Hi. Jack Robertson, an ex-soldier and the brother of an SAS officer now on deployment to the Gulf, details the crucial unanswered questions on invading Iraq, particularly from the perspective of our soldiers, in White House anti-Americanism, Australian patriotic blackmail.
Today’s Herald details where Howard has agreed our troops will fit into the US war machine in the Gulf, and their role in an invasion. (Forces to follow US plan of attack). It proves that John Howard has handed his decision on whether Australia troops will join an invasion of Iraq to the Americans. It is inconceivable that Australia would not go to war if the Americans did so given that it has agreed to play specific roles in an invading force. That would be treachery.
Yesterday -a day after farewelling our troops – Howard acknowledged his failure to explain himself to Australians. “They’re wanting to hear from me, I understand that and I’ll do my very best to talk to them and to explain it,” he said on radio 3AW. Yet he persisted with his false claim that he would exercise an independent judgement on whether Australian troops will invade Iraq.
Howard’s promised parliamentary debate on whether to go to war is a sham. He has handed the power to the Americans to decide. It’s that simple. And he’s failed to tell us the rules of engagement, or the plan for regime change.
Australians need to watch the US President’s state of the union address on Wednesday for clues on what we might be in for. George Bush will decide whether Australian troops invade Iraq and the circumstances in which they do so. John Howard – and Australian public opinion – are irrelevant to their fate.
Today, responses to my piece in yesterday’s Webdiary from Americans Hal Wilson and Charles P. Solomon and a selection of your emails which show just how bitter this debate is going to get, on both sides.
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Recommendations
Glenn Condell recommends nowarblog, a joint effort by American progressive and conservative bloggers who oppose the war.
David Candy recommends an Australian National University publication, anu, on waging war on Iraq, in which Australia’s leading academics, military men and policy advisors discuss how we’ve got to this and what it could mean for the world.
A reader says that if an attack begins, there’s a rally at 5pm that day at Sydney Town Hall. Contact Nick Everett 0409 762 081, Hannah Middleton 0418 668 098, Bruce Childs 9386 1240. You can keep in touch with what the anti-war movement is doing by emailing StopTheWar_Announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Hal Wilson in Tallahassee, Florida
The United States of America has been attacked by an organized group of terrorists whose stated goal is the destruction of our country and our freedom loving way of life. We are at war and there is nothing that you can say or do that changes this. As President Bush so aptly stated – you are with us or you are against us. It is that simple.
Anti-Americans such as yourself who seek to deny that freedom loving peoples everywhere are threatened do your readers a grave injustice. You seek to lull your readers into complacency by suggesting that by doing nothing, our enemies will leave us alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. That has been proven time and time again with horrible and vivid consequences. How much innocent blood must be shed? Not any more of ours, thank you.
This is a war unlike any the world has ever seen. Our enemies are unseen and for the most part difficult to target. But the risks of inaction are the same. Destruction.
Why is Saddam a threat to America and why must he be removed, now? Because we believe that he has the potential for making weapons of mass destruction available to terrorists who will use them against us and in doing so, kill innocent Americans. That is simply unacceptable and it is not worth taking the risk that he won’t. History is full of examples of inaction that have resulted in tragedy.
There is a very large group of radical extremists, well funded, and relentless who seek to impose their way of life throughout the entire world. These people are not champions of individual freedoms, especially for women. They seek to impose their will by first destroying Israel and all Jewish people everywhere (all those who worship on Saturday). They next plan to destroy all of those who worship on Sunday. This is no secret. Why is it so difficult for you to understand this?
Australians have been attacked and hundreds were slaughtered. Do you believe that if you do nothing the radical elements that attacked you will suddenly leave you alone? Hardly. Bullies seldom leave weaklings alone. Were you never in grade school?
It is sad that it seems that so many Australians have deserted America. So be it. However, I can assure you of one thing. Our President has sworn an oath to protect his country and his people and he will do so. So help him God. When it comes right down to it, this is a fight for survival and only the fit and the strong shall survive.
If you are with us, then you shall survive. If you are not with us, may God have mercy on you.
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Charles P. Solomon, MD, Birmingham, Alabama
As an American planning a visit to Australia soon, I have been reading the SMH regularly to find out how Australians feel about current events. I read your essay In Australia’s best interests with great interest.
