LaRouche Interview on Southwest Virginia Radio
October 21, 2023

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I spent last night and part of this morning, reviewing some material in regards to you, some of your speeches and whatnot. Clearly, you're an extraordinarily and extremely educated man, but, I've got to tell you, some of the words you use are just well above me. I'm not sure I can understand all of it.

LaRouche: Well, I'm sure that if people take the course, they can understand it, and I intend to give the American people the necessary course, among my other duties.

Announcer: One of the things that you--you're very critical of the current Bush Administration, in particular, Dick Cheney. Can you just run down with us, for a few minutes, about your thoughts on Vice-President Cheney?

LaRouche: Well, first of all, I think that the current President is not a man of great intellectual achievements, or acumen. He is, like many people, put in that kind of situation, that is, way over his head, in terms of the issues, of the economy, international strategic questions, and so forth, he faces. He's being controlled, in effect, or has been up to now, by his Vice-president Dick Cheney, who, together with a group of people who called themselves neo-conservatives, essentially have been running the crucial policies of the Bush Administration.

So, my concern has been, get Dick Cheney out.

Look, it's only a year now before the next election, really. Therefore, changing Presidents at this time, unless there was some disastrous reason for doing so, is a bad idea. However, the important thing is to eliminate this influence, of Cheney and his neo-conservative confederates, from the picture, and then, I believe, that wise people from the older Bush camp, plus the influence of the institutions of the Executive Branch and Congress, would give the incumbent President a new perception, of some of the things that need to be done rather desperately, on the economy, and on strategic questions. Then I think we would get through the coming year. And that leaves it up to the next President, in January 2005.

Announcer: You bring up that word economy--really that's going to be a huge, huge topic in the forthcoming Presidential election.

LaRouche: Right. You just take the news this week from the U.S. on the current account deficit, the budget deficit. You take the comparable figures from Europe, and what you have is a picture, as of this morning, if you look down through the course of day throughout these kinds of reports, you'll see, we're in an impossible situation, under the present arrangements.

There are possibilities, there are a lot of possibilities. The problem is, Europe is facing some of the problems, but their ability to deal with them is inadequate, because of their systems of government. Under our system of government, under our Constitution, we can go back to precedents we set under Roosevelt, with the old Bretton Woods system, we could intervene, and bring European countries, and others, into emergency cooperation with us, to make sure this thing doesn't bring the whole economy down. That's the current issue right now, and it's going to be a bigger issue, of course, over the coming weeks and months.

Announcer: Mr. LaRouche, Scott Stevens here. It sounds like you're describing what has been called, in the past, the world economy. Can the United States exist within its own economy, without being a part of this new European Union, and these kinds of things? It sounds like we're talking about a global economy.

LaRouche: Well, look, what we've done in the past 40 years, when we went through a paradigm shift--the Kennedy assassination, and the beginning of the Indo-China war--we dumped our role as a producer society. You note it down there, in agriculture and industry, in mining, and so forth. You see the effects.

We then went to cheap labor, from foreign countries. We are now in an insane form of dependency upon foreign economies, as well as a natural dependency in a complex modern world, of cooperating with other countries. So, you cannot isolate the United States unto itself. You have to have a U.S. policy which deals with our interests, from the standpoint of this inter-connectedness we're stuck with.

Announcer: Okay, you mentioned jobs in this area. I mean, certainly, industry--the Pillowtex Corporation, not far from here--the clothing industry has suffered greatly, with all the jobs going overseas, or to Mexico. NAFTA has certainly had an effect on that, to be sure. What is the solution? We hear many politicians talking about retooling and retraining, but they're talking about taking a 45-year-old man who built cars, or worked in the clothing industry his entire life, and trying to teach him to make cell phones. I don't think that's really the solution.

LaRouche: There is a solution, but the solution is not patchwork.

Look, we have two great areas of problems. First of all, for large employment--and don't overlook the number of young people, or younger people, who are not qualified for any kind of skilled employment.

