On October 13, as the news of the mass murder in Bali spread across Australia, 45,000 people marched through Melbourne's streets in order to prevent the loss of thousands more lives in a war on Iraq.

“Innocent people are often the victims of violence”, rally chairperson and Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) secretary Leigh Hubbard told the anti-war protesters. “[The Bali bombing] is an act of terror, an act of violence which no-one supports. It is an act which is to be condemned because innocent people yet again have been killed and injured. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of our leaders is about war and about violence, and that leads to a spiral of violence. And one can't be surprised at what we've seen overnight.”

Hubbard's comments were a timely warning. Because no matter how insane it might seem to use a brutal murder as the excuse for more killing, that is exactly what many politicians and corporate media heavies are trying to do.

Although huge numbers of Australians have been shocked by the deaths of almost 200 people in the Bali terrorist bombings, their grief will not necessarily turn into bloodlust, no matter how hard the warmongers try to exploit it.

The size of the Melbourne protest is an indication that the Coalition and the ALP will find it difficult to win support for Australian participation in a war on Iraq.

“This was a brilliant anti-war demonstration”, Hubbard told Green Left Weekly. “The first mobilisations against the Vietnam War or the [1991] Gulf War were not nearly as big as this rally. I was also heartened with the strong union representation, which to me indicates a broad perspective within the union movement and shows that for many trade union activists political issues, such as the war, are just as important as the bread and butter ones.”

One of the reasons for the significant turn-out was the strong union support for the rally. Flags from various unions, particularly the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, littered the crowd. The VTHC, along with a number of individual unions, is an affiliate to the Victorian Peace Network, which organised the rally.

One of the attendees was Michelle O'Neil, state secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, who told GLW that she thought the “breadth and diversity of people” attending was “fantastic”. “I enjoy going to rallies where I don't know everybody”, she said. “I get the sense that there is a strong and growing opposition to Australia's involvement in a likely attack on Iraq.”

Graham Matthews is a Democratic Socialist Party representative in the network. He told GLW that the rally struck a chord because “there are people out there who are rather worried about the Australian government's slavish following of US foreign policy. They wanted to get out on the streets and express their opinion. This rally was able to mobilise so many of those people because it was built by such a broad coalition of forces.

“There were lots of young people, which was great, but it was still a very cross-generational crowd. The mood was one of defiant opposition to war, and a real determination to stop it.”

Another affiliate to the Victorian Peace Network is the Victorian Council of Churches, whose representative Margaret Postma told GLW: “I was very pleased with the high turnout of members from different church denominations and traditions and we had the opportunity to hear speakers reflecting on experiences from the Gulf War in 1991 which highlighted the absolute horror of war.

“More than ever I think Australians need to build links and bridges with our neighbours and not let divisions develop. Especially in light of the tragic Bali bombing we need to withhold judgement until the real facts about the case are brought to light.”

Such an attitude is especially necessary in the face of a government resolute on supporting the US-led War on Terror.

Less than 24 hours after the bombings, foreign minister Alexander Downer and Prime Minister John Howard were tripping over themselves to link al Qaeda to the bombings. Even if Osama bin Laden's group was not directly involved, Howard argued on October 15 Sky News, it was involved “in some way”.

On October 14, the Coalition put to both houses of federal parliament a condolence motion about the Bali bombings. The final clause of the motion reaffirmed “Australia's commitment to continue the war against terrorism in our region and the rest of the world”.

In addressing the motion, Howard and Labor leader Simon Crean laid out the basic argument that the government is using to link the bombings with the War on Terror: that such attacks can only be stopped by using military force against the terrorists.

Crean and Howard avoided mentioning a potential war on Iraq in this debate — that was left to deputy prime minister John Anderson, who added that Australia must “make sure that terrorist fanatics can never have access to these weapons of mass destruction”.

This is a convenient line for the bipartisan warmongers, who have been struggling against a tide of increasing cynicism about the War on Terror in general, and a war on Iraq in particular. Underneath the rhetoric, the War on Terror has been no more than an intensified attack on the Third World by wealthy countries' governments. As well as justifying US military aggression against any poor country which dares to thumb its nose at the imperial superpower, it has also been used as justification to repress dissenters in countries as diverse as Colombia and the Philippines.

In the United States, public support for this war on the Third World has been won by creating a xenophobic climate of fear — fear that all that First World workers have could be taken from them by Third World “fanatics”.

