Bring the troops home!

Alex Bainbridge, Hobart

"The car-bomb attack on Australian troops in Baghdad is yet another reminder that Australian troops should be brought home immediately", Hobart Peace Coalition activist Kamala Emanuel told Green Left Weekly. "Any suggestion that it be used as an excuse to send more troops should be knocked on the head faster than John Howard can run for cover when the shit starts to fly!"

Two Australian soldiers were wounded in a car-bomb attack on an army barracks on the other side of the road from the Australian embassy in Baghdad on January 19. Emanuel, who is also a member of the Socialist Alliance, was responding to the idea that protecting the embassy is in some way a worthy cause.

"What is the Australian embassy doing there anyway? There is no legitimate Iraqi government to have diplomatic relations with", Emanuel said. "Maintaining relations with Washington's puppet government in Iraq is part of maintaining political cover for the US conquest and plunder of Iraq.

"Worse, the embassy directly organises involvement by Australian corporations in that same plunder. This has seen Iraqi assets sold off at bargain-basement prices, mostly to George Bush's corporate mates.

"Withdrawing all occupying troops and paying massive reparations is the only way to bring justice to Iraq."

Emanuel argued that as long as they are in Iraq, "Australian troops — who should neither have to kill nor die in a war for oil — are part of an invading and occupying force and therefore they are fair game for the resistance fighters — the true liberators — in Iraq."

From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.

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From GLW issue 612