Announcer: Right.

LaRouche: So, therefore, we have a double problem. The only solution is to increase the productive employment of the nation, up to the level where we're operating above breakeven. The way we're going to have to do that, initially, is the way Roosevelt did it: We're going to have to use large-scale infrastructure development, in transportation, power generation and distribution, water management, and so forth. And those things will stimulate employment in other sectors.

I'm also--it'll shock some people--I've been pushing for a restoration of Selective Service. The reason for that is not just military. We should have a selective service, consistent with the intent of our Constitution. We don't want a special army, we want a military force of the nation, which we deploy only when the nation is willing to deploy it. Therefore, we want that control.

But secondly, we need to build the Corps of Engineers, and do things such as we did with the CCCs, back in the 1930s. We have to take a lot of young people, who have very poor qualifications for skilled employment, and we have to give them the training, which will make them skilled employees. One of the ways to do that, is if you do your recruitment program, for Selective Service, on the basis of a Corps of Engineers type of emphasis, in military training, you're going to produce people who are capable, rather rapidly, as of two or three years. We saw that in the last [world] war, in training people then. Two or three years, you're going to take people who are considered unemployable, you're going to transform them into productive people. That's what we need to do.

Announcer: Let me ask you this, Mr. LaRouche, and let me preface this question a little bit. You've, over the years, taken a lot of criticism, and heat, for some of your ideas, but one of the things that people don't know about you, and I wanted to bring this up this morning, you are certainly credited for your initiating role in formulating what eventually became the Strategic Defense Initiative, passed by Ronald Reagan.

LaRouche: Yes.

Announcer: Tell us a little bit about that. What did you do?

LaRouche: Well, this is where I got into a lot of trouble with Brzezinski and company. In 1975, I got into what was coming out of the incoming Brzezinski Administration--Carter was not my concern, Brzezinski was. And you had people around him, who were pushing a policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Now, what they were proposing was insane. And therefore, I was concerned to change our military policy, so that we were no longer dependent upon this "you kill me, I kill you" kind of thing.

So I worked on this with some specialists, and some scientists, and so forth, and I came up with a package, and because I had a friendly exchange with Ronald Reagan in New Hampshire, in the beginning of 1980, this led, after his election, to my meeting with his people in Washington. And I gave them my wish list on what the United States government should do under Reagan.

One of the things I proposed was this--what became known by Reagan, on March 23, 1983, as the Strategic Defense Initiative. This is something that I had pre-negotiated, back-channel, with the Soviet government on the Reagan Administration's behalf. The problem became, essentially, that Andropov, Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the Soviet government, turned it down flat. It was an insane thing on Andropov's part, a vicious thing, because if we had agreed then, to discuss this matter, I think we would have gotten out of the present international nuclear confrontation pattern.

So, that was one area where Ronnie Reagan and I, as sort of veterans of the Roosevelt tradition, came to an agreement. Ronnie had some things on economics I didn't like very much. But on the question, this question, he showed himself a Roosevelt-era patriot, in saying, "We do not want unnecessary wars." And I'm sure that General MacArthur, if he had been still alive, would have agreed with us both.

Announcer: Certainly, you bring up the work, or the title of "unnecessary war." You characterize the Iraq war as illegal. What's behind all that in your thinking?

LaRouche: Well, what you've got, we had at the end of war, beginning with the dropping of the two unnecessary nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--there was no military reason for doing that. We had won the war. All we had to do, because of a negotiation, which a friend of mine had been involved in, between the Japanese government and the United States, all we had to do is say, we will recognize the continuation of Hirohito, as the Emperor of Japan, and Hirohito would have been in a position, immediately, to push through a peace agreement on those terms, pre-negotiated terms.

MacArthur, of course, was not for any bombing of that sort. He was not consulted. Eisenhower was consulted, and said, "don't do it." We were, and what happened is, actually, the bombings did nothing to end the war.

