This long, thoughtful piece by Ian MacDougall argues the case for war by means of a deep engagement with and considered response to Scott Burchill’s piece ‘Counterspin: Pro-war mythology’. I highly recommend it.

The annotated Scott Burchill

by Ian MacDougall

Scott Burchill’s Counterspin: Pro-war mythology, is quite thoughtful, and apparently is having some influence on the web, but a number of critical comments need to be made on it. Rather than submit these as a separate article necessitating continual reference by the reader to Burchill’s original, I have decided to make use of the possibilities offered by the Web and my own computer to produce this annotated version.

I am by training a biology teacher, but have retired from that now. These days I make my living, at least in part, by fattening cattle for the market. The current drought gives me the enforced leisure to pursue other interests, one of which is my lifelong interest in politics.

Orbiting around the issue of the looming war in Iraq we find a shoal, like unto a whole asteroid belt, of red herrings. Writers against the present positions of both opposition and government in Australia, and against those of the US and Britain, commonly point to inconsistencies of behaviour over the years of the US, Britain and Australia. Examples of hypocrisy and double standards are not hard to find in historical literature.

One can also find the issue of Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) linked to the asylum seekers and such issues as Aboriginal land rights. The question is often asked: If it is all right for the US and Britain to have WMD, why can’t Saddam have them too?

Others may speculate on such questions if they wish, but the answers to them are useless unless two fundamental questions are addressed, namely: (a) What are the likely consequences if the US goes in to Iraq to remove Saddam, with or without UN approval, and (b) What are they if it does not? My suggested answers are set out in my discussion of Scott Burchill’s article below.

The United States has a marvellous set of documents in its Declaration of Independence, its Constitution, and its Bill of Rights. But if democracy means rule by the people, then we can only allow that like Australia and Britain, it is ruled by an oligarchy appointed by the electorate and subject also to dismissal by it. To that extent, and to that extent only, it is a “democracy”. But that is clearly enough to satisfy most of its citizens, and until a better working model is built somewhere, and not just proposed, this situation is likely to continue. Until that situation arises, representative government will remain as assessed by Winston Churchill; the least worst system yet devised.

However, wherever found it has one major drawback: those elected by the people as representatives tend themselves not to be democrats. Machine politics as played in modern states is a game as much of ignoring the popular will and of manipulating it to one’s own advantage through expensive media campaigns as it is about finding out what that will is and putting it into effect. The concept of the non-core promise introduced by John Howard into Australian politics is significant here. As Lord Acton astutely observed: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is arguable that parliamentary democracy would be improved by observation of a simple rule: Power should never be given to anybody who seeks it.

In this contest between Saddam and the US alliance as formed to date we have fully corrupt absolute power on the one hand versus non-absolute power with a legacy of corruption on the other.

It is in the realm of their work where they are not subject to an electorate within their own country and the effects of their decisions impinge on the lives of (mainly poor) foreigners, chiefly in the Third World, that the undemocratic nature of democratically elected politicians comes to the fore.

As critics such as Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, and now Scott Burchill never tire of pointing out, the history of the Twentieth Century is studded with examples of dictators put into power and supported by Western “democratic” governments; of outrages such as the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile by a junta operating with the support of the CIA, but more commonly of Third World democracy being stifled through Western assistance in the installation of local uniformed mafia as governments. Examples are easy to find, and Burchill provides a number.

In the 1930s, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reportedly replied when told that the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza was a bastard, “Yes, but he’s our bastard.” The problem with such an approach is not just the embedded cynicism, but the fact that bastards have a way of being bastards and turning on their owners.

The moral principle to my knowledge first put forward by the great Jewish philosopher Hillel (c 100 BC) is relevant here: Do not do to others what you don’t want others to do to you. A simple rule for all politicians to observe: If you want the affection of the people of your own or any other country, don’t support their oppressors. It has unfortunately been a long time in the learning, and is easily forgotten. Actions taken in this regard by past US administrations are clearly having a deleterious effect on the level of domestic and international political support available to the present one.

Efforts to dress the looming war in anything that does not reek of petroleum are running into considerable difficulty as well. At the same time, few people in the West would challenge the contention that the removal of Saddam would be a good thing for the bulk of the Iraqi population, or defend his right to power or to the exercise of it in the appalling way he does. Many also would agree with the critics who say that his removal is an internal political problem for Iraq, ie a problem for the Iraqi people to solve, and outsiders should have no part in it.

However, the careers of two Twentieth Century politicians brought humanity face to face with itself in a particularly gruesome way. Adolf Hitler and his adversary Joseph Stalin (Saddam Hussein’s role model and hero) showed clearly what was possible through the exercise of power in the context of modern technology, communications and transport. The deeds of these two displayed to a degree unparalleled in history what humans organised into bureaucracies and authoritarian hierarchies are capable of in terms of the creation of death, misery, enslavement and debasement of the human spirit. But also they showed possibilities of power previously unheard of.

Stalin exceeded even Hitler. Hitler exercised power on the model of the Roman emperors, from which he borrowed much of the paraphernalia of the Nazi religion, including the salutes, the chants of “Heil!,” the banners and the methods. Surrounding the Roman emperor was the elite of the armed forces, the Praetorian Guard. Hitler’s version of this was the SS, which swore personal allegiance to him, and after a purge of rival power in mid 1934 (in which it is generally estimated that several hundred leaders of Ernst Rohm’s brownshirt organisation were arrested and executed without trial by the Gestapo) was subject to no routine of intimidation. That was not true for the rest of the German Army or the population of course.

But Stalin achieved something else again. His elite, which terrorized the whole USSR under his direction, was the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD), forerunner of the KGB. But the cadres of the NKVD were no privileged elite in the sense of being free of fear of arrest and ‘liquidation’. Stalin in his time as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (the only office he held after his rise to supreme power) appointed three chiefs of this organisation – Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. Only the last outlived him. The first two he had shot.

Nobody in the USSR was safe from Stalin. One man held no less than 190 million people in total fear of him, such that by 1937, in the observation of the poet Evgenia Ginzburg, people stopped communicating. In an atmosphere where a single slip of the tongue could land you in the Gulag or before a firing squad, small talk was the safest course. No assassination or coup attempts were ever mounted against Stalin, and his repetitive resort to purges and terror prevented any formation of a political opposition.

