. It will lose, if it continues this operation, for military reasons, which are well understood in some circles in Israel. Matter of fact, Rabin, the former Prime Minister, understood this very clearly. Israel cannot continue to do the kind of thing that Sharon represents, and Netanyahu represents, and survive. How then can Israel survive? Well, they really don't care. There's a Masada complex among some of these nuts. They'd rather go over the cliff, than be defeated.
Iraq and the Clash of Civilizations
But the key thing is Iraq. The key purpose behind this operation is to use this, to get a wider war going, to get the Clash of Civilizations war that Sam Huntington, Brzezinski and company want. So what you have here is a combination. The training and recruiting of large numbers of otherwise useless youth, psychotic youth or quasi-psychotic youth, by Nintendo games designed by the U.S. military, put into general circulation through the military, with cooperation of Japan's production of Nintendo games and so forth.
We are now taking from our population, our youth, our adolescent and other youth, we're turning a large portion of them into potential intended killers, who are trained killers, trained on their videogames, who then simply have to go out and get trained with actual weapons and do what they've been trained to do on videogames. Recruit them as soldiers and send them in various parts of the world, as part of a Clash of Civilizations war. Put the two things together, and you have the new Roman Legions, the new Waffen-SS, to send around the world.
So what we're suffering, our corruption, is a result of our policy, which many people in our country in high places know, but they haven't got the guts to say. And therefore, we come to the position that I have to say it, because there's nobody else. In almost any significant circle in Europe or the United States, you drop my name in a meeting and you're going to have a freakout. The place is going to go wild. Just say the name LaRouche; the whole place will go wild. So actually, that my impact inside the United States and also in Europe, and other places is rather large, especially so in the United States. So when I speak, people listen. They may not like it, but they listen. So I use the voice I have, and the influence I have, to try to force people to face the truth about the situation.
Now, how is peace possible? Implicitly, it should be obvious. We have the power in the United States—and Europe is prepared to join the United States in such an effort, I can assure you; most of Europe—Italy, most of Germany, so forth—are willing to support the United States in such an effort: to say that we are going to bring an economic basis for durability of peace in the Middle East. That we're going to do what was proposed earlier—two states, equally sovereign, side by side, living together in peace.
Why? Because, first of all, you've got to provide the water so that they can all have something to drink, something to live, and there isn't enough water. Some of the big impetus for war in the Middle East comes from a shortage of water in the aquifers. We're capable of generating large-scale, efficient desalination programs which can produce water economically, for drinking and other human purposes. We can overcome the water crisis of the Middle East. The Middle East is, because of its position, as a point of traffic of Africa, through Eurasia, a crucial point of transport from the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean; is an ideal place for the development of industries which are on the line of transportation. You can take the Sinai, you could take whole parts of the Middle East, and you could develop them as areas of industrial and related development. Very relevant, to the relationship not only to Africa, in general, but the relationship of Europe as a producer of high-technology goods, into areas of Asia which desperately need infusions of high-technology goods.
So there is no basis, in either the interests of the people involved, or in the interests of Europe, or the United States, or Asia, to have this war go on. The purpose of justified war was to produce peace, was to bring about a state in which the person you fought against, would accept you, to live with you in peace because they saw the reason to do so. Because you gave them a reason to do so.
The purpose of war is not to kill; not justified war. The purpose is to bring about peace in the quickest possible way, for the most people. You want to bring about peace? We have the power to bring about peace in the Middle East, because we have not only the capability ourselves, but we have friends in Europe and elsewhere who would enthusiastically join with us in any program of reconstruction of the entire Middle East region.
Now, we don't have much as a President of the United States, but the man is President, and therefore, why don't we work on the problem of trying to create around him an environment where it is communicated to him, that the United States does have an interest—he may not fully understand it, but make it clear to him what that interest is—the way it was clear, in a sense, to Eisenhower, the way it was clear to Johnson, in terms of the civil rights legislation. That something has to be done, because it's in the interests of the United States. Tell him not to be afraid of the so-called Zionist Lobby in the United States. We'll take care of that for him. Do the job, and give him some good advisers, so that you say to him—how do you motivate a guy like George Bush? There's only one way to reach a fellow with his limitations, and that is to say: "You've got a job here, it's an important job."
He says, "Yes, it is an important job."
"Well, do you want to be a success?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to be remembered in future generations as having been a great President?"
"Yes."
"Okay, you agree to that, we'll make you one".
And that's what we have to do.
Thank you.
