The Gulf War and the Vietnam War

February 25, 1991
Issue 

Bernie Taft was vice-chairman of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign Committee in Victoria and former joint national secretary of the Communist Party of Australia. Albert Langer was the most prominent student activist in the Victorian movement against the Vietnam War. DICK NICHOLS replies to their recently expressed support for the US-led war against Iraq.

Straight after you came out in support of the US-led war against Iraq — in the ABC TV's February 5 Lateline and the February 6 Melbourne Age — there was the Murdoch press's guru-in-residence, Paddy McGuinness, congratulating you both for being "capable of thinking hard about the real moral issues involved in the Gulf War" (Australian, February 7).

I wonder if you didn't squirm inwardly a little in the McGuinness embrace.

Maybe not. Maybe you both have enough confidence in the argument that "the lesser [evil] is the present destructive war", as Bernie put it.

Of course, on the surface of things, it's understandable why (in contrast to your stand during the early days of Vietnam) you have now enlisted in the pro-war camp.

For starters, Saddam Hussein is not Ho Chi Minh; the Iraqi army is not the Vietnamese National Liberation Front; the invasion of Kuwait freed nothing except a lot of gold and petrodollars from the Kuwait Central Bank.

So, you reason, surely something had to be done to stop Saddam, especially when sanctions weren't working. More in sorrow than in anger, and despite your intense desire for peace and hatred of war, you find yourselves led by logic and morality to support the US-led forces in the Gulf.

Well, we can agree on one thing — Saddam is evil. Now that he has made himself an enemy of the West, everybody knows that. His criminal record, which small groups of human rights activists laboured in vain for years to bring to world attention, Channels 7, 9 and 10 have now drilled into millions of brains. In the pubs people who wouldn't have known what a Kurd was six months ago will now tell you gravely that "the bastard gassed the poor Kurds".

Former favourite

As former radicals you both know why this is so. Up until August 2, 1990 (and for all the shrill Arab nationalist noise that regularly came out of Baghdad) Saddam's Baathist regime was preferred by Washington, London, Paris and Canberra to the alternatives — an Iraqi Communist Party and Kurdish nationalist coalition inside Iraq and the Iranian revolution on Iraq's eastern flank.

That's why the CIA obliged Saddam's torturers with the names and addresses of Iraqi CP members; why the US Navy found itself blowing an Iranian airliner out of the skies over the Gulf; and why Whitehall, Paris and Washington could only find it in themselves to tut-tut over the gassing of Kurdish villagers while

their crates of weaponry continued to ring up valuable export revenue in Basra and Baghdad.

Even Gareth Evans and Tory mouthpieces like the Economist concede this. Yet, like them, you go on to argue: "Why should these past wrongs prevent us from doing right now? Especially when this action has the full backing of the UN."

It's here your argument really starts to unravel. Firstly, you make no mention of how the US strongarmed and bribed its way to a 12-2-1 Security Council majority in support of war. The December 12 US Guardian summarised this "diplomatic" process:

"China's abstention earned it a much-desired White House meeting for its foreign minister; the Soviet Union's co-sponsorship of the bill was repaid by a US $4 billion gift from the Gulf states; the only Arab state on the Council, Yemen, which voted 'no', was told by a US diplomat, 'That was the most expensive no vote you ever cast' — signifying an end to the over $70 million in annual US aid and termination of vital financial aid from the Gulf states."

No alternative?

Next you deny that the peace movement is advancing any viable alternative. As Albert told Lateline: "All they [the peace movement] are saying is 'Give Peace a Chance'."

Are we really? It's hard to take you seriously when you talk like this, Albert. If you want a serious debate, at least consider the full range of positions that have been put forward by those who oppose both the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US-led response to it.

More specifically, what would have been wrong with the following policy approach to Saddam's annexation of Kuwait?

l Any decision on actions against Iraq should have rested with the General Assembly, not the Security Council. That would have produced a majority in support of measures targeted against the Saddam regime, but hurting the Iraqi people as little as possible. Measures such as an embargo on Iraqi oil exports and an end to export and development finance (used to good effect against the apartheid regime) should have been favoured.

l Any policing force needed to monitor such an embargo should have been under the control of the General Assembly, with its aims strictly limited and defined. This would have been the complete opposite of the present juggernaut in the Gulf, the biggest and most destructive military force assembled since the Korean War, and now wreaking a nightmare of destruction whose horrifying course will stop nobody knows where.

l The principle should have been clearly enunciated that it is up to the Iraqi people (not George Bush) to overthrow Saddam and help given to the democratic Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Kurdish opposition.

Such an approach, far from "giving in to Saddam", would have facilitated his removal by the struggles of the Iraqi and Kuwaiti people, that is from the left and not the right. It would also have had the advantage of allowing something the Kuwaiti

Al Sabah clique never conceded "their" people — the right to decide what form of government they want and what sort of relationship they want with Iraq.

In the absence of such an approach — clearly impossible given the present world balance of forces — the antiwar movement has no choice but to oppose what is really happening in the Gulf right now — the obliteration of a Third World country by the combined might of the advanced capitalist world.

Would the policy outlined above have taken "too long" to work? Such a line of argument immediately boomerangs against its proponents. They must tell us how many dead and wounded they think the "liberation of Kuwait" is worth. Five thousand? Ten thousand? Thirty thousand?

There's a second great blank spot in your arguments. Neither of you say anything about Washington's real war aims. Coming from two former leaders of the anti-Vietnam War movement, this is remarkable indeed, especially when former US secretaries of state (like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger) have been quite forthright in this regard.

One is to secure as conservative a "solution" as possible to the Palestinian question. As Kissinger said in the January 29 Newsweek:

"A new balance of power will revive prospects for progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict. A peace process dominated by Saddam Hussein, or heavily influenced by him, would have been a debacle. For it would have taught the lesson that radicalism, terrorism and force are the road to diplomatic progress in the Middle East ... But with Saddam defeated, moderate Arab leaders will gain in stature, America's credibility will be enhanced and Israel will have a breathing space. This new equation should be translated into a major diplomatic effort within a few months of victory."

'No blood for oil'

Then there's the three-letter O-word. Unlike silly Bob Hawke, who tried in the parliamentary debate on the war to "nail that mindless catchcry 'No Blood For Oil'", the January 12 Economist decided the smartest policy was to come clean.

"Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait, good-natured people have felt queasy about fighting merely for the sake of oil ... [But] oil is not just any commodity, it is the fuel on which every country's hopes for growth and prosperity rest ... This war is not being fought for the oil companies ... but to keep the hands of a ruthless blackmailer off the windpipe of the world economy."

Finally, there's the US's third major war aim, to end the "Vietnam Syndrome" — that resistance and suspicion ingrained in so many North American people towards foreign military adventures. Don't you two feel just a bit uncomfortable helping Bush and Baker out in this line of work?

Strip away the incidentals, and the basic character of this war is identical to the one you both opposed 25 years ago. Like Vietnam, it's a war of the rich against the poor, the North against the South; like Vietnam, it's a war to preserve and strengthen the strategic position of imperialism abroad; and, like Vietnam, it's

a war against the working people and poor at home, a war to make them swallow a diet of militarism and austerity.

The carpet-bombing B-52s are today carrying out the same job over Kuwait and Iraq as they did over Cambodia and Vietnam.

The fact that you, Albert and Bernie, have become a couple of corks bobbing on the new tide of reaction this war has unleashed, doesn't change that reality one jot. n

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