After 1944, during the period in which Eastern Europe was either controlled directly by the Red Army and KGB or indirectly through satellite governments, fear of Stalin extended from the western border of East Germany to the Pacific coast of Siberia, half a planet away. For the sake of that planet’s population, I sincerely hope that Stalin goes down in history as the most powerful man who ever lived. If someone else ever beats his record, we are all in for trouble, and many of us for a life of sheer terror. Needless to add, Saddam is the current contender on the block.

It could have been argued at the time that the removal of Stalin was a problem for the Soviet people to solve. Except that even 190 million strong, they could not do it. Likewise the Iraqis today with Saddam; 22 million of them cannot do it.

Saddam recently demonstrated his power in a presidential plebiscite in which he got 100 per cent of the vote. This more than anything illustrated the terror which dominates life in modern Iraq. Only from a population which is truly petrified of the consequences of voting against the ruler is such a vote possible. There is no need to hypothesise about stuffed ballot boxes or anything like that. Stalin is Saddam’s avowed hero, and I am sure the mentor would in turn admire the protege.

Of course the looming war is about oil, but by no means only about it.

In the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, which started as a border dispute, Saddam fought not to settle the dispute, but to totally defeat Iran’s theocratic government and establish Iraq as the dominant power in the Gulf. An early strategic objective was the oil rich Iranian province of Khuzestan, and had Iran been defeated by the militarily superior Iraq, Saddam’s terms of settlement would likely have included increased control of Iranian oil, which forms about 9 percent of total world reserves.

The next country his forces invaded was Kuwait in 1990, which started the Gulf War. Kuwait holds close to 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves. His troops pillaged Kuwait and killed many Kuwaitis in the course of their occupation, and contemporary Kuwaitis have little time or love for the Iraqis. This move was widely read at the time as the precursor to a move on Saudi Arabia, whose feudal monarchy is widely unpopular amongst ordinary Saudis.

No doubt to his surprise, Saddam was driven out of Kuwait by the Gulf War coalition, and this was followed by the imposition of UN weapons inspections. An advance on Baghdad and the replacement of Saddam was ruled out in the interests of promoting ‘stability’, the key alliance partner Turkey being particularly concerned about possible autonomy or independence for Iraqi Kurds leading to similar demands from its own Kurdish population.

The United States is no longer self sufficient in oil, and buys much of its supply from sources in the western hemisphere. However, American oil companies are deeply involved in the world oil trade, and most authorities agree that around 2016 the Hubbert Limit will be reached. This represents the peak rate of oil production, after which, even with the pumps working flat out and everything possible done to maximize the rate at which crude comes out of the ground, production will go into steady and irreversible decline. Elementary economics dictates that either the price will rise in response until a new equilibrium between price and supply is reached, or rationing will have to be introduced as it was in World War 2.

So it is reasonable to conclude that this business is partly about oil – Saddam’s manifest desire to get into a position from which he can dominate both the oil market and the Middle East, America’s desire to stop him, and a desire on the part of France, Russia and China to come to some arrangement with him. It is reasonable to assume that he sees weapons of mass destruction as providing necessary protection while he engages in this, for if Iraq today had WMD and delivery systems intact and ready to go, the defeat of Saddam as presently contemplated by George Bush and his allies would be considerably more risky and potentially far more expensive.

But oil, despite what some commentators are saying, can only be part of it. The rest is the horrific possibilities the world faces if Saddam achieves his aims in the area of weapons capability. Critics of Bush, Blair and Howard should remember that the UN has declared such a low level of confidence in Saddam that it has demanded he disarm in the area of WMD. They should also remember that if war occurs, the primary responsibility has to lie with Saddam.

Saddam has been placed in a no win situation by the UN, and fully deserves it. He has been called upon to prove that he has no WMD, and so far has not been able to do so. If I was called on by the law to prove that I did not own a sawn off shotgun, I would invite inspection of my property. But when that turned up nothing and they said “OK so where have you hidden it?” no amount of denial on my part could prove that I did not own one, and had not hidden it somewhere.

Some forbidden items have been found in the homes of Iraqi scientists, which indicates that Saddam may have opted for a Dunkirk style solution. When the British Army was trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk early in WW2, evacuation was effected by a large number of small boats rather than a few large ones. There are around 20 million people in Iraq, and even at ten per house, that means 2 million houses. If the WMD and related equipment were broken up and distributed between those houses with the occupants sworn to secrecy on pain of dire consequences, the task of the inspectors would be way beyond the scope of possibility. Something like that is probably the present reality.

That said, here is my comment on Burchill’s original text. Scott’s remarks are in italics, my responses in bold.

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Amongst the agitprop, disinformation and outright fabrications by commissars and politicians, the following questions and themes are prominent in the public discourse. Each of them deserves careful analysis.

Is Saddam Hussein likely to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the US and its allies?

First, many states, including the US, the UK and Israel, acquire these weapons for deterrence against external attack. You’ve got to wonder how Prime Minister Howard and the pro-war lobby have failed to understand the lesson that the Iraq-North Korea comparison is teaching the world: If you want to deter the war addicts in Washington, you’d better have weapons of mass destruction and resources of terror. Nothing else will work.

Why wouldn’t Iraq develop WMD for deterrence purposes given threats by Washington and London?

One moment, please. Iraq’s WMD program pre-dates the threats from Washington and London. As we read further on in his piece, it was begun before the Iran-Iraq war, and during that conflict had Washington’s support. Iraq only came into conflict with the US after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

We are discouraged from seeing things from Iraq’s point of view, but in many ways WMD make sense for vulnerable states. As the realist theorist Kenneth Waltz argues, “North Korea, Iraq, Iran and others know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence. Weapons of mass destruction are the only means by which they can hope to deter the United States. They cannot hope to do so by relying on conventional weapons” (Waltz 2002, p.351-2).