I do understand the reluctance other nations have to our nation’s stance concerning terror and especially Iraq and its dictator. It is encouraging to know that America does have friends who want to lend their support in this effort, but I also understand why other nations do not share our determination in this matter. I admit that if the terrorists had flown their aircraft into the Sydney Opera House, then the Sydney Harbor Bridge and finally the AMT Tower, that most Americans would not likely want to commit troops to finding and punishing the culprits so that such terrible deeds did not happen again. So your point of view is well-taken from your nation’s vantage point, I must admit.
However, if indeed this had happened to Australia and not to America, how would you respond if our President did pledge troops/support to the course of action your government chose to take? The world is a small place and is shrinking daily. To imagine that non-action will preclude future attention by terrorists is a flawed policy in my view.
9-11 changed America forever; it was the Pearl Harbor Day of my generation. I have served in the US Military previously and recognize that freedom is never free. Please also consider that we Americans have been affected and changed forever by what was done to us. May this never happen to your wonderful country. But, if it does, I believe you will find comfort in knowing that America will stand by your side as we have in the past.
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Sue Arnold, an Australian in the US
I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco and take part in what surely must have been one of the biggest marches ever seen in this city. Those in the know reckon the crowd was around 200,000. It was the most awe inspiring incredible experience from the time my friends and I jammed ourselves into the crowded Muni trains around l0.00am. Everyone was smiling, carrying placards, badges – all drenched in good will. People of every age group and race walked, roaring their protests. It was almost impossible to move in the streets because of the ever swelling crowd. Here and there was street theatre, women lying down with “dead babies “, other groups making music, banging drums, singing. Everywhere placards which made so many of us laugh.
The anti Bush sentiment is tangible in this country in spite of what the polls say. It was the most peaceful, inspiring, wonderful experience to be in the midst of jam packed humanity – without identification other than being part of a sea of concerned people who refuse to accept that war with Iraq is any solution. In Washington DC more than 500,000 people were on the streets. The mood in America is almost beyond description, a sleeping giant has awoken . Bush will ignore these outpourings at his peril.
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John Burnett in Sydney
Mr Crean,
Your statements before the deployment of troops overseas has merely cemented in my mind what I have long suspected. You and your party are playing the “race card” just as hard as the Liberals except you are bigots when it comes to America. In your mind and in the minds of the the party you lead all Americans are deserving of contempt and hatred. According to the ALP and the ACTU, both organisations with which you have strong ties, America is the source of all the world’s ills.
Funny how you didn’t take this anti-American line until after opinion polls started to confirm just how bigoted and racist the Australian public is against Americans. Playing on people’s prejudices is always morally wrong, Mr Crean… even when it’s against those damn Yanks.
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Carlo Randazzo
You are right when you say that the prime minister is prevaricating in his responses to the Iraq war and our participation therein. Is he taking the Australian people for fools? I doubt that a seasoned political campaigner like him will. If the polls are right and this war goes badly (though, if it is anything like the last one don’t expect there to be much debate about the pros and cons after the event) he will be crucified at the next election.
The question is why is he risking so much: Australian lives, Australian international credibility and his political career. It appears to me that he is doing it for the same reason that we have backed the USA since WWII.
We exist because of their security blanket. To pretend otherwise would be to ignore the reality of the world we live in. That security blanket comes at a cost, and on this occasion it is at the cost of participating in a war that we may not support and is not at first glance in our national interest.
I note that we participated in Afghanistan and Iraq Mark 1 for similar reasons (our contribution was symbolic at best on both occasions) and I do not recall particularly sharp debate on those decisions.
Our national interest has long been about maintaining the US as our friend and ally. The greater change in our national strategy would not be that we are participating in a war at its behest – there is already a long list of precedents for that – but that we will not answer their call when it arrives (and we should not behave like babes in the woods when it does arrive). The US is a superpower (the only one left) and we are its ally. That best summarises our foreign policy.
As for the UN, do you really believe that participation in any conflict requires its imprimatur? How then do we explain US led attacks in Kosovo and Bosnia, not to mention older examples such as Panama and Grenada. Russia is also killing thousands of people in the Chechen conflict in what is a war in all but name. I could list many others but that is not the point here.
