April witnessed a breakthrough in the reach of Lyndon LaRouche's courageous voice of reason through the states of the Middle East. From the Arab world today, LaRouche stands out like a statue of liberty, compared to every other strain of American policy. This has been reflected in dozens of articles, commentaries, speeches, and interviews published and broadcast in different parts of the Middle East, all the way from Pakistan to Egypt.
While some Arab and Islamic commentators refer to LaRouche as "a lone voice in the desert," the majority, and the most active, now regard him and his political movement as a hope not only for the Middle East, but also for the United States itself. Recently, an Arab diplomat in Europe reported to EIR that he had asked an American diplomat, "What can you tell me about this man LaRouche?" The American replied, "Oh, we have marginalized him. He is completely crazy!" The Arab surprised the American, by replying, "But the whole Arab community agrees with what LaRouche says. LaRouche has become a film star in the Arab world! If he is crazy, then we are all crazy!"
Dr. Ahmed Al-Kedidi, a University of Qatar professor and authority on the dialogue between Islam and the West, wrote a commentary in the Dubai-based daily Al-Bayan, "Is All of America Against Us, or Only Part of It?" He answered: "We Arabs are confronted by a strange and very special historical phenomenon, because in America there are people who support our just causes, especially the Palestinian cause, and they oppose the current American policy of limitless support to a Nazi crime. Today, as I was writing this article, I received an e-mail message from my American friend Lyndon LaRouche, the internationally celebrated economist and Democratic pre-candidate for the U.S. Presidential elections. LaRouche, commented on Bush's April 4 recent speech, saying that the speech is a blank check for Sharon to kill Arafat.... The U.S. administration, 60% of the Congress, and the American mass media are enemies of our causes. But, there are many groups that are not victims of the Zionist influence. The question is: What have we Arabs done to build a bridge to these live consciences and moral people who who are waiting for us to be heard and who want to support us?" Kedidi urged Arabs to intervene in the U.S. political scene and build bridges to those like LaRouche and the Arab-American community.
Land-Bridge Widely Covered
LaRouche's analysis of the Sept. 11 events, and also the earlier economic-financial situation continues, as of early May, to reverberate around the Muslim world. In an lecture delivered recently at the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Centre, Sheikh Mohammed Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti, a prominent Islamic scholar from Syria, employed LaRouche's views on the current world situation to make his points. Although the discussion was dominated by his defense of the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation, Al-Bouti made a number of very important observations on the "Clash of Civilizations" gang at the Council on Foreign Relations and Bernard Lewis.
The Zayed Centre published Al-Bouti's lecture on its website and at least two major London-based Arabic dailies, Al-Arab International and Al-Quds Al-Arabi covered it as news concerning Lyndon LaRouche.
"Terrorism," said Al-Bouti, "in the sense the Western mass media describes it, has always been and is still being cooked and fermented by certain Western circles; then it is exported to the Arab world and the Islamic world to be implemented there." He emphasized that after the fall of the Soviet Union "much attention has recently been given to how to plan, prepare and then export this terrorism to us. These Western circles chose Islam as the next enemy." Professor Al-Bouti singled out two interrelated indications of this, pointing to an article published in the Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs in November 1992, which discussed ways that Islam could be destroyed as a power, and which concluded that spreading "schism" among Muslim nations was the way to do it. His second example was Bernard Lewis's book, The Middle East and the West, where, Al-Bouti said, Lewis recommended the method of provoking ethnic and sectarian fanaticism across the Islamic world as the best way of annexing these nations, or at least controlling them all.
Al-Bouti indicated that the global financial meltdown, and the progress of Lyndon LaRouche's Eurasian Land-Bridge, has set off reactions among the international financier oligarchic elite. "The new factor, which is only a little more than one year old, is the discreet hysteria which is spreading ... in reaction to the project about which some news have come recently. This is the attempt by Asian and European countries to build what they call the Eurasian Land-Bridge between the two. It is well known that Russia is playing a key role in this project, which could lead to the establishment of complete networks of magnetically levitated trains, extending from Rotterdam to Shanghai. The objective of this project is to establish a Eurasian economic system, replacing the current collapsing financial system, which is threatening the world, and on top of it the United States.
Al-Bouti continued that LaRouche "stated in a webcast lecture on July 26, 2001, that the Israeli forces abroad [sic], typified by Zbigniew Brzezinski, will prepare for a war in the Middle East to prevent the European and Asian states from building this bridge between the two. This could eliminate the hegemony of international Zionism on the world economy and the monetary system. Therefore, they must launch a religious war into which Europe would be drawn, and thus this project would vanish amidst the flames of this raging war."
On the U.S. administration's role, the Syrian scholar concluded, "The U.S. Administration under Bush considers anything which is not in its own selfish interests as terrorism. Since the Eurasian project is contrary to its interests, the Zionist circles should be aided to wage a war in the Middle East to make sure that this project is destroyed. The best fuel to launch this war is to label Islam terrorism, because the people who inhabit this region are Muslims."
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sept. 11th
Many articles and reports about LaRouche's view of the world before and after Sept. 11, are circulating in the Internet-based Arabic media. This coverage includes the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh and U.A.E.'s Al-Bayan of LaRouche's associate Muriel Mirak-Wiessbach's in-depth interviews in the Tehran Times on the Sept. 11 attacks being as an attempted, "ongoing" coup d'état. Mirak-Weissbach's statements in Tehran and Cairo are also circulating in "Internet discussion" forums.