Wrong. The Vietnamese using conventional weapons inflicted on the US the greatest military defeat in its history, and were never at significant risk of nuclear attack throughout that entire conflict. North Korea is safe from US attack thanks to its land army, which is the sixth largest in the world, and to its proximity to China, which became involved in its 1950-53 war with the US (the latter fighting under the flag of the UN). North Korea’s present danger lies precisely in its attempts to become a nuclear power. Unlike Iraq, Iran has no significant population likely to side with the US against its own government, and Iranian popular hostility to the US is based on the latter’s abysmal history of intervention in Iranian politics, specifically via the joint CIA and British SIS organised coup which overthrew premier Muhammad Ali Mussadeq in 1953 and then supported the oppressive regime of the Pahlavis. Iran would be in no danger of a conventional attack from the US (the last effort by Jimmy Carter was a complete fiasco) and only in danger of a nuclear attack if it had nuclear weapons of its own and the means to deliver them onto a strategic US target. Iraq is the only country in the world at risk of US attack, now or at any time in the foreseeable future. Even Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, is safe, and only became vulnerable when the USSR moved to set up a nuclear rocket base there, thus provoking the missile crisis of 1962.

To make Iraq safe all Saddam would have to do would be to arm the whole population, as Castro did before the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. No dictator wants to do that. Stalin made possession of a firearm by an ordinary citizen a capital offence, and one would assume Saddam has followed suit.

As with every country, Iraq’s weapons inventory and systems tell us precisely nothing about its strategic intentions.

Is that so? Iraqi aggression started both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Its biological warfare capability is worse than useless within its own borders, and its powerful chemical agents would have to be used at locations remote from its own troops. While they could conceivably be used to counterattack against hostilities begun as external attack, such weapons inventory and systems considered in the light of Iraq’s recent history tell us a great deal about its (likely) strategic intentions. With WMD he will be in a better position to resume his drive to dominate the Middle East. The safest assumption to make about someone like Saddam is that his intentions are those of a ruthless megalomaniac, ie the worst possible.

Secondly, Iraq had chemical and biological weapons during the Gulf War in 1991 and chose not to use them. Why would Saddam Hussein be more inclined to use them now knowing the horrendous consequences (as they were explained to him by Brent Scowcroft in 1991), unless his personal survival was at stake and he had nothing left to lose? AS CIA head George Tenet reminded President George W. Bush, Saddam was unlikely to launch WMD against the US unless the survival of his regime was threatened.

Which is why a tyrant like Saddam seeks to develop such weapons. The range of responses available to the rest of the world through the UN include both (a) therefore leave him alone, (b) therefore take them away from him, and (c) therefore replace him and his cronies with others more agreeable. The UN has chosen (b) rather than (a), and given the failure to date of (b), is more likely in the near future to opt for (c) because they know that (a) is not an option offering peace to the region or the world even in the short term.

As Mearsheimer and Walt argue: “The threat of Iraqi nuclear blackmail is not credible. Not surprisingly, hawks do not explain how Saddam could blackmail the United States and its allies when a rival superpower like the Soviet Union [with 40,000 nuclear weapons] never seriously attempted to blackmail Washington, much less did it.” (Mearsheimer & Walt 2002, pp.10-11).

One would actually hope this to be true. However, throughout the Cold War both the leaders of the US and the USSR manifested at all times a desire for personal survival. Since 9/11 one cannot say this in confidence about any Muslim armed with a nuclear weapon, since unlike the majority of the world’s Muslims, such a person is likely to be motivated by the same goals as Muhammad Atta and his 9/11 colleagues. After Saddam’s Iraq, Pakistan is the wildest card in the nuclear pack.

***

Saddam Hussein has form: he has used WMD before

It is true that Saddam Hussein has used these weapons before, against those who couldn’t respond in kind – Iranian soldiers and perhaps most infamously on 17 March 1988 against “his own people” in the Kurdish city of Halabja. Within half an hour of this attack over 5000 men, women and children were dead from chemical weapons containing a range of pathogens which were dropped on them.

If Washington and London are genuinely concerned about Iraq’s WMD, why did they continue to supply him with the means to acquire them for 18 months after the attack on Halabja?

Simple: He was their bastard then, and they are now reaping the consequences.

Initially, the US blamed Iran for the Halabja attack, a particularly cynical ploy given Saddam had also used chemical weapons against Teheran’s forces during their nine-year conflict in the 1980s. In fact Washington continued to treat Saddam as a favoured ally and trading partner long after the attack on Halabja was exposed as his handiwork. At the time, the Reagan Administration tried to prevent criticism of Saddam’s chemical attack on the Kurds in the Congress and in December 1989, George Bush’s father authorised new loans to Saddam in order to achieve the “goal of increasing US exports and put us in a better position to deal with Iraq regarding its human rights record”. Surprisingly, the goal was never reached. In February 1989, eleven months after Halabja, John Kelly, US Assistant Secretary of State, flew to Baghdad to tell Saddam Hussein that “you are a source for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq”.

I suppose a contemporary White House staffer would say that at the time, beating Iran had priority. One has little difficulty discovering cynicism and dishonesty on the US side. All governments lie, and thus prepare for themselves future difficulties of both credibility and alliance such as the US now faces.

According to the reports of a Senate Banking Committee, the “United States provided the government of Iraq with ‘dual-use’ licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs. According to the report, this assistance included “chemical warfare-agent precursors; chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical warfare-filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.” These technologies were sent to Iraq until December 1989, 20 months after Halabja.

According to William Blum a “veritable witch’s brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers,” including Bacillus Anthracis (cause of anthrax), Clostridium Botulinum (a source of botulinum toxin), Histoplasma Capsulatam (causes disease which attacks lungs, brain, spinal chord and heart), Brucella Melitensis (bacteria which attacks vital organs) and other toxic agents. The US Senate Committee said “these biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction,” and it was later discovered that “these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program” (Blum 2002, pp.121-2).

After the recent leaking in Germany of Iraq’s 12,000 page declaration of its weapons program, it is now known that at least 150 companies, mostly in Europe, the United States and Japan, provided components and know-how needed by Saddam Hussein to build atomic bombs, chemical and biological weapons (for the list, see Always willing, we’re off to war again). Unsurprisingly, the US was keen to excise these details from Iraq’s report before its wider dissemination to non-permanent members of the Security Council (Newsday (US), 13 December, 2002; The Independent (UK), 18 and 19 December, 2002; Scotland on Sunday (UK), 22 December, 2002).

