This piece was first published in the Sun Herald today
Around the world the top experts on war, terrorism, foreign policy, diplomacy and politics warned against invading Iraq. Some resigned in protest from governments and their agencies in the US, Britain and Australia.
Ordinary people who rely on their leaders to exercise sound judgement in their interests warned against it too, most spectacularly on a weekend in February 2003 when they marched in unprecedented numbers on all continents to request an alternative to war.
Yet on the eve of war, John Howard said of his long-made decision to invade Iraq: “I have never thought of changing my position. Never.”
This Easter, on the first anniversary of the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, I want to salute some of the many Web Diary readers who did what they could to avoid the disaster Bush, Blair and Howard were determined to inflict on us all.
October 1, 2002
David Makinson: “Many commentators have tried the ‘appeasement’ argument. It’s terribly short in the logic department, but it has a certain emotive appeal so I’m not above using it. If we continue to appease US self-interest and let Bush et al get away with this, our children will hold us to account one day.”
Kim Rybinski: “The Americans just don’t seem to learn from their history. They were defeated in Vietnam because they failed to understand their enemy or their enemy’s commitment to their cause. Sadly, I fear that this is another lesson that will have to be taught to them again.”
Gene Adam: “There is no critical evidence in hand that Saddam is an immediate threat to Oz, the UK or the US now, even without inspectors on the ground, and certainly not ever if inspectors are in place. This rush to war is obviously not a matter of self-defence, of disabling an imminent attack. Is this rush to war with Iraq, with Osama bin Laden uncaught and unaccounted for and his followers doubtless at work, simply a matter of it being the right moment to grab the oil?”
January 30, 2003
Mike Lyvers: “The US threatened war, forcing the UN to take action by resuming inspections. As long as those inspections are happening, Saddam is effectively bottled up. That’s why they should be continued – they keep Saddam under wraps without having to go to war to do so. That’s why I oppose invading Iraq.”
Grace Knight: “You bastards of war you took your turn, running our planet into the ground. Now you sanction a dying child’s last breath, won’t stop till you own the rest.”
February 12, 2003
Justin Bell: “The benefit of removing Hussein by unilateral action is not worth the cost of exhausting the Western world’s most precious resource – international goodwill towards the ideals of America and Western liberal democracy.”
February 14, 2003
Michael Chong: “In diplomacy nothing’s so diverse as the mechanics of truth, you can even engineer in reverse evidence from proof. So shall we lose or confuse the plot of morality’s slender charter, as we choose to undo the despot with the tyranny of another?”
February 18, 2003
Diann Rodgers-Healey:
“We fear the loss of blood, so young. We fear the swell of death, so near. The loss of peace, the strength of rage. A future of divide, inequality more alive.”
March 18, 2003, the day Howard formally committed to the war on Iraq
Meagan Phillipson: “With a handful of words, the future of the entire world has become critically uncertain on a multitude of fronts. The only thing that remains certain, for me at least, is the thought that when people make war, war makes monsters of people. Hardly a comforting certainty in this, the most uncertain of times.”
Carole Hancock: “War is not the way to solve this problem and I sincerely hope that John Howard is prepared for the likely consequences. Even if the war is fast and furious, I doubt it will be the end of the issue. It is very likely there will be significant repercussions that roll out continuously in guerilla-type tactics by those who will feel justified to retaliate.”
Hamish Tweedy: “I have to confess to being more nervous about war in Iraq than any other decision I can recall. I can’t think of a time I more wanted to be shown up as an idiot, and that John Howard and the Government are 100 per cent correct and our commitment to a war on Iraq without UN sanction is not only the right thing to do but won’t turn around and bite us on the bum. If things go awry this could seriously screw the world and Australia for generations.”
March 19, 2003
John Augustus: “The big eagle caught in the trap. Feathers of failed diplomacy drifting, bin Laden smiling, the hapless waiting. A swift, brutal war, a fractured globe. The terrorist wins after all.”