The UN has failed so often in recognising that conflicts may occur (eg Rwanda) or in resolving the ongoing ones (such as the myriad African civil wars) that you need to question whether that is even its role. For years the UN stood by while the USSR and the US played world domination and held its breath hoping that it wouldn’t explode into something more substantial, and now we expect that body to be the overarching institution that will deliver world stability. There is somehow a disconnect here that is beyond me.
If the UN is to become that, and it is not impossible, it will need the assistance of the world’s superpower – without such support it will face the same abyss as any dependant institution without a substantial benefactor (here you can read Australia without American alliance).
What then is our prime minister to do? In my view, he should spell out that we are answering the call of the US for better or for worse because it is in our national interest to do so as it has been for some 60 years now. When we are a significant international power then we can ignore them, until then we will continue to do what we have always done whether we like it or not.
However, is it an option to call the US an evil warmonger and tell them that we will not participate in a war on the peaceloving Saddam Hussein?
I’m glad I am not the prime minister and I do not have to make this call.
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Chris Murphy
How can the “Coalition of the Willing” maintain its willingness, its steadfastness, and the morale of its troops when the truth of the matter is in real doubt? The Washington Post today reports that the White House lied about some of their “evidence”. This is beginning to look like Vietnam all over again, folks.
Conservative fools note: Little lies can undermine the entire credibility of superpowers, no matter how worthy the cause. And there is no greater traitor than the leader who abuses the trust of his people.
“When President Bush travelled to the United Nations in September to make his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what he called Iraq’s “continued appetite” for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were “used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”
Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the UN General Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim, with Rice describing the tubes as “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.”
It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House of recent Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But according to government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be seriously in doubt.
After weeks of investigation, UN weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium, according to officials familiar with the inspection process. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-chartered nuclear watchdog, reported in a Jan. 8 preliminary assessment that the tubes were “not directly suitable” for uranium enrichment but were “consistent” with making ordinary artillery rockets – a finding that meshed with Iraq’s official explanation for the tubes. New evidence supporting that conclusion has been gathered in recent weeks and will be presented to the U.N. Security Council in a report due to be released on Monday, the officials said.
Moreover, there were clues from the beginning that should have raised doubts about claims that the tubes were part of a secret Iraqi nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and international experts on uranium enrichment. The quantity and specifications of the tubes – narrow, silver cylinders measuring 81 millimeters in diameter and about a meter in length – made them ill-suited to enrich uranium without extensive modification, the experts said.
But they are a perfect fit for a well-documented 81mm conventional rocket program in place for two decades. Iraq imported the same aluminum tubes for rockets in the 1980s. The new tubes it tried to purchase actually bear an inscription that includes the word “rocket,” according to one official who examined them.
“It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium,” said one expert familiar with the investigation of Iraq’s attempted acquisition. “But you’d have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece.”
As the UN inspections continue, some weapons experts said the aluminum tubes saga could undermine the credibility of claims about Iraq’s arsenal. To date, the Bush administration has declined to release photos or other specific evidence to bolster its contention that Iraq is actively seeking to acquire new biological, chemical and nuclear arms, and the means to deliver them.
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Glenn Condell
I saw a bloke on FoxNews the other night who is leading an international group of volunteers through Europe and into Iraq to act as human shields in the event of a ‘coalition’ invasion. His name is Ken O’Keefe, a Gulf War vet who got wise to his government’s policies – he’s since been hounded out of the US on some trumped up car insurance charge and is being threatened with arrest as an ‘enemy combatant’ if he survives the initial confrontations in Iraq. He has renounced his US citizenship, and says he’s had thousands of inquiries and expects as many as 10,000 to join him.
I see the value of this in two ways. Foremost is that he would force the US to kill many of its own and other nation’s citizens in order to take Iraq. This would be an event even the docile US media would find hard to ignore or obfuscate. The other thing it does is neatly contrast the passion and genuine commitment of antiwar activists with the faux conviction of their opponents. He and his colleagues are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their beliefs; one their opponents wouldn’t dream of making. Oh, they’re happy to send soldiers to deal with Saddam’s WMD and general badness, but would they go, or send their children?
The other thing to say about this guy is that he is great media talent – he looks like Quentin Tarantino in a foul mood but is articulate and engaging. He belted the war toadies who ‘interviewed’ him on Fox into orbit the other night and it was inspiring. Here was someone who was prepared to move beyond the formal niceties and meet propaganda with an implacable combination of eloquence and contempt. His website is uksociety.