Historian Gabriel Kolko claims that “the United Stares supplied Iraq with intelligence throughout the war [with Iran] and provided it with more than $US5 billion in food credits, technology, and industrial products, most coming after it began to use mustard, cyanide, and nerve gases against both Iranians and dissident Iraqi Kurds” (Kolko 2002, p.34).

If the US is genuinely concerned by Saddam’s WMD, why did Donald Rumsfeld (then a presidential envoy for President Reagan, currently President George W. Bush’s Defence Secretary) fly to Baghdad in December 1983 to meet Saddam and normalise the US-Iraq relationship, at a time when Washington new Iraq was using chemical weapons on an “almost daily” basis against Iran (Washington Post, 30 December, 2002)? Why were no concerns about the use of these weapons raised with Baghdad?

Saddam has been successfully deterred from using WMD against other states with WMD. There is no reason to believe this situation has changed or will.

Except that the UNSC, concerned about nuclear proliferation and chemical and biological WMD, has seen fit to try to force Saddam to get rid of his whole arsenal.

***

Saddam Hussein has invaded his neighbours twice

True, but this can hardly be a source of outrage for Western governments or a pretext for his removal from power given they actively supported his invasion of Iran in the 1980s with intelligence (eg satellite imagery of Iranian troop positions) and weaponry and, in the case of Washington, told Saddam it was agnostic about his border dispute with Kuwait just prior to Iraq’s invasion in August 1990 (US Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam in 1990 that “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait”. The U.S. State Department reinforced this message by declaring that Washington had “no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait” (Mearsheimer & Walt 2002, p.5). This is mock outrage at best.

As noted above, Iranian hostility to the US is a reaction against the latter’s indefensible history of intervention in Iranian politics against the wishes and interests of the majority of the Iranian people. However, the second last sentence could not be construed as a State Department invitation to Saddam to invade Kuwait.

Saddam’s behaviour is no worse than several of his neighbours. As Mearsheimer and Walt remind us, “Saddam’s past behavior is no worse than that of several other states in the Middle East, and it may even be marginally better. Egypt fought six wars between 1948 and 1973 (five against Israel, plus the civil war in Yemen), and played a key role in starting four of them. Israel initiated wars on three occasions (the Suez War in 1956, the Six Day War in 1967, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon), and has conducted innumerable air strikes and commando raids against its various Arab adversaries” (Mearsheimer & Walt 2002, p.3).

True enough, but long term strategic control of oil, as against territory, was not involved in the above examples. Saddam’s unique combination of oil strategy and WMD deployment is what has attracted UN concern. As for Saddam being no worse than his neighbours, tell that to the Kurds.

***

Saddam Hussein is a monster who runs a violent, oppressive regime

True again, though this didn’t prevent him from being a favoured ally and trading partner of the West at the peak of his crimes in the 1980s. As Mark Thomas notes, the conspicuous aspect of British Labour’s attitude to Iraq has been the failure of Blair, Straw, Prescott, Blunkett, Cook or Hoon to register any concerns about Iraq’s human rights record whenever the opportunities arose in the British Parliament during the 1980s and 1990s (New Statesman, 9 December, 2002).

Washington, London and Canberra never had reservations about General Suharto’s brutal rule in Indonesia, to take only one example of relations between the West and autocratic regimes around the world, and were in fact overjoyed when he came to power over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens in 1965.

Here we are into ‘true, but …’ Had the US engaged upon the unlikely course of sending troops to block the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, some Scott Burchill of the time might have opposed it on a comparable basis – that the US supported the brutal regimes in South Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines (under Marcos) etc. If we are to base an assessment of the policy the US should follow now on selections from its past chequered record then any position we like is possible, but the most likely one is total paralysis, as Hitler found in the case of Britain and France after he moved into the Rhineland in 1936.

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Only the threat of force by the US has forced Iraq to accept weapons inspectors

Possibly true, although this ignores the fact that the last time force was used against Iraq on a significant scale because of its non-compliance with UN Security Resolutions, the opposite effect was produced. After the Clinton Administration and Blair Government attacked Iraq from 16-19 December, 1998 (Operation Desert Fox), the result was the collapse of Richard Butler’s UNSCOM and the absence of weapons inspectors from Iraq for the next four years. Hardly a testament to the use of force, to say nothing of the precedent this kind of behaviour sets. The Prime Minister’s claim that “Hussein effectively expelled weapons inspectors during 1998” is untrue and he knows it (The Australian, 1 January, 2003). Richard Butler withdrew his weapons inspectors on Washington’s advice only hours before the Anglo-American attacks in December 1998.

There are many issues on which I personally disagree with John Howard, but this is not one of them. The key word here is “effectively”, which Burchill glosses over. Nobody who has read Richard Butler’s account of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) could accept this. Butler sums up his experience as follows:

“Three permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations – the lawmaker and enforcer in this field – have decided to end any serious effort to disarm Saddam, to oblige him to conform with the law. Russia, France and China have done this because they prefer to pursue their own interests rather than to carry out their international responsibility.

“Also, in 1998, at a key moment of extreme defiance by Saddam, the Secretary General of the United Nations, in many respects the guardian of the law, sought to solve the crisis through diplomatic means substantially disconnected from the matters of substance – weapons of mass destruction and the authority of international law.

“In addition, during my time at UNSCOM, members of the Security Council increasingly sought to shift political responsibility to me for their failure to enforce their own law. They asked me to make judgements about the threat posed by Iraq, an issue well beyond my mandate and one that they alone could settle. When I pointed out that they were asking me the wrong question, they resented it. When I gave them the facts as I knew them and for which I was competent and responsible, if they didn’t like these facts, they joined Iraq in charging that UNSCOM, not Iraq, was the problem.