Now, as a result of that, we got into this kind of thing, which was pushed by a fellow called Bertrand Russell, the guy who invented preventive nuclear warfare. And, until the Soviets developed a thermonuclear device, a deployable variety, we had a policy, in the United States, of going to preventive nuclear warfare against the Soviet government, for what Russell declared was the intention of creating world government.

So we had, at that point, in the Rand Corporation and other institutions, we had a group emerging which were opposed to the American military tradition. They were called Utopians. Eisenhower called them, in 1961, he called them the "military-industrial complex." The problem has been, we have a bunch of fanatics, inside our institutions, typified by what's around Cheney, what's around George Shultz, the so-called Utopians, otherwise called neo-conservatives. These people are getting us into a kind of warfare, preventive nuclear warfare, we don't want. It will kill us.

They got us into Iraq as it was intended to be the first step, in a series of wars, leading to use of mini-nukes, for nuclear terror against governments, to bring about what they call world government. And this is the nonsense which must be stopped.

We're in a crisis, a financial crisis. Those kinds of things are dangerous, as in the past. Financial crisis is often the occasion for war. We're in such a period now.

Announcer: Mr. LaRouche, I want to make sure I understand your statement correctly. Are you implying that Dick Cheney, and those in the Bush Administration, intend to use nuclear weapons against Iraqi government, or other governments in the Middle East?

LaRouche: Or, in various parts of the world, yes. That is their stated policy. That was what Cheney stated as a proposed policy, when he was Secretary of Defense, under Bush '41. This is what he revived, used the occasion of what happened on Sept. 11, 2023, to push the same thing again. As of Janaury 2023, this policy was in place, as far as Cheney-Rumsfeld and so forth, were concerned. This is what these neo-cons are pushing. That's why my policy.... I say, George W. Bush, Jr. is not our problem. He is a problem, but he's not our security problem. Cheney is our security problem. I'm convinced that is people like Scowcroft, and others, from the old Bush crowd, together with our professional military, together with our intelligence services, our diplomatic services, were informing the President, and if the right people in the Congress were being heard, who {will}, on both sides of the aisle, cooperate, I think that this President, with all his shortcomings, could be managed successfully, to get us through until January 2005.

The problem is, with Cheney in there, and the possibility that Cheney might be the Vice-President again, then I think the country's in danger.

Announcer: All right. Now, certainly even though it was in California, the California recall was a top headline here in Southwest Virginia. You were against the California recall, and campaigned heavily. Tell us about that.

LaRouche: Well, we did pretty well in our show. We went into Los Angeles, we made contact directly with Gray Davis, at the time that the actual recall election was put into motion, the Governor of California, and we indicated that whatever our differences were on other things, we were supporting the integrity of the office to which he'd just been elected. And that the problem was not Gray Davis--everybody in California had made a mess of this deregulation business, deregulation of power production and distribution, and he was guilty, as he admitted, as everyone else had. But it was not a reason to throw him out of government. The corruption charge against him was false, because everybody was guilty, including his Lieutenant Governor, who was just as guilty as the rest of them.

And so was Arnie Schwarzenegger, who was involved with Enron and Company, who are the people who looted the state of California, under the Bush Administration in particular, which caused the crisis of the State of California, or the principal cause of the crisis.

So, I moved in there, and said, "tell the truth." And my proposal to Gray Davis's circle was, "just tell the truth. You're guilty, but everybody else was guilty. So, tell the truth. Tell the truth about how the state was looted. Tell the truth about Dick Cheney, as Vice-President, intervened on behalf of Halliburton and company, to prevent an exposure of the Enron-related hoaxes that were being run against the state of California.

He did it partly. He was advised not to go too strong. But we worked closely with the Los Angeles branch of the Democratic Party, and with others, and we pushed against recall. So we went from a situation where there was a 60-40% vote in favor, according to polls, of the recall, and by the time we were through, by the day of election, in the Los Angeles area, it was 51 to 49. So our heavy deployment, especially by my youth, the youth associated with me, had changed the situation, there, and in the Oakland, elsewhere where we deployed.

