“Securing World Peace Through
Embracing the Common Aims of Mankind”
Schiller Institute Conference
Saturday, September 10, 2016, 12 noon – 4:30 pm
New York City
Conference Page: Program and Video Links
Conference Report Press Release
Media Advisory Announcing Conference
TRANSCRIPT
Helga Zepp-LaRouche Jeff Steinberg Ramsey Clark
Richard Black Bashar Ja'afari Walter Jones
Q & A
SPEED: The ambassador's not going anywhere. I just wanted to give us a chance to ask some questions, because I know people have them. We have a microphone which is going to start to go around. And just give us your name and to whom you're addressing the question.
Q: My name is T—C— and my question is for the Ambassador. I'm wondering what you think the U.S.'s end goal is in this? Why would they try to destabilize Syria and Iraq?
AMBASSADOR JA'AFARI: Thank you so much for this important question. The answer is a multi-facetted one. Number one, it's about settlement of old and new accounts, because Syria, historically speaking, has been a difficult country for the American diplomacy in the Middle East. When I say "difficult," I know what I'm talking about. From the beginning, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, we were somehow in Syria allies, natural allies of President Wilson, the American President, who participated at the Versailles Conference and then [St. Raymond ph]. At this conference President Wilson, for the first time reflected on the real American values of the right of self-determination. He said peoples under European colonial rules should enjoy the right of freedom and the right to self-determination. Our own representative at that conference—that was a couple months before we were occupied by France—endorsed immediately that statement of President Wilson. It didn't fly. President Wilson found himself obligated to leave the conference. He lost the possibility to convince the British and French of giving up their colonies. So he failed and he returned. You know the history. From that moment, and for some time, we had only and exclusively problems with the colonial European powers, meaning Britain and France.
Our problem started with the American diplomacy when Israel was established in Palestine. Then we started having misunderstanding with the American administrations, in plural, one after the other. Washington tried to punish us many times, by instigating and pushing and backing Turkey to aggress us many times, in the 1950s, 1960s, etc. Then the war of 1967, the war of '73. We have been in a series of wars in this area for decades. So, number one is—and then, incidentally, the American administrations, Carter, Clinton, tried very hard to bring us and the Israelis to the table of peace talks. It didn't fly. So there is this ups and downs in the bilateral relationship, but there is a kind of respect.
Until recently, I mean recently the last 20, 25 years, the laboratories of the Western intelligence services, in plural, discovered that that they might use political Islam to oust the Soviets out of Afghanistan, if you remember at that time. So they started using Islam as a political weapon against so-called infidel communists. They succeeded; they succeeded. The Soviets left Afghanistan, then the whole world found itself in front of a bitter truth, bitter reality: "What to do with this garbage we created in Afghanistan? They are by hundreds of thousands from all over the world. We created evil and we don't know how to deal with it." The laboratories, the intelligence laboratories, came up with this idea. You know what? If we want to get rid of this radical Islam, we've got to encourage and back and help a moderate trend of Islam, who are the Muslim Brotherhood family.
So the West endorsed this Muslim Brotherhood family, backed them, helped them, taking over in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and elsewhere. The departing point was that these moderates, moderate Muslims, would be an excellent answer to eliminate radicalism, the previous evil created in Afghanistan. It didn't fly because, unfortunately these Western laboratories are full of ignorance and stupid guys, and imbecilic dictionaries and encyclopedias. It didn't fly, and now we have this horrifying war between all these radical tendencies in Islam, killing each other everywhere, because each one of them is backed by one party. This group is backed by Qatar, this group is backed by France, the other group is by Turkey. Then you have Britain, then you have U.S.A., then you have etc., etc. They created a huge chaos because they are ignorants.
I need to give you one example about how ignorant they are! Before invading Iraq, there are in your country, in your beautiful country, there are 10,000 specialists in the Arab world and Islamic world. You have 10,000 specialists, American specialists. You know what? According to the memoirs I read here and there, none of these 10,000 was consulted by the Pentagon and the CIA before invading Iraq. This is why the American soldiers, when they went to Iraq, they were not only surprised by the resistance against their occupation they were surprised by the behavior of the people. They didn't know anything about Arabs and Muslims! In our traditions, men could hang out together putting hand by hand, so the soldiers, American soldiers, in Baghdad thought that these people are gay, and started harassing them. The harassment led to these people to fight against the soldiers. Very simple! Very simple truth. If they consulted one specialist in Arab affairs or the Muslim world affairs, they would have told the soldiers, "Guys, in the Arab and Muslim world, they behave this way, which is not like the way we behave here."