“Nowhere in my mandate was it stated that I should decide on or recommend military action. But in November 1998, the Security Council instructed me to produce a factual report on Iraqi compliance against a background where, if my report showed Iraq was not in compliance, there was likely to be military action by the United States and Britain. My job was to report on the disarmament facts. I did so, and military action followed, in December 1998.

“It could be argued that I should have deciphered the political code: report negatively on Iraq’s conduct and there will be war; if you don’t want that, don’t report negatively; this is not about facts, its about politics.” (Richard Butler, Saddam Defiant, Phoenix, 2000. p.2)

Butler’s account is one of continuous Iraqi frustration of the work of UNSCOM, aided by divisions on effective policy and purpose in the Security Council. Burchill’s summary above leads one to the conclusion that the collapse of UNSCOM was the fault of the Americans and the British. Richard Butler’s UNSOM had effectively collapsed before Operation Desert Fox, which was a response to that collapse, not the cause of it.

To say that Butler left rather than was forced out (expelled) by Saddam and his cronies is to split hairs and accord to the latter a degree of innocence and victimization they do not deserve. We can of course play word games and legalistic petit point with this until the cows come home. I am sure Saddam would not mind at all.

Why wasn’t the threat of force an appropriate strategy for the West in response to Indonesia’s brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor? Or South Africa’s occupation of Namibia? Or Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus? Or Israel’s occupation of Palestine? Etc, etc,.

Yes, etc, etc, etc. Because in the case of East Timor, threats of force, however appropriate in terms of a human sense of justice, were not made. The people who could have made them were operating in a Cold War framework. But to give credit where it is due, that changed with the end of the Cold War. During the Indonesian rampage in East Timor in September 1999 the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff read the riot act over the phone to his Indonesian counterpart General Wiranto, and the US gave the Australian army vital logistical support for the East Timor operation. Henry Kissinger subsequently bleated about not knowing what atrocities the Indonesian army was capable of when he gave them the green light to invade East Timor in 1975. A very convincing performance, particularly in the light of the slaughter that brought Suharto to power following the “Untung Coup” of 1965, which could not have escaped Kissinger’s notice. But outside the Cold War environment, the US used the threat of unpleasant consequences against the Indonesians with quite telling effect.

What lessons should we draw from this claim? Presumably one is that if a state wants to get its way in international politics, it should threaten to annihilate its adversaries. Apart from the morality of such behaviour, the consequences of the broad adoption of such behaviour are worth pondering.

Saddam threatens to annihilate his adversaries as a matter of routine. His most recent target in this regard has been the government of Qatar. But it all hinges on what one calls an “adversary”. Australia has its differences with certain other countries, but these do not lead to threats of force. Saddam on the other hand has by his behaviour gained himself a long list of adversaries, and as usual is diplomatically isolated. He now faces annihilation. But he stands as an exceptional case in the modern world. Burchill says that apart from the morality of such behaviour, the consequences of the BROAD adoption of such behaviour are worth pondering. I agree. Like wormholes in space-time – of arguable significance in the everyday world we all know, but a nice academic exercise.

***

Has the threat posed by Saddam Hussein increased recently?

The West, particularly London and Washington, was solidly supporting Saddam when he committed the worst of his crimes at the zenith of his power and influence in the 1980s.

In terms of international support – especially Western and Soviet backing, the strength of his armed forces and the state of his industry and equipment, Saddam was considerably more dangerous then than he is now under harsh UN sanctions, (illegal) no-fly zones in the north (since 1991) and south (since 1993) of the country, political isolation and a degraded civilian infrastructure. His armed forces have not been re-built since their decimation in 1991.

Is that so? Given the wild goose chase he has been leading for the latest round of weapons inspections, who knows what Saddam has up his sleeve? He says he is ready to defeat the Americans if they invade. Keeping one’s weapon capacity secret from the enemy has long been part of the art of warfare.

Why are Saddam’s attempts to develop WMD a concern now if they weren’t when he actually used them?

Because when he used them against the Kurds and the Iranians, the US governments involved operated in the forlorn belief that he was their bastard. Since, he has emerged in his own true colours as his own bastard. The administrations of G. Bush I, Bill Clinton and G. Bush II have recognized this fact.

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The events of September 11, 2001 have made disarming Iraq more urgent

The problem with this argument is that those in Washington who are now urging war against Iraq are the very same people who publicly called for Saddam Hussein’s overthrow well before 9/11. The argument about Saddam’s WMD and the likelihood that he will pass them on to terrorists has only been ‘added on’ to earlier calls for his removal by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Armitage, et al, which were made during the Clinton Administration.

Yes. Saddam’s record, his present policy of not to yield on WMD and to frustrate inspections, and his apparently retained objective to seek a wider role and status for himself and his regime in the Middle East makes him about the most dangerous megalomaniac alive today. And no. G. Bush Snr miscalculated badly in 1991 when he called on the people of Iraq to overthrow Saddam. It is reasonable to assume that he did not cynically calculate to flush them out into the open so they could be mown down by Saddam’s troops. On the face of it, the Gulf War had destabilized Saddam’s regime sufficiently enough for it popular overthrow to be achievable, given the right encouragement. That had been the fate of the Greek colonels and General Galtieri of Argentina, who had all made the mistake of getting their armies involved in foreign wars when their true and proper role within the context of their regimes was domestic repression. Mutiny brought them down, but Saddam proved to be the exception, and not through the love of the Iraqi people for him.

For example, in 1998 the US Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act which said that “It should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” The question of Iraq’s WMD should therefore be seen as merely the latest pretext for a policy of regime change taken well before terrorists attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre.

The US has had a policy favouring regime change in Iraq since 1991. But 9/11 showed the world what could be done by suicidal terrorists with significant resources behind them. Saddam has such resources, and the safest assumption to make is that he is totally ruthless – also supported by his domestic record. It is hard to conceive of any regime which replaced Saddam’s being anything but a change for the better as far as the Iraqi people are concerned. Behind the benign acronym WMD are nuclear bombs, rockets loaded with anthrax and other epidemic disease organisms, and chemical compounds of almost unbelievable toxicity, together with their means of delivery. Saddam has already established his credentials as a terrorist in his own right; Halabja showed that.