The problem we had, is that the National Democratic Committee, would not intervene effectively. We had candidates, including former President Clinton, who's not a candidate of course, intervening, but intervening in such a limp-wristed way, that we couldn't get anyway. We could have won that recall election, against it. And our performance demonstrated it.

This now means, the Democratic National Committee is in a crisis, it's discredited. All 10 of my rivals, who've played the fool, or didn't show up at all, in California, are discredited, because they didn't act in the most important state for the next Presidential election: California.

We also have a situation in which, as a result of that, you have Senator Kennedy, and Senator Byrd, and they've spoken out effectively, in a debate in the Senate, and have shown that the senior people, leading responsible people in the Democratic Party, in the Senate, and also Republicans, are now moving forward to change politics in the United States. The politics that we're changing to, is in the direction I wish things to change to, so I'm not unhappy about that aspect.

We've got the truth out, of California, out to the American people generally. Schwarzenegger is a menace, he's a Hitler-like Beast-Man, I don't know how much Nazi he is, but his style of political behavior is like his acting style in "Terminator." The two things are pretty much the same. And we don't need a Terminator as a governor of a state of California.

Announcer: Okay, 8:27 now, talking this morning with Lyndon LaRouche, a Presidential candidate. In 1988, Mr. LaRouche, you were convicted, and sentenced on conspiracy charges. Do you feel like, after now, after some of the statements that have been made from people like Ramsey Clark, and others, that you've been exonerated at this point?

LaRouche: Well, in a sense. Actually, internationally, among knowledgeable circles, including in the United States, that conviction is something I can wear as a badge of honor. I was a real political prisoner of the United States, and I survived it, and I came back, and I'm doing what I should do again.

That is, in a sense, I think in anyone's book, a badge of honor.

Announcer: Okay, let's talk about your webcast. You have a webcast, I understand, coming up tomorrow. Tell us about it.

LaRouche: Well, we're putting on a international webcast, because there are people around the world, as well as in the United States, who are waiting to hear what I give as a signal, in the wake of what happened in California, and in the circumstances of a crashing international financial system, and a U.S. financial system, right now. So, people are looking at what I have to say, in government, and in other governments, in order to set their clocks, so to speak, to what may the fight shaping up inside the United States, during the coming weeks.

Announcer: Do you think, Mr. LaRouche, you get your fair shake from the national news media?

LaRouche: No, but who cares? If you do something, you're likely to make some powerful enemies. If they control some of the national news media, they're going to treat you accordingly. But as you probably know from working where you work, that the national news media do not have the influence they had, say, 10, 15 years ago. They don't have that clout any more. Other media, local media, and the Internet, as such, has moved in.

Well, look at what you get for news. What do you get on national news media--like CNN, and similar kinds of media--what do you get for news? Look at it the way I look at it. I'm in the news business, internationally. I know what's going on, pretty much, in the world, and I look at the newspapers, I look at the electronic mass media, and I don't see what I know that's important, going on in the world, being accurately reported to the American people, among others.

Announcer: Yeah, but Mr. LaRouche, the Republicans conservatives contend, that it's the liberal, or the Democrat, that has control of the media, and what's being released to the public.

LaRouche: Well, I think that's kind of dishonest. The fact is, I don't think the liberal media does too much of a good job, anyway. Look at the Washington Post--they're one of the worst. They're supposed to be liberal media. The New York Times, which is liberal imperialist, takes a more positive view, from my standpoint, a little more honest. They don't like me much, although they have supported some of the things I've said. So, I think it's a toss-up. The major problem in the small media, around the country, is the right-wing media. But the liberal media is no gem. What we have is largely these informal, decentralized things.