The message coming from the White House, and slavishly propagated by the corporate media, since September 11, 2001, is that the horrific poverty in many predominantly Muslim Third World countries is a result of the populations' religious views — not a result of the plundering of these countries' resources by US-based giant corporations.

By using the Bali bombings to create an “Australia under attack” mood of paranoia and fear, Howard, Crean and the corporate media hope to replicate an American-style anti-Muslim pro-war sentiment in Australia. But most Australians simply do not see the connection between bombings in a politically unstable Indonesia, and a war on Iraq, whose government has never been proven to support al Qaeda, let alone any South-East Asian terrorist groups.

As the letters pages and talkback radio callers around the country have indicated, many also believe that Australia is more likely to be a target for terrorist bombings because of Howard's support for George Bush's war drive against Iraq.

Howard has been forced to retreat on the question, reiterating in several press conferences that a war on Iraq is a “separate” issue from the Bali bombings, a point also made frequently by Crean. The job of linking Iraq to the Bali bombings has been left to the US government, and Australia's ambassador to the US.

Instead, both Crean and Howard have been concentrating on winning Australians to supporting a heightened Australian military involvement in the South-East Asia. In his October 14 parliament speech, Crean launched a proposal he has been running hard on: a regional “anti-terrorist” summit involving the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.

“A coalition was formed as a consequence of September 11”, Crean said. “I believe a similar coalition needs to be built again in the context of October 12 this year. It is our region. Australia needs to take a leading role.”

Crean's proposal, which Howard has said is “worth considering”, is hardly a change of tack (having been proposed in the government's December 2000 defence white paper). Nor will it help prevent further terrorist attacks. Many of the governments Crean is keen to cooperate in combatting terrorism are notoriously corrupt and repressive of peaceful dissent — key ingredients that can encourage frustrated middle-class dissidents to turn to terrorist tactics.

The 2000 defence white paper, which called for a boost in military spending, identified “internal” political unrest in Asian countries as the most likely target of Australian military intervention, particularly in Indonesia, where it pointed out that Australia had “great respect” for the country's “territorial integrity” (meaning: opposing the Acehnese and West Papuan national independence struggles).

The paper identified an “arc of instability” that reached from the Indonesian archipelago to the South Pacific Ocean.

This year, in a September 25 speech, defence minister Robert Hill updated the rhetoric. The “arc of instability” had become an “arc of militant Islamic influence” from Malaysia to Indonesia. The white paper is now being reviewed, presumably to emphasise Islam and de-emphasise “instability”.

Despite this, the intent is still the same. The ruling elite in Australia is concerned that South-East Asia remains a stable environment for Australian business interests — and this means maintaining the poverty-level wages and horrendous working conditions of most people in these countries.

It was in pursuit of such “stability” that successive Australian governments supported the Indonesian dictatorship of General Suharto. As a statement released on October 15 by Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP) observed: “At the same time the Suharto regime was using terror to control politics in Indonesia, John Howard tried to tell the Australian and Indonesian people that Suharto was a `caring and sensitive' leader. Now Howard laments the fact that acts of terror start to hit Australians in Indonesia. The hypocrisy is mind boggling.”

The motion before parliament, including the clause supporting the War on Terror, was passed with the support of all parties bar One Nation. However, while speaking to the motion, Democrats leader Senator Andrew Bartlett explained, “The Australian Democrats do not support a war against terrorism if it includes unjust actions: the undermining of international law and of basic civil liberties, or responding to violence with blind vengeance or more violence.”

Greens Senator Bob Brown said: “The last six words of this motion … do not include the potential for Australian involvement in an attack on Baghdad, with all the consequent loss of innocent life that that would entail.”

Most Australians oppose the war on Iraq. Increasingly, people are angry at the refusal of the government to acknowledge that, in supporting more death, it does not have the support of the Australian people.

In a media release condemning the Bali bombings, Socialist Alliance co-convenor Dick Nichols explained: “The anti-war movement, strong after its 45,000-strong showing in Melbourne, must refuse to be intimidated or demoralised. The best memorial it can create to the innocent victims of Bali is a movement so powerful that it stops Bush, Blair and Howard from carrying out their own massacre of the innocents in Iraq.”

From Green Left Weekly, October 23, 2002.
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