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Saddam Hussein will pass WMD on to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda

Despite forensic efforts by Washington to produce a pretext for war, no credible evidence for this claim has been found. All we are left with is unsubstantiated assertions by Bush Administration officials such as Richard Armitage that he has no doubts Iraq would pass WMD on to terrorists (though he doesn’t explain how an obvious return address resulting in reciprocal annihilation could be concealed). This may be enough for faithful conduits in the Australian media, but it cannot withstand even a cursory examination. Where is the evidence for such a claim? Osama bin Laden offered the Saudi Government the resources of his organisation to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990 instead of Riyadh relying on the US, such is the animosity between Islamic fundamentalists and secular nationalists in the Arab world. Saddam has responded by repressing fundamentalist groups within Iraq. Would Saddam be likely to hand over to Al Qaeda nuclear weapons so painstakingly built when he, himself might be the first victim of their use? Remarkably, the pro-war lobby reads this history as evidence of likely future co-operation between Baghdad and Al Qaeda.

Much of this is a smokescreen designed to conceal who the real proliferators of WMD are. Which states, for example assisted Israel to develop nuclear weapons – France and the US? What role did Pakistan and China play in helping North Korea build its nuclear stockpile? Why can’t we read the list of European, Asian and US companies which proliferated WMD technologies to Iraq? Instead of imaginary scenarios asking ‘what if Iraq acquires nuclear weapons in five years and what if it passes them on to terrorist organisations?’, why not more sensible questions about which rogue states (most of whom are members of the so called ‘war against terrorism’) are already responsible for the proliferation of WMD?

On the face of it, quite right. Chasing a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam has not exactly been a success for the G. Bush II Administration, and is the weakest part of the otherwise strong case put on February 6th 2003 by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. But must we assume that al-Qaeda is the only terrorist organisation likely now or in the foreseeable future to seek to acquire such weapons? The danger is not confined to al-Qaeda. The enemy is Islamic fascism, of which al-Qaeda is merely the most prominent part.

Burchill also states that most rogue states are already members of the ‘war against terrorism’, and are already responsible for the proliferation of WMD. I wish he had been more specific: Who is he referring to?

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What happens if terrorists acquire nuclear weapons?

Conventional wisdom claims this is “the ultimate nightmare.” But is it?

Yes, it damned well is. One reads through the section that follows the above statement with great interest, hoping that Burchill will reveal a worse nightmare. But in vain.

The nature of the threat posed by terrorists with nuclear devices is presupposed, but rarely examined. The discussion below is by Kenneth Waltz, a US conservative and the leading theorist of neo-realism in international relations. It helps to place this “ultimate nightmare” in some perspective.

“With the devolution of nuclear weapons to three of the parts of the former Soviet Union, with shaky control of nuclear weapons materials in Russia, with the revelation in 1994 that the United States had lost track of some of its nuclear materials, with increased numbers of countries able and perhaps willing to sell components needed to develop nuclear capability to countries that lack them, and with a flourishing market in systems for the delivery of weapons, fear has grown that terrorists may obtain nuclear explosives and means of placing them on targets they choose. The worry is real, especially if terrorists are eager to have nuclear explosives and are backed by a state bent on disrupting international society.

“Terrorists have done a good bit of damage by using conventional weapons and have sometimes got their way by threatening to use them. By their lights, might terrorists not do better still by threatening to explode nuclear weapons on cities of countries they may wish to bend to their bidding?

“If we believe that terrorists could, if they wished to, wield nuclear weapons to threaten or damage their chosen enemies, then the important question becomes: Why would they want to? To answer this question, we have to ask further what terrorists are trying to do and what means best suit their ends.

“Terrorists do not play their deadly games to win in the near term. Their horizons are distant. Instead they try to offer a voice to the unheard, to give a glimmer of hope to the forlorn, to force established societies to recognise alienated others previously unseen, and ultimately to transcend given societies and found their own.

“Terrorists live precarious lives. Nobody trusts them, not even those who finance, train, and hide them. If apprehended, they cannot count on the help of others. They have learned how to use conventional weapons to some effect. Nuclear weapons would thrust them into a world fraught with new dangers.

“Terrorists work in small groups. Secrecy is safety, yet to obtain and maintain nuclear weapons would require enlarging the terrorist band through multiplication of suppliers, transporters, technicians, and guardians. Inspiring devotion, instilling discipline, and ensuring secrecy become harder tasks to accomplish as numbers grow. Moreover, as the demands of terrorists increase, compliance with their demands becomes harder to secure. If, for example, terrorists had told Israel to abandon the occupied territories or suffer the nuclear destruction of Tel Aviv, Israel’s compliance would have required that a lengthy and difficult political process be carried through. However they may be armed, terrorists are not capable of maintaining pressure while lengthy efforts toward compliance are made.

“One more point should be made before concluding this section. If terrorists should unexpectedly decide to abandon tactics of disruption and harassment in favour of dealing in threats of wholesale death and destruction, instruments other than nuclear weapons are more easily available. Poisons are easier to get and use than nuclear weapons, and poisoning a city’s water supply is more easily done than blowing the city up.

“Fear of nuclear terror arises from the assumption that if terrorists can get nuclear weapons they will get them, and that then all hell will break lose. This is comparable to assuming that if weak states get nuclear weapons, they will use them for aggression. Both assumptions are false. Would the courses of action we fear, if followed, promise more gains than losses or more pains than profit? The answers are obvious. Terrorists have some hope of reaching their long-term goals through patient pressure and constant harassment. They cannot hope to do so by issuing unsustainable threats to wreck great destruction, threats they would not want to execute anyway.” (Waltz 1995, pp.94-6) (Ian’s emphasis)

Please note the date Waltz wrote the above: 1995. But everything changed on September 11, 2001. Everything, including the currency of Waltz’s otherwise sound thought. We can play word games and define al-Qaeda as a small group or whatever we like, but the now redundant assumption underlying the above is that terrorists want to survive. I would not trust an Islamist terrorist who had got hold of a nuclear bomb of whatever kind to behave rationally. I don’t know why; it is just a feeling I have.

