Labor sells out on war
The “me-too” approach that Prime Minister John Howard and his cabinet
have taken to the US war drive against Iraq has given the ALP some leeway
to appear to be an opposition on this issue. It isn't.
Both the ALP and the Coalition have accepted the basic framework underlying
the current hyperbole and chest beating: that Saddam Hussein must be removed,
even at the cost of inflicting massive casualties among Iraqi civilians.
The most significant difference between the Coalition and the ALP on
this question is one of process. While Howard appears quite happy to follow
the US into a war without the UN's formal sanction, a public debate or
credible evidence that Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction”, the ALP
wants all of those things. Then it wants to go to war.
On September 11, Labor federal leader Simon Crean told ABC Radio's AM program:
“The point is this: get the process right, produce the evidence, make the
case, build the coalition and Labor will support the cause.”
The ALP even accepts that the war on Iraq is no longer part of the “war
on terror”. “The case for military action against Iraq [could] be made
either on the basis of Iraq's links to international terrorism through
the events of September 11 or evidence of a significant expansion in Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction capability or threat”, Crean said in his September
4 address to the Retired Servicemen's League.
The problem with this approach is that there is no evidence that Iraq
had any connection with the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center
last year or any significant stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction”.
Former UN weapon's inspector Scott Ritter argues persuasively that the
stockpile is “90-95%” destroyed.
Even the current head of the UN weapon's inspection team, Hans Blix, was reported
by the September 14 Sydney Morning Herald as saying British Prime Minister
Tony Blair's promised dossier on Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons
programs is “not proof”.
The truth, of course, is that the bi-partisan desire to wage war on
Iraq has nothing to do with either Osama bin Laden or Hussein's weapons
programs. It is entirely about supporting the US-led drive for First World
political control over the oil-rich Middle East.
After US President George Bush's September 12 address to the United
Nations General Assembly, the ALP's position got even more bellicose. In
a statement released to the media on September 13, Crean “welcomed” Bush's
“commitment to work through the United Nations to see all UN Security Council
resolutions complied with immediately and in full”.
Crean did not mean all UN Security Council resolutions. He only meant
those relating to Iraq — not the resolutions demanding Israel end its 35-year
military occupation of Palestinian territories.
Crean then specified that he backed all of Bush's list of resolutions
on Iraq: not only those demanding weapons inspections, but also those demanding
that Iraq account for missing US military personnel from a decade-old war.
“The UN should ensure [compliance] occurs”, Crean's statement said,
oblivious to the fact that it will be impossible for Iraq to comply with
all of them. That is why Bush made them: to provide a “legal” excuse for
his government's planned aggression against Iraq.
Crean went on: “Support for collective action needs to be built both
at home and abroad. Australians are still waiting for the prime minister
to take them into his confidence.”
Like Blair, the ALP would like the UN to oversee the war, rather than
the US taking unilateral action. The concern underlying this view is that
public opinion in Britain and Australia will not support the war unless
given a compelling reason.
According to a Sunday Telegraph/Newspoll survey, published in the
September 15 Sunday Telegraph, 75% of Australians are against sending
troops to Iraq, unless the government can provide credible evidence that Iraq
poses a military threat.
The message underlying Crean's appeal is: “Convince us a bit more!”
But working people in Australia have no reason to support this war. It
will inflict untold suffering on the civilian population of Iraq, and possibly
result in the deaths of thousands of US and Australian soldiers — all in
the name of preserving a world “safe” for the profiteering of big business,
particularly the big oil companies like Exxon-Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell
and Chevron-Texaco (Caltex).
See Jaybee cartoon here.
From Green Left Weekly, September 18, 2002.
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