When you leave these very important decisions of making war and peace into unqualified hands, you make catastrophes. This is why, nowadays, Senator Black has eloquently pointed out that the American administration is supporting and backing people who behead kids! Washington spent $500 million on forming 49 terrorists—more than what they spend on forming an American soldier. Five hundred million dollars forming these 49 terrorists, and they called them Army of Freedom, or whatever. They wanted them to have the power in Syria with these 49 people. Incidentally, of course, they give them weapons, anti-tank missiles, whatever, all sophisticated weaponry they needed, and they send them inside Syria. After hours, only four of them remained—only four. The others—some of them got killed. Most of them joined ISIL, with their American weapons. Why did that happen? It happened because the decision was in the hands of non-qualified people.
Some people say creative chaos is what the American administration is looking for. Creative chaos—it's a beautiful, eloquent, expression. This is one of the answers.
The other answer is the geopolitical competition for the oil and the gas, which was eloquently elaborated by Senator Black. Some others say that it is not only about geopolitics and oil and gas, but it is about imposing the American version of globalization all over the world. You should think like me, you should eat like me, you should pray like me, you should die the way I die. This is globalization. Everybody should eat hamburger. Everybody should eat pizza. This is globalization. Chase Manhattan Bank should be in Damascus ruling the Syrian economy. This is globalization. Syrian fighter jets should not be Russian-made or Chinese-made, they should be American-made. So it is all of that, together. Thank you.
SPEED: OK, here's our situation. We have until 4:30. We're going to make a couple of changes. We're going to take one more question. I'm going to give it to Kesha. Then we're going to show a videotape that was prepared for this occasion by Congressman Walter Jones. So, Kesha.
KESHA ROGERS: Thank you. First of all, my name is Kesha Rogers, and I'm here from Texas, and I'm a member and representative of the LaRouche National Policy Committee. For those who are in the room who have just the remarks made by Senator Black and by the Ambassador, I know you have chills going up your spine. If you remember the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to turn retreat into advance."
I want you to think about that because what we have seen right now is the fact that the American people cannot act and continue to act out of fear. And if you look at the circumstances, first of all, we're talking about murders going on. It is important that the 28 pages as Jeff Steinberg [referred to] has been released, it is important that the JASTA bill just got passed, but these are not mere pieces of legislation. This is not for trial lawyers to make some money on suing the Saudis. This is bring down this imperial, murderous policy. And it's important to look at the fact that you have a President in the United States who has continued to perpetuate these murders, and who has a kill list, and who will continue to back ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and every other terrorist network.
And so my question to both the Ambassador and to Senator Black is, thank you for your courage, first and foremost, and we all have to exemplify and continue to exemplify such courage. What would you say to the American people that we must do now to make sure that we can once and for all bring the type of necessary peace to stop this war drive and to make sure that this policy of murder does not continue? What is your message to the American people? Thank you.
SENATOR BLACK: That is a great question. You know, we are presently under what I call the Bush-Obama Doctrine. There has been a steady progression, really since the time of Herbert Walker Bush, there was a time when the Republicans were sort of the party of peace. Under the Democrats you had the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and then it flipped. When Herbert Walker Bush took over, he basically entrapped Iraq into the war in Kuwait. He sent signals that yes, OK, you've got this border dispute, we're going to stay out of it. And as soon as they went in, we pounced on them and slaughtered a lot of innocent young fellows.
We've got to break this doctrine of regime change. And we've got to get to the point where we recognize that Americans in think tanks are not brighter than the people who run their own countries. You go back to Vietnam, and I fought in Vietnam, and I was very much a part of it; but one of the essential errors that we made, Vietnam, like all countries was very complex. It had a President, Diem. President Diem was a savvy guy; he understood the complexities. He knew who the powerful figures were. He knew the religious interactions and so forth.
President Diem, during an American-inspired coup, organized by the CIA, was taken out, taken into an armored personnel carrier and he was murdered. And when this happened, the United States, then tried to come up with somebody better, and we did that throughout the Vietnam War. We had some decent folks. I think it was Nguyen Thieu, who was an honorable man and so forth, but nobody quite had the savvy to comprehend the complexity of that nation, and as a consequence we lost 60,000 people. Some of them, maybe we would have lost if we had been a little more reasonable, but we would not have lost 60,000 people, and the war would have been resolved in a much better way for the United States and a much better way for Vietnam.
We have this terrible arrogance, where we send people to Yale and Harvard and they come out and they think, "I've got it figured out. All these foreigners are a bunch of dummies; they don't understand anything; they're idiots in their countries. We're going to go in and we're going to write a document and hand it to them and we'll say this is how you run your country." Well, we don't follow our own Constitution! You know, the idea that we're going to take over a foreign country and impose our own values is absurd.
And so we have got to pull back. We've got to become less confrontational with Russia. [applause] We absolutely do. We should be working with Russia and yet, we're moving troops. We've got eight battalions right on their border. We're running troops right up to their sea lanes, and then we say "Oh, they flew aircraft to warn us off. That's provocative." What? What's provocative is when you run your ships, your warships, right up to their territorial waters. What would we think if they sent nuclear submarines right off the coast of Norfolk? I'd be nervous. I'd be troubled by it. The Russians are no different. We've got to be able to start looking at things from other people's vantage point. So we need to relook our relations with Russia.
