Only Four-Power Cooperation
Can Save Southwest Asia
by Jeffrey Steinberg
With Congress about to take up the issue of the Iraq "surge," and the larger issues of U.S. policy toward the Southwest Asia and Persian Gulf regions, Lyndon LaRouche has weighed in with a frank assessment that only a coordinated intervention by Four Powers—the United States, Russia, China, and India—can avert a regional catastrophe, far beyond the current level of disaster.
"The simple fact," LaRouche explained, "is that no combination of regional actors—either Iraqi factions or some combination of Iraq's immediate neighbors—can save the situation from a downward spiral to general asymmetric warfare and worse. It has degenerated that far."
LaRouche stressed the role of the British, who, Washington sources confirm, are pursuing a policy of "managed chaos" in the entire region. The British forces, for example, have pulled out of the southern Iraq city of Basra, and the Gordon Brown government in London has announced plans to withdraw British forces altogether by the end of the year. Following the March 2003 invasion and occupation, the British Army assumed charge of the southern Shi'ite region of the country. When the British pulled out of Basra, they turned authority over to the rival Shi'ite movements of Muqtada al-Sadr and Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim—not the Baghdad al-Maliki government, thus stoking the flames of the Shi'a versus Shi'a armed conflict that has already erupted.
Now, the United States has that added headache to contend with, at a point that U.S. forces in Iraq are already strained to the breaking point, and scheduled troop rotations demand a drawdown of American forces by Spring 2008 at the latest—regardless of what kind of policy emerges from the White House/Congressional "who lost Iraq" brawl that is about to begin.
"The British are playing their typical Sykes-Picot games," LaRouche stressed, referring to the post-World War I imperial deal between Great Britain and France, that carved up the former Ottoman Empire into two colonial spheres of influence. "Look at it from an historic standpoint, and you see clearly that the British are playing one religious grouping against another, one tribal grouping against another, Kurds versus Turks, Sunni versus Shi'ites, Shi'ites from one faction against Shi'ites of another, Arabs versus Persians, Israelis versus Palestinians, etc., etc. Without a unified intervention, a diplomatic intervention, top-down, involving the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, you are not going to muster the kind of clout to counter the British games," LaRouche elaborated.
Hitler 1939, Cheney 2007
While Congress enters into a meaningless debate with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus over the fine points of the Bush Administration's military "surge," Vice President Dick Cheney, in his capacity as London's chief puppet inside the White House, is pressing for an attack on Iran, perhaps as early as October.
The Cheney-orchestrated drumbeat for a war against Iran has provoked a flood of worried reactions from sane circles, including top Pentagon officials and senior American diplomats, but Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike continue to block the only meaningful war avoidance action: the immediate removal of Cheney from office. This, despite the fact that there is growing alarm at Cheney's drive for military strikes against Iran. According to one well-placed U.S. intelligence source, for a long time, there was a widely held belief that an attack on Iran was such an act of insanity, that it could not possibly happen. Now, the source reports, following the leaking of detailed war plans for hitting up to 1,800 Iranian industrial, nuclear, military, and governmental "high-impact targets," "there is a serious backlash. People now are convinced that Cheney and company are planning to bomb Iran precisely because it is totally insane."
The ouster of Cheney from office is not a matter of his many past high crimes and misdemeanors. The issue is the crime he is about to commit in the Persian Gulf, and the consequences of inaction now, while it can still be prevented. That is why LaRouche has chastized the vast majority of Congressional Democrats, who tolerate the continuing presence of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Speaker's chair, as she continues to insist that Cheney's impeachment is "off the table."
Adding to the growing angst over a near-term military strike on Iran, Arnaud de Borchgrave penned a Sept. 3 article in the Washington Times, reporting that French President Nicolas Sarkozy returned from his visit with President Bush at Kennebunkport, Maine, convinced that the United States is going to bomb Iran. Sarkozy has spread the word around France and the rest of Europe that the Americans are intent on hitting the Islamic Republic, citing recent Bush Administration threats to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as an international terrorist organization, as further evidence that the President plans to hit Iran without going to the Congress for permission.