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The US wants to democratise Iraq

There is no serious US interest in a democratic transition in Iraq, because this could ultimately encourage the Shi’ite majority in the country to pursue a closer relationship with Shi’ite Iran – a nightmare scenario for Washington. Washington was content for Saddam Hussein to stay in office for as long as he was useful to its geo-strategic interests in the region. There was no mention of a transition to democracy in Iraq during the 1980s.

As far as I know, the above is quite true, and the US cause is severely compromised. The past is weighing like a dead hand on the present. The Kurds are the natural allies of the US in Iraq, but were massacred in large numbers by Saddam following G Bush I’s call for them to rise against Saddam in 1991. The US support they expected and hoped for never came. Carving an independent Kurdistan out of Iraq would satisfy their cravings for independence, but would antagonize the Turks, who do not want to see Turkish Kurds involved in anything similar.

Similarly, the Shi’ite majority and the US have a common enemy in the Sunni “aristocracy” of Iraq who support Saddam. What this would translate into on the ground is still an open question, and I am in no position to offer suggestions, except that in the light of the counterproductive policies followed by the US over the 20th Century in the Middle East, perhaps the best thing for it to do now would be to help create the conditions wherein the Shi’ites on both sides of the Iran-Iraq border could work the issues out for themselves. A commitment against the breakup of Iraq in the interests of ‘stability’ is, to say the least, a joke in the light of the situation the US presently finds itself in.

It’s more likely that a dissident former General, possibly involved in war crimes against Iraq’s Kurdish or Shi’ite communities, will be returned from exile and presented as the “democratic opposition” to Saddam Hussein. The US is interested in compliance and obedience rather than democracy. It has rarely, if ever, expressed an interest in democracy in the Middle East where all but one of its friends and interlocutors are authoritarian states. Ideally, a pro-Western, anti-Iranian, secular “iron fist” would do. The recently rehabilitated Iraqi opposition in exile (with whom until recently the US refused to deal) has no democratic credibility and is largely unknown inside Iraq (or in the US for that matter).

What we in the West understand by ‘democracy’ is actually the periodic appointment or replacement of an oligarchy by popular ballot. In the Middle East the oligarchies are appointed and replaced by different means. Democracy is not native to the Middle East, unlike tribalism and feudal hierarchy, which definitely are. There is a tradition of stamping out democracy which goes right back to the wars fought by the Persians against the democratic Greeks in ancient times. Thus it is not surprising that traditionally the US has sought out rulers it can deal with rather than democratically oriented groups and parties which have potential but little in the way of actual assets on the ground.

Christianity in the Reformation period in Europe became a vehicle for the rise of what we in the West understand as democracy, but Islam has yet to undergo anything similar to the Reformation. In the huge Islamic arc that stretches from Indonesia to Nigeria, democracy is struggling to be born and liberalism is virtually an unknown concept. The safest thing for the politicians of the US to do is to refrain from supporting politicians and parties in the Third World that they would not like to see gain power if they were in the US.

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What is the status of pre-emptive strikes in international law?

There is a regime of international law, binding on all states, based on the UN Charter, UN Security Council resolutions and World Court decisions. In summary, the threat or use of force is banned unless explicitly authorised by the Security Council after it has determined that all peaceful means for resolving a conflict have failed, or in self-defence against armed attack until the Security Council acts.

A number of points can be made about Canberra’s interest in retrospectively amending international law to legitimise a shift of strategic doctrine from deterrence to pre-emption. It would establish a precedent that others (Pakistan & India; North & South Korea) might be encouraged to follow; it would have a destabilising effect on international order; the difficulty (impossibility) of getting changes through the UN Security Council; the heightened sense of vulnerability for smaller states and for states in the region, etc, etc,. It would open up a can of worms.

That it would, and the Bush Administration knows it, which is why they are working so hard to get Security Council support.

Significantly, there is currently only one country which could seriously consider exercising a right to anticipatory self-defence under existing international law – Iraq. It has been directly threatened with attack by both the US and UK. There has been no reciprocal threat from Iraq.

Except that intimately bound up with the question is the fact that Iraq is in violation of a UNSC resolution.

The term ‘pre-emptive war’ isn’t strictly accurate. As Steven Miller explains:

“Though Bush’s approach has been almost universally described, in the media and elsewhere, as a doctrine of preemption, this is incorrect. Preemption refers to a military strike provoked by indications that an opponent is preparing to attack. The logic is: better to strike than be struck. But no one is suggesting that Saddam is preparing to strike the United States. There are no indications that this is the case. Bush is instead making the case for preventive war, for removing today a threat that may be more menacing and difficult in the future. The administration may prefer to label its policy preemption because that is an easier case to make. But it is not an accurate use of the term as traditionally defined.” (Miller 2002, p.8)

Given the inherent conflict between the strategic interests of the US (access to Middle East Oil, if not now then in the near future), her policy tradition (for US companies to gain as much control of that oil as possible) and Saddam’s recently manifested push in the same direction, conflict between the two will always be on the cards until the oil itself runs out. No other Middle Eastern ruler has the combination of strategic position, form and megalomania as Saddam.

Saddam’s drive into Kuwait constituted merely the opening phase of what was likely to be a campaign to secure control over the combined oil fields of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia: 47 percent of the whole world’s reserves, and the best and most accessible ones at that. In such a situation of power it would be quite conceivable that Saddam would work to add the fields of the United Arab Emirates to those under his influence if not control: another 8 percent, to total 55 percent.

The safest assumption to make is that Saddam’s ambition remains. It is to become the Joseph Stalin of the Middle East, ruling directly where he can and through satraps where he cannot. If the US is going to get into a fight with him, it is understandable that it might choose to do so when he is weak rather than wait until he is strong.

According to international law specialist Michael Byers, “there is almost no support for a right of anticipatory self-defence as such in present-day customary international law” (Byers 2002, p.124). To the extent that pre-emptive action is permissible under Article 51 of the UN Charter, it requires very strong evidence and there is a heavy burden of justification. The United States, for example, would have to be facing a specific, grave and imminent threat from Iraq which could only be averted by the use of force. According to the test established in the mid-nineteenth century by US Secretary of State Daniel Webster – criteria applied in 1945 at Nuremberg – the need for pre-emptive action must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”.