Take an example: the Iraq war. We have a lot of people whose sons and daughters, wives, and whatnot, are serving in Iraq, as reservists, army reservists, or national guard. They're experiencing a very high rate of trauma, but the rate of deaths to trauma, has gone down, so that now where two out of three trauma cases, in military operations, survived, in the Vietnam War period, now seven out of eight trauma cases survived. They're crippled. They've lost limbs, amputations, and so forth and so on. But the trauma effect, which is being experienced, the conditions, the lack of proper conditions, for the soldiers who are serving in Iraq, especially the reservists and the National Guardsmen, is horrible.

So, now this is coming back to the States, in the form of letters to the editor, and similar protests from family members of these national guard and reserve people, as well as others. So, this is going into the media. This is building up, inside the population, to the point you see reflected in the statements of people like Joe Biden, Senator Joe Biden and others, who are saying, "When I go back to my constituencies, I'm getting this from the families which are affected by national guard service, or reserve service, in Iraq." So, that's one way in which some of the local media, becomes a conduit for actually, what might be called vox populi.

Announcer: A few minutes ago, Mr. LaRouche, you mentioned the youth movement you have out in California. Is this a target for your Presidential bid this year, or next year? Is it to go after those young adults that maybe feel misplaced by both parties at this point?

LaRouche: Well, essentially, partly, not exactly in a hostile way against the older generation. What's happened is, since, the people who are now running things, pretty much, which are in their 50s, or entering their 60s, are people who were young people, adolescents usually, about the time of the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and the beginning of the Indo-China war. This generation underwent a cultural paradigm shift, from the successful producer society, with all our faults, otherwise, that we'd been earlier, to a consumer society, which became essentially a pleasure society, in which we lived on other things, we didn't produce, we cut down farming, we cut down industy, and so forth, and they're living on pleasure.

So, their children, who are now, say, in the age-group of 18 to 25, the university-age group, find themselves faced with a no-future society, the United States. Their parents' generation tends to be indifferent to the reality of this situation.

Now, my view is, by organizing youth, and I do have a unique youth movement in that sense, by organizing youth, we can probably turn their parents' generation around, into coming back to the idea of a society with a real future. I think these youth can give their parents' generation, the optimism to rally, to help save this nation.

Announcer: Mr. LaRouche, we know you're a very busy man, on the campaign trail. We certainly appreciate your time this morning. I'll give you a couple minutes here just to talk to our listening audience, and tell 'em why they should vote for Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche: Well, I think that, possibly, they've run out of other candidates. Bush is what he is. I don't see anybody coming up on the Republican side right now, of much interest, from that standpoint. My Democratic rivals have largely disgraced themselves in California. I wouldn't doubt that probably, Senator Kerry might be brought back, from what he seems to be, a secondary position, because there's a lot of clout behind Kerry, if it gets mobilized. Dean is, I think, a fly-by-night, but right now he's a frontrunner. I can see very soon, that the Democrats, and other voters, are going to be looking at a choice among, Kerry, me, and Dean.

I think the others will tend to be eliminated. Certainly, Clark isn't going to make it, once his military record, in Bosnia and so forth, comes out, he's not going to make it. I think it's come down to that. So, the people have to say, what are the issues? And what are the proposed solutions?

I propose the issues are strategic. I propose the issues are largely economic. I propose that the essential thing is, we have to learn the lesson of what was done by Roosevelt after the disastrous effects of the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations. We must put America back to work. We must enter into the kinds of relations with other countries, which Franklin Roosevelt tried to develop, with South and Central America, and with Europe, and so forth. If people want that kind of thing, and they want somebody who believes in that, I'm the only man they have.

Some of these other guys may be decent guys, I might even want some of them in my Administration, or to collaborate with them, but they cannot carry the ball, not with this crisis. This is a time of crisis for which I'm rather uniquely qualified.

Announcer: Thank you, Mr. LaRouche. We appreciate your time this morning, and certainly will welcome you back in the future.

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