We need to relook our involvement in NATO. NATO should have shut down at the end of the Cold War. [applause] All of the defense and intelligence establishment of the Soviet Union dissolved. All that was left was you had Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union. You hear it repeated over and over. Oh, they're just the Soviet Union. They're not the Soviet Union. But we got a lot of people who made their livelihoods in NATO, think tanks, and they've got to have an enemy, so that they can do something.
We are becoming so reckless on the Russian border that we run the risk of triggering a nuclear war. After the end of the Cold War, we promised, and it's well documented, we promised, that we would not move NATO one inch to the east. Now, we're talking about bringing in Georgia, we've brought in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Things right on the border. We've moved right to the border.
The beauty of the end of the Cold War was, all of a sudden, instead of being face to face with nuclear powers, suddenly we had distance. Distance gives you time for reflection, time for communication. Now we've moved and all of a sudden, we're toe-to-toe again.
We need a sweeping overhaul of American foreign policy from beginning to end. Our concepts are anachronistic; they are self-destructive, and the idea that we are about to celebrate 9/11, and we have supplied billions upon billions of dollars to al-Qaeda, the very people who brought down the Twin Towers. Incredible! I mean, who could've done such a thing? So we need a sweeping revision in our foreign policy; we need to move away from letting the State Department and the CIA dictate policy. [applause] We need a change.
I am hoping, I don't mean to be partisan, but I'm not anxious to have a President who has already been paid for foreign policy initiatives [applause] and the Clinton Foundation has accumulated $2 billion—that's 2,000 million dollars—in addition to $111 million that simply are in the Clintons' pockets and we don't even know—I have a feeling that's the tip of the iceberg—Saudi Arabia has a lot of money and they can move it into accounts that are not visible. I just don't want politicians who have been paid off, so I think we've got an opportunity.
I hate to be partisan, because, you get me talking about George Bush, my wife had to hear me rant and rave for six months before we invaded Iraq. I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned! I had watched Ronald Reagan, who made his mistakes, but they had built a balance of power that stabilized the Middle East at the end of the Iraq-Iran War. Everything was stable; it was in place, and all of a sudden George Bush came in and said, "You know what? Take him out!" "You know, Saudi Arabia has attacked us. If we don't do something to divert people's attention, people are going to start saying how come you aren't firing nukes at Saudi Arabia after they brought down the Twin Towers?" And so what do we do? Well, what about Iraq? Let's take them down.
We've got to get away from that. I mean this is insanity, and it's suicidal for the United States, for Western civilization. It's brutal towards the Middle East, which we've left a smoking ruins. We've just had a torrent of bloodshed — unnecessary. There was a time, in the '80s, I was part of NATO forces, I could've travelled anywhere in the Middle East in complete safety. People loved Americans. People don't love Americans any more. People fear and they hate Americans, at least they hate American policy. I want to change that. I want to get to where people look at us as reliable partners, predictable partners, and not aggressive partners. [applause]
SPEED: OK. This is Diane Sare, whom some of you will be seeing later tonight. She's a choral conductor. She's also a member of the LaRouche Policy Committee and she'd like to have a word on behalf of our intellectual sponsors. [applause]
DIANE SARE: Yes, our intellectual sponsors, namely Mozart, Handel, and others. I just want to say something very quickly, because I was really delighted to hear the passion of Senator Black in speaking as he did and the Ambassador [applause] and I wanted to convey to the people gathered here that there is no difference between the concert tonight, the mass tomorrow honoring the firefighters and those who died in line of duty on September 11th, and what we are doing with the cultural work, because, as I think everyone will agree the change the United States needs is not going to come through these elections.
And the only way the nation is going to change is through a sort of what MacArthur described, a spiritual recrudescence, a revolution of the spirit and the thinking of the American people. And I can report that in the last months, as the hope for justice in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, that a certain kind of emotional manhole cover which has been on the heads and the hearts of the American people since that event, since thousands of Americans were killed, not to mention millions who have died in these wars, that this is being lifted because people have a glimmer that we are going to get to the bottom of this; and that we are not going to stop until the truth is out and until the policy is changed.
And that change is not going to occur in the ways that Americans typically think about it, but it will occur in the spirit of what happened in Berlin in 1989. And that is what we are hoping to recruit Americans to in the concert tonight, which will be here at St. Bart's at 8 o'clock, of the Mozart Requiem, prefaced by a set of four African-American Spirituals, and concluded by the "Amen" from Handel's Messiah. So, I would urge everyone here also to join us in that, but to take heart, because, if you're looking to the election, you're looking in the wrong direction.
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