Accueil > Bring the troops home now !

Bring the troops home now !

Publie le samedi 15 février 2003 par Open-Publishing

Prime Minister John Howard’s decision to send more than 2000 troops - the largest Australian combat force since the Vietnam War - to participate in a US-led invasion of Iraq is a commitment by his government to be complicit in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Nobody believes that when the US asks Howard to order the Australian sailors and soldiers who have been sent to the Persian Gulf to participate in attacks on Iraq, he will refuse Washington’s request. Nobody believes that Howard, or his allies, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, want to avoid a war with Iraq.

To the contrary, Bush, Blair and Howard have been attempting to manufacture excuses to win public support for an invasion of Iraq that aims to install a subservient pro-US regime in Baghdad. They argue that Iraq has a huge arsenal of biological and chemical weapons and that Saddam Hussein’s regime is training al Qaeda terrorists in the use of these weapons.

In his speech to parliament on February 4, Howard claimed, "Only one nation, acting alone, can make the choice for peace. That nation is Iraq". This is a lie.

Howard has ignored the fact that UN weapons inspectors have found no evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and that there no credible evidence of any link between al Qaeda and Iraq.

No matter what Iraq does, the US, British and Australian governments are set on a course toward war - a war to seize control of Iraq’s oil reserves, which are the second largest in the world. Howard remains determined to commit Australians to a war the big majority of Australians don’t want.

It is impossible to miss the extent of Australians’ fury and fear at the government’s decision to send troops to such an unjust and unnecessary war. In Sydney, city streets are dotted with people wearing, often homemade, "No War" T-shirts and badges. Posters advertising anti-war protests appear on almost every city block and flyers are handed out at many train stations during peak hour. People are talking about the impending war at work and school, on public transport, in karaoke bars and cafes.

Trade unions are beginning to organise against the war. UnionsWA has announced that a wave of industrial action, involving 75,000 workers, will begin as soon as any war against Iraq does.

Despite campus holidays, the call for a national student strike on March 5 has been rapidly taken up by student organisations across the country. The strike is likely to be the biggest national student protest in years.

The mass anti-war sentiment, which is crystallising into action, is placing enormous pressure on the politicians. On February 5, the Senate passed a motion of censure against Howard for his decision to send troops to the Gulf - the first time that a serving prime minister has been censured by the federal parliament. The motion was supported by the ALP, the Greens, the Democrats and independent senators Meg Lees and Shayne Murphy. The Coalition only managed to get the support of One Nation’s Len Harris.

Predictably, the ALP refuses to categorically rule out supporting Australian participation in a war against Iraq, rejecting a Greens amendment, also supported by the Australian Democrats, that would have committed the Senate to oppose a war on Iraq with or without UN endorsement.

The Labor Party’s official position, is to support a UN-sanctioned war on Iraq. "Labor believes Saddam Hussein must be disarmed", Simon Crean declared on February 4. "Labor will support decisions of the United Nations Security Council to enforce resolution 1441 in the event of Iraqi non-compliance, but Labor will not support a unilateral military attack on Iraq."

But the cracks in the ALP are becoming clearer. A statement opposing any war on Iraq, organised by the Victorian Peace Network, has been signed by 16 federal Labor MPs and many more state parliamentarians. Signatories include Carmen Lawrence, Nick Bolkus, Jennie George, Harry Quick and Kate Lundy.

"The statement goes further than the existing ALP position but I think it’s very close to the views of quite a few MPs", Lawrence told the February 6 Melbourne Age. "It’s a more universal statement. It says we oppose war on Iraq and Australian military involvement. It would be a very brave soul who suggested that Iraq really posed an imminent threat to any other nation."

The divisions in the Labor Party go deep. The main left faction in the NSW ALP has been circulating a statement opposing any war, and at least one local ALP branch has adopted, and is circulating to other branches, a motion calling on Crean to adopt this position.

This anti-war ferment inside the ALP is an indication of how strong the growing movement against war has already become.

The more vocal, widespread and organised this movement becomes, the more politically difficult will it be for Howard to order Australian troops into battle.

It is not enough now to simply condemn the sending of Australian troops to the Gulf. Opponents of the war need to demand that the troops be brought back immediately.

From Green Left Weekly, February 12, 2003.