And Barnett Rubin, a senior fellow at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, has put out his own warnings, based on a conversation with a White House insider, who told him that Cheney issued orders to a number of Washington right-wing and neo-conservative think tanks, led by the American Enterprise Institute, to build support for an attack on Iran. On Sept. 10, AEI hosted two events, a major policy speech by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and a book promo event for the latest propaganda tract by self-avowed universal fascist Michael Ledeen, featuring Ledeen, James Woolsey, and Gen. Jack Keane (USA-ret.). Ledeen's book is titled The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction.
In the one-week period leading into Labor Day and the return of Congress, a series of leaks had detailed the Bush Administration's war plans. Over the holiday weekend, the London Times and the Telegraph both published lurid accounts of the Bush bombing plans; and two British think-tankers, Daniel Plesch and Michael Butcher, published an 80-page analysis, promoting the idea that the United States could bomb Iran into a "failed state" in a matter of days. Such British encouragement to Cheney and his neo-con "Amen chorus" further indicate London's larger game: permanent war in the Persian Gulf, and the total destruction of the United States as a sovereign republic.
It was in this context that LaRouche responded to a recent statement by Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who compared the recent propaganda barrage against Iran with the 2002 drive by Cheney and company against Saddam Hussein, leading up to the March 2003 invasion. "Dr. ElBaradei is wrong," LaRouche said. "He is too young. It's not like the pre-Iraq War period. It's like the pre-Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. Cheney is the new Hitler."
Indeed, since no later than November 2006, when he made a secret trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to set up a Sunni versus Shi'ite confrontation in the region, Cheney has been London's provocateur-in-chief, setting the conditions for a Hundred Years War in the world's oil patch.
Washington intelligence sources point to two other situations where the Cheney-led Bush Administration is promoting chaos in Southwest Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean—from a made-in-London script.
- In Lebanon, the Bush Administration is doing everything possible to sabotage the upcoming parliamentary vote on a new President. Rather than encourage a political compromise between the Sunni factions led by the Hariri clan, and the Shi'ite Hezbollah, Washington is pushing for a breakup of the country, into a Sunni/Christian North and a Shi'ite South.
- Inside the Palestinian territories, the United States is building up a security force around embattled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—so that they can confront Hamas in the West Bank, as Israel prepares military incursions to wipe out Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Several Palestinian and American sources have emphasized to EIR that the so-called "peace conference" proposed by President Bush, to take place in November, is a joke and a diversion. Palestinian officials have confirmed to EIR that no preparations are now under way for the meeting, and Bush Administration officials, led by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, have already privately assured the Israeli government that three issues will not be raised at the conference: the final borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian right of return. Without those three issues being addressed, a peace conference would be meaningless, and would be more aimed at Bush's domestic political problems, than anything having to do with the plight of the Palestinian people.
EIR sources also emphasize that there is growing danger of an Israeli-Syrian war. On Sept. 6, Israeli fighter jets "strayed" over Syrian territory, and one jet broke the sound barrier, drawing fire from Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries. A U.S. intelligence source confirmed to EIR that the incident had occurred, as reported. The source indicated that the most widely held assessment is that Israel was testing Syria's new Russian-made anti-aircraft system, and that Israeli claims that the plane merely strayed off course were pure fabrication. The source added that the timing of the incident suggested two possible motives: First, Israel is setting up options for military strikes against Iran, and one possible route would run along the Syrian-Turkish border, the area where the incident occurred. Second, Israel could be planning strikes against Syria, as part of a new round of military actions against Hezbollah or Hamas.
According to one senior U.S. intelligence analyst, the Israeli Defense Force's after-action assessment of the July 2006 Lebanon invasion and month-long war, is that Israel cannot fight and win an asymmetric war against Hezbollah. Any future conflict will involve a "scorched Earth" assault into southern Lebanon, and a likely attack on Syrian military installations that are part of Hezbollah's supply line.
Israel, too, is operating off a script written in London, and involving permanent conflict and chaos.
The LaRouche Doctrine for Southwest Asia
In April 2004, Lyndon LaRouche issued a proposal for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, and the implementation of a regional diplomatic and economic development plan, which would bring stability to the entire Southwest and Central Asian region. The plan involved the active involvement of Iraq's neighbors. Now, more than three years later, with the entire region set to explode, with the Iraq situation deeper in chaos and sectarian conflict, and with the entire global financial system in freefall, the need for Great Power cooperation is crucial. And that means Cheney must be removed from office now.
