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PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Angela Vullo
Tel: 1-800-929-7566

President Clinton-Sen. Bayh Brawl
Spotlights Deep Ruptures In Both Parties
April 18, 2023

Click here for a printable PDF version.

President Clinton's remarks were delivered at an April 15th New York City conference of the Conference Board, a prestigious business forum, before an audience of at least 300 people.  The former President sharply criticized the Bush Administration's "paradigm shift" since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2023, warning that the United States cannot "jail, kill and occupy all your adversaries."  The former President accused the Bush Administration of telling the rest of the world "to go to Hell." He said that the Bush Administration was practicing poor decision-making, noting that, "when people are under stress, they hate to think ... when they most need to think."  Former President Clinton stated that chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had requested more time to continue the work of his inspectors, and that in time, Clinton believed, Iraq would have been fully disarmed -- without the use of military force.  The Bush Administration would not bend, and instead, decided "We are going to do it now, and if you don't like it, we'll get even with you when it's over."

The next day, the New York Times, while not mentioning a word about former President Clinton's speech, published interviews with several Democratic Party candidates and elected officials, commenting on the Iraq war.  Sen. Evan Bayh delivered a blunt warning to fellow Democrats that there would be no toleration for any attacks on President Bush over his Iraq war. "There is no question that the President has been strengthened at least in the short run," Bayh told the Times.  "If people can't envision a candidate as their commander-in-chief in a dangerous world, they're not going to listen to you.  The threshold has now been raised, and we need to nominate someone on those grounds." "Equivocating about whether Saddam's departure is a good thing or not," he added, "doesn't help the Democratic Party."  Bayh speaks for the organized crime-contaminated DLC of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), which threw its support to the Bush Administration's illegal preventive war against Iraq.

In a further indication of the deep rift in the Democratic Party over the Bush doctrine of imperial preventive war, the Times quoted an unnamed senior Democratic Senator, who clearly shared former President Clinton's concerns:  "The big difference is that the first Gulf War ended.  This administration will never end the war.  And because they never end the war, they will have an ongoing advantage.  An open-ended war on terrorism that will never end and that keeps people constantly on edge.  A never-ending military commitment in Iraq that might lead to other commitments beyond Iraq also keeps people focussed on national security."

Leading Republicans, closely allied with former President Bush, have recently surfaced with powerful objections to the policies of the current "chickenhawk"-dominated Bush Administration, which threatens World War III:

On April 13, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger gave an interview to BBC.  The "Bush 41" Administration official was asked by BBC about the argument, coming out of Washington, from circles close to the President, that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein justifies regime-change elsewhere in the region, "even if that includes extending military action to Syria, Iran -- I've even heard Saudi Arabia mentioned." Eagleburger replied, "I just don't think anybody who says that truly understands the American people.  You saw the furor that went on in this country before the President got sufficient support to do this [attack on Iraq]. We're just not built like that.  This is still, whether anybody is prepared to admit it or not, this is still a democracy.  And public opinion and the public, still, on these issues rules." Eagleburger warned, "And if George Bush decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria now, and Iran after that, he would last in office for about 15 minutes!... In fact, if George Bush were to try it now, even I would feel that he ought to be impeached.  You can't get away with that sort of thing with this democracy.  It's ridiculous!"

Five days before Eagleburger's warning of impeachment, if President Bush follows the agenda of Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al., and wages war against Damascus, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor to "Bush 41", and one of the former President's closest confidants, delivered a speech in Oslo, Norway before the Norwegian Nobel Institute.  In that April 8th address, as in other recent public appearances, Gen. Scowcroft repeated his opposition to the Iraq war.  He had warned strongly, prior to the unprovoked American attack, that a preventive war on Iraq would be a dangerous distraction from the war on terrorism, and would undermine the entire international system.  He told the Oslo audience that, were the United States and Britain to occupy and control the interim administration in Iraq, this could provoke the "wrath and enmity" of the entire Muslim world.  He added, "We're moving uncertainly down paths nobody has gone down before.  The structures we've built to handle our security are under significant stress and may not survive to serve us in the future."  Warning about the propagandistic use of the term "democracy" by Bush Administration officials, Gen. Scowcroft asked, "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win?  We're surely not going to let them take over."

On April 2, speaking in Toronto, Canada at the Empire Club, former "Bush 41" Secretary of State James Baker III made a strong push for the current Bush Administration to turn from war in Iraq to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, emphasizing that the "road map" document, prepared by the Quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the Secretary General of the United Nations), represented a "vehicle ... that can help move the stalled peace process forward.  So, too, will the appointment of the moderate Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Prime Minister."  Baker III drew the parallel to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which led to the Madrid talks, and, soon afterwards, to the groundbreaking Oslo Accords. Baker III bluntly stated that "Land for peace under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 ... is the only basis upon which the dispute can be settled."  He directly warned Ariel Sharon:  "Any decision to reopen the ‘road map' to substantive amendment ... is an open invitation to interminable delay.  And there should be no conditions whatever to Israel's obligation to stop all settlement activity.  The United States must press Israel -- as a friend, but firmly -- to negotiate a secure peace based on the principle of trading land for peace....  But the bottom line is this:  the time for talking about a road map is over.  We have one.  And, when the war is over, we need to begin using it."

On April 15, "Bush 41"'s Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Russia, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert S. Strauss, wrote an op-ed, which was published in the Washington Post, seconding Baker III's call for aggressive Bush Administration pressure on Israel to accept the road map for Middle East peace.  "The time to implement the road map is now," he wrote.  "There is no perfect plan, but there are reliable friends.  The United States has repeatedly demonstrated its friendship with Israel.  Now comes a win-win opening; a plan from which all parties can benefit that can break the logjam at a critical moment.... The United States can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines, nor can Israel or the Palestinians afford the luxury of turning their backs on this potential breakthrough. It's time for positive thinking and progress, not retrogression."

In the midst of this surfacing of strong substantive opposition to the Bush Administration war party faction's agenda, former President Bush, himself, made a trip to Seoul, South Korea, during which he promoted the idea of multi-lateral talks to resolve the North Korea crisis without war.  Donald Gregg, his former Vice Presidential national security aide, and later his Ambassador to South Korea, made similar statements, promoting a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

This chorus of statements from leading associates of former President George H.W. Bush reflects the same intensity of behind-the-scenes policy warfare inside the GOP, where the dominant Cheney-Rumsfeld grouping within the Bush Administration, is committed to a permanent war of destructionism, pointed at the heart of Eurasia.  The fact that leading figures in both the Democratic and Republican parties are now publicly revolting against the dominant war party factions, is of great strategic import, reflecting action along the lines of Lyndon LaRouche's persistent call, in recent weeks, for a "counter-coup" against the neo-conservatives, who are driving a pathetically ill-equipped President George W. Bush into the abyss of world war and a new dark age.

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