Military, corporate elite divided on war

BY ALISON
DELLIT

It is usual for newspapers to canvass a range of opinions following
major government speeches such as Prime Minister John Howard’s National
Press Club address on March 13 in which he presented his government's case
for Australian participation in a US-led war against Iraq. What was unusual
about the opinions solicited for the March 14 Sydney Morning Herald,
however, was that they were all current or former military and intelligence
officers.

Paul Barratt, secretary of the defence department in 1998-99, told the
SMH: "I thought [Howard's speech] was quite unconvincing. The prime
minister relied on the depth of his own opinion, how nasty Osama bin Laden
was and how anxious he is to get weapons of mass destruction. That doesn't
make a case for attacking Saddam Hussein. The rationale is indirect. There
is no clear and present danger. It's the first time Australia has participated
in an unprovoked invasion of another country."

While Barratt's memory may be selective — Australia has participated
in the invasions of many countries (for example, Turkey in World War I,
Korea and Vietnam) without having been attacked by them — his argument
expressed doubts of many establishment figures on the need for a war against
Iraq.

Their criticisms of Howard's pro-war policy came in the wake of the
March 11 resignation of senior intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie in protest
against the war drive. Wilkie worked for the Office of National Assessments
(ONA), which is the smallest of Australia’s spy agencies, but whose job
is to collate intelligence information gathered by other agencies, analyse
it and prepare briefings for government ministers.

Prior to resigning, Wilkie was on standby to join an intelligence assessment
team monitoring the war against Iraq. He has not pulled his punches when
expressing his view that Howard’s push for war is wrong. He told the Bulletin,
in an article published on March 11: “[Iraq’s] military is very weak. It’s
a fraction of the size it was when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Most of what
remains is poorly trained, poorly equipped and of questionable loyalty
to the regime. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program is, I believe,
genuinely contained... The bottom line is that this war is totally unrelated
to the war on terror.”

Wilkie and Barratt are not alone in their criticism. Former chiefs of
the defence forces General Peter Gration and Admiral Alan Beaumont, former
chief of naval staff Michael Hudson, Returned Services League president
Major-General Peter Phillips and former foreign affairs department head
Richard Woolcott have all condemned Howard’s push for war. Howard has also
come under blistering attack from conservative politicians, including former
PM Malcolm Fraser and former Liberal leader John Hewson.

And while the Murdoch-owned press in Australia, and around the world,
continues to scream the need for war from the rooftops, its main print
competitor, the Fairfax group, has remained more circumspect. Editorials
in the Fairfax-owned Illawarra Mercury, Australian Financial Review,
Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age have all argued that
Howard’s position is “risky”, and have criticised his uncritical support
for the US.

“[Howard’s press club speech] was powerful stuff. But none of it can
hide the fact that the world is on the brink of throwing out the multilateral
system of global governance because the world’s most powerful nations have
mismanaged the post-Cold War era”, the March 14 AFR editorial commented.
A majority of opinion pieces published in the Fairfax-owned papers have
been critical of the government's pro-war position, with headlines such
as “Logic too simple to convince” and “The blood of the dead will be on
our hands.”

Of course, the Fairfax press is not interested in building and supporting
the anti-war movement — and reflects the ruling class consensus that Iraq
must be “disarmed”, whether by crippling economic sanctions or by military
conquest. The Age’s March 15 editorial, for example, described Howard’s
case for war as “powerful” and “compelling”, merely criticising him for
having jumped “too quickly on board with the United States view on pre-emption
and the need to tackle rogue states head on, before they were in a position
to threaten us”.

In one of the most insightful articles to come from the corporate scribblers,
the AFR published a two-part article on the reasons for the war
on March 10 and 12. Written by columnist Peter Hartcher, the article explained
that an invasion of Iraq has been on the cards for some time, since shortly
after the first Gulf War in 1991.

Arguing that the invasion of Iraq is just the beginning of a US “revolution”,
Hartcher wrote: “The US will pre-empt threats to preserve hegemony. And
hegemony is a nice way of saying preponderant and unchallengeable global
domination.”

Not all sections of the ruling elite are convinced that cuddling up
as close as possible to the United States will be worth the political cost
— both the exposure to a population opposed to war of the lack of democracy
in this society, and the potential instability for Australian business
interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

This unease is also giving some courage to the ALP to continue arguing
for a “softly, softly” line — amounting to support for a later, UN-supported
attack on Iraq.

And for Wilkie, who was responsible for preparing ONA’s report into
the humanitarian crisis that a war against Iraq will create, he may very
well oppose the war because he understands all too well the devastation,
misery and despair that it will bring. We can only congratulate and welcome
all such dissenters from the establishment who join the ranks of the anti-war
movement.

From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.

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From GLW issue 530