The Egyptian semi-official daily Al-Ahram had a report from Washington correspondent Said Ali, on the U.S. situation "from the inside." He referred to LaRouche's view of the Sept. 11 attacks and his earlier warnings of financial-economic collapse, international terrorism, and war for the Fall of 2001. Said Ali wrote that he asked many people in Washington about LaRouche, only to be told, "He is crazy." However, Said says, he went to LaRouche's supporters and "got a complete and reasonable view of the real crisis in the world."
Al-Ahram's Arabic weekly magazine, Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, ran a lengthy article by Ahmed Fikri on Arab-American relations and other developments since Sept. 11. In a major segment dedicated to the Mega Group and Israeli spying activities in the United States, Fikri quoted LaRouche on the Mega Group's targetting of President Clinton. The same weekly carried a report by Marwi Meshali, on "individuals facing the American bull," reporting the opposition to the Israeli and U.S. policies emerging from courageous individuals in the West. Meshali says: "The opinions of the observers of the American internal situation point to the fact that, the Presidential candidate for the next elections and Democratic member of Congress [sic], Lyndon LaRouche, is the organizer of this offensive opposition campaign against the administration's policy. They also say that he succeeded in estimating the limitations of this administration and pointing to its weaknesses, both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. He also predicted the Sept. 11 events."
In the official daily of the Sultanate of Oman, Al-Watan, columnist Mohammed Abdel-Khaliq wrote a powerful attack against the Trilateral Commission's Samuel Huntington and the Clash of Civilizations gang under the title "A Greater Apology Is Demanded." Adbel-Khaliq wrote, "We fully understand how mistaken Huntington's theory is. Many others around the world realize that. They also realize the disgusting arrogance of the U.S. administration and the Israeli government. Lyndon LaRouche has captured part of this in his article 'Götterdämmerung in Palestine,' in which he strongly linked the Israeli brutality against the Palestinians and the Nazi barbarity against the Jews in the last century. We strongly believe that victory will be on the side of LaRouche and his like. We also believe that Huntington and his like will be forced to make a demanded apology, even if it comes late."
The Saudi daily Al-Watan published several reports and commentaries on the powerful statements LaRouche has been making on the state of economic and political affairs in the United States itself.
It is also noteworthy that the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, on its website www.plofm.com, has published articles on LaRouche and his analysis of the political and strategic crisis in the world.
A Household Word
In the third week of April, "LaRouche" became a household word in most Arab countries. He was interviewed by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Egyptian Satellite Channel 1 (broadcast simultaneously with the main national TV channel), and Egypt's English-language Al-Ahram Weekly.
On April 14, Arabs around the world had a chance to see and hear LaRouche live, on Al-Jazeera. The program, "Issues of the Hour," hosted "American Democratic Presidential candidate and political-economist Lyndon LaRouche," to comment on the current U.S. policies in the Middle East and Colin Powell's meetings with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Host Malik Al-Teriki introduced his program on the U.S.-Israel alliance, stressing that "this week will be a decisive one for the Israeli-American relationship. It will determine who is steering this relationship." Al-Teriki added: "It seems that even the resident of the White House is unable to influence the policies of Ariel Sharon, in spite of the fact that the American administration's favors to Sharon have reached an unprecedented level and the fact that Sharon is the main beneficiary in the Sept. 11 attacks. It was indicated in last Thursday's 'Issues of the Hour' program [whose main guest was EIR's Edward Spannaus] that the possibility of the Israelis having prior knowledge about those who conducted the Sept. 11 attacks was very strong, and that they nonetheless decided not to inform their American allies."
Al-Teriki then introduced LaRouche: "The apparent tension in Powell's face revealed during his meetings with Sharon is the ultimate thing an American politician could do. But, what would you say about an American politician who is calling for using the threat to break American relations with Israel? This politician, who is in the Democratic Party, is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche who is joining us today from Washington." LaRouche commented powerfully on several questions on the Israeli-American relations and how he is intending to use his campaign to straighten U.S. policy in the Middle East. LaRouche's appearance gave Arabs at every level, who have not yet had an encounter with LaRouche, a brief, but unique feeling of an American statesman who represents the intellectual and political opposite and antidote to everything terrible they have experienced with other American statesmen in the recent decades.
"Issues of the Hour" is a new program on Al-Jazeera, which had previously had separate interviews with EIR Counterintelligence Editor Jeff Steinberg to comment on Sharon's and the Anglo-Americans' plans for the Middle East, and with Edward Spannaus who addressed the Israeli spy story. Al-Jazeera Channel is watched by millions of Arabs.
On April 17 LaRouche was hosted on "Good Morning Egypt" on the Egyptian Satellite Channel, coincidentally the same day that President Hosni Mubarak refused to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, to protest Washington's backing for Sharon's criminal policies. Excerpts of this interview were published in the previous issue of EIR. On April 18, Al Ahram Weekly published the English-language interview with LaRouche. The website introduction reads: " 'It's What I Have To Do': Lyndon LaRouche, a lone voice in the desert of American thinking on the Middle East, chats to Mohamed Hakki in Washington." A transcript of the long interview is available at: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/582/9inv2.htm.
The explosion of this coverage comes at a time when Arabs, and especially Palestinians, look in horror at the United States, and see no hope for anything good to come from the administration or the Congress. This in itself is not new. "America is an imperial power anyway," people used to say. However, through LaRouche, they are beginning to discover another America, a morally and culturally competent nation. Although this other America is not in power, it is nonetheless a potential that exists within the United States. LaRouche has shown people around the world that what is called "the American intellectual tradition," is far different from anything else they have experienced from the "Great Satan" in the recent decades. However, it would be an illusion to believe that this tradition is politically embodied anywhere else in the United States, than within Lyndon LaRouche himself and the movement he is leading.
