"The LaRouche Doctrine" will bring U.S. troops to safety
April 19, 2023

April 19--Under the title "Southwest Asia: The LaRouche Doctrine," Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche on April 17 issued a policy statement on how the United States can immediately withdraw its troops from harm's way in Iraq, while providing the necessary context of economic cooperation in Southwest Asia, that will permit the Iraq situation to be stabilized, and put on the right path.

The statement, which is available on www.larouchepub.com and www.larouchein2004.com, is currently being issued in a half a million run by the LaRouche Presidential campaign, and translated into at least a half dozen languages other than English, for massive circulation.

LaRouche's initiative proceeds from the reality that neither President Bush, nor putative Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, are showing the competence to define a practical approach to the urgently necessary withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Under the present Bush policy, and Kerry's "me-too," the ship of state will sink.

While the full 10 points of his doctrine cannot be reproduced in this space, the first five points will convey the crucial thrust.

"1. Neither the causes, nor remedy for the present quagmire of boiling asymmetric warfare in Iraq can be found within the bounds of the present configuration of conflicting forces within Iraq itself. There could be no competent moral or military reason for maintaining a policy of keeping our forces within the territory of Iraq. We must, therefore, extricate our troops safely, and quickly, from Iraq itself. However, this can not be done without creating a larger strategic framework in which a workable solution could be brought into existence.

"The trap currently gripping U.S. military forces inside Iraq, is that either a headlong flight forward, as a desperate Secretary Rumsfeld proposes, or reckless retreat, would inevitably create an infinitely worse mess there, and for the U.S. world-wide, than already exists today. Therefore, the present situation on the ground must be strategically outflanked.

"2. To define a feasible solution, we must shift the agenda, from Iraq alone, to the subject of Southwest Asia as a whole. Only within an appropriate declaration of U.S. policy-interest in Southwest Asia as a coherently defined unit of U.S. policy-making, could we bring into play the concert of forces required to create a viable option for Iraq today.

"3. For the purposes of U.S. foreign policy, Southwest Asia is to be recognized as bounded by four principal states, whose appropriate cooperation is indispensable for creating a zone of stability among the nations and peoples of the region as a whole. These are Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Egypt. ... It is only through fostering the immediate establishment of an appropriate declaration of U.S. commitment to recognition of that reality of Southwest Asia, that the needed aid for the extrication of U.S. forces from Iraq could be accomplished. The acceptance of that U.S. declaration by those and other nations of that region, is the necessary flanking action. Therefore, action in the direction outlined here is urgent, and must be immediate.

"4. The effort to establish such a zone of mutual security in Southwest Asia, would fail, unless the U.S.A. also took the boldest action toward bringing about the realization of an unconditional U.S. commitment to immediate negotiation of a two-state peace-agreement along long-standing, predetermined lines, between the Palestinian and Israeli state. No one in Southwest Asia or much of the world besides, would believe the U.S. to be an honorable party unless the U.S. came down hard, without its present and customary equivocation, on the long-overdue establishment of a kind of Palestinian-Israeli peace consistent in fact with the principled precedent of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.

"5. However, no such policy proffered by the U.S., even if it followed to the letter what has been said here, would be accepted among the peoples of the regions, unless the U.S. government were to identify such a declaration as the adoption, by name, of this as a "LaRouche Doctrine." No other notable political figure of the U.S. would be capable of enjoying the trust of the Arab and related parts of the world, for this purpose, at the time...."

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