Firstly, the justification offered by the Indonesians in 1975 for their invasion of East Timor was that if they did not there would soon be a Cuba in this region, with all that that implied: subversion of neighbouring states and foreign military bases in particular. It was presented to the world as a preemptive strike against a looming threat. They got away with it for 25 years in the face of what amounted to token objection from the UN, along with systematic genocide behind a total news blackout. Certainly there was no push for forces operating under the UN flag to intervene against Indonesia the way they had against North Korea in 1950. Both international and domestic politics, as practiced, is the art of what you can get away with. Law at times has precious little to do with it. Sad, but true. On the same basis, the UN is highly unlikely to make any move against the perpetrators of the militia violence in East Timor in 1999 following the independence ballot. The UN is only as good as the states that make it up, and a whole bunch of them are none too savoury. Which is why the permanent members of the Security Council have insisted on having their own club.

Secondly: With all due respect to Mr Webster, he was writing in the era before nuclear weapons. The world fortunately to date has not experienced a situation where a surprise nuclear explosion from whatever source occurs inside the territory of a nuclear power, and one must hope that it never does. But we can do more than hope: we can work to minimize the risk, which is what nuclear non-proliferation is all about.

Otherwise a unilateral strike not authorised by the UN Security Council would be an act of aggression and a breach of international law. As claimed earlier, Iraq has a stronger case at this point in time (given US troop and equipment movements in Qatar, to say nothing of Bush’s stated threats).

Christine Gray, author of a seminal modern text on the use of force under international law, argues that the reluctance of states “to invoke anticipatory self-defence is in itself a clear indication of the doubtful status of this jurisdiction for the use of force”. According to Gray, in cases where Israel (Beirut 1968, Tunis 1985) and the US (Libya 1986, Iraq 1993, Sudan & Afghanistan 1998) have invoked anticipatory self-defence under Article 51 to justify attacks on their enemies, “the actions look more like reprisals, because they were punitive rather than defensive”. The problem for the US and Israel, she argues, “is that all states agree that in principle forcible reprisals are unlawful” (Gray 2000, pp.112, 114, 115, 118).

By definition, pre-emptive strikes depend on conclusive intelligence. If the intelligence is wrong, as it was on 20 August 1998 when the Clinton Administration attacked the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, mistakenly believing it was an Al Qaeda chemical weapons factory, the results can be catastrophic for the innocent – self-defence becomes aggression.

Interestingly, the US has not always supported the ‘doctrine’ of anticipatory self-defence, even when its closest allies invoked it. On 7 June 1981 unmarked American-built F-16 aircraft of the Israeli airforce attacked and destroyed a nuclear reactor at Osirak in Iraq. The raid was authorised by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but had been internally opposed by Yitzhak Hofi, the director of Mossad, and Major-General Yehoshua Saguy, chief of military intelligence, because there was no evidence that Iraq was capable of building a nuclear bomb. This was also the view of the International Atomic Energy Authority. At the time of the attack, Israel itself had been developing and accumulating nuclear weapons for thirteen years, primarily at its nuclear facility at Dimona.

In response to Israel’s unprovoked pre-emptive strike, US Vice President George Bush Snr argued that sanctions had to be imposed on Israel. The US State Department condemned the bombing for its destabilising impact “which cannot but seriously add to the already tense situation in the area”. The basis of Washington’s concern, it must be said, was not its opposition to anticipatory self-defence per se but that Israel had violated the UN Charter by not exhausting all peaceful means for the resolution of the conflict – in truth no peaceful resolution had been sought. A few days after the raid, Ronald Reagan’s White House announced that the planned delivery of four additional F-16s to Israel would be suspended in protest against the attack. The suspension was discretely lifted soon after (Hersh 1993, pp.9-16).

Politicians tend to operate on the principle of a short public memory, an often somnambulant press, and what they can get away with. Thus pointing to inconsistencies in their behaviour is quite easy, as Burchill and others are presently showing. But one searches in vain in the writings of such people for alternative policy suggestion that might work in terms of bringing about the best outcome for the greatest number of people, Iraqi, American or whatever. The question as to what the outcome might be if the present alliance invades Iraq (with or without UNSC approval) is addressed in detail, with catalogues of past sins, hypocrisies and outrages of all kinds on the parts of the protagonists appended. (And let there be no doubt, it could be anything from a walkover to a total catastrophe.) But nothing beyond it in the direction of what the future might hold if Saddam is left working as he pleases within Iraq, except the oft repeated statement that so far no significant weapons have been found by the inspectors, with the unstated invitation to conclude that therefore it is likely none exist.

The work of the UNMOVIC inspectors is carried out in Iraq under the ever present threat to Saddam of UN sponsored military intervention if he does not fully comply with the UN terms and conditions. He has clearly chosen to play his usual games with the inspectors, and to retain his WMD capability.

If Burchill believes that under no circumstances should a military move be made against Saddam, then he should clearly say so. If not, he should say under what circumstances he would approve such action. Again one finds refutation of many common propositions about the present situation in Burchill’s document, but no attempt at refutation of the commonly encountered proposition that doing nothing is not an option to guarantee the long term peace of the region. Burchill has much to say on the consequences of acting against Saddam, but very little on those of not acting against him. This fits in with his reluctant concession at the start that the majority of the population of Australia have not so far bought what he and his co-thinkers have been throwing at them on a daily basis in the media, which is definitely not dominated by any gung-ho pro-war faction.

Significantly, Israel’s pre-emptive attack against the Osirak reactor had the opposite effect to the one that was intended. As Kenneth Waltz explained: “Israel’s act and its consequences…made it clear that the likelihood of useful accomplishment is low. Israel’s action increased the determination of Arabs to produce nuclear weapons. Israel’s strike, far from foreclosing Iraq’s nuclear career, gained Iraq support from some other Arab states to pursue it.” (Waltz 1995, pp.18-19).

In the current climate when pre-emptive attacks are being invoked as just responses to terrorism, it is worth recalling Princeton University historian Arno Mayer comments in Le Monde shortly after the 9/11 attacks:

“…since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of “pre-emptive” state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled. Besides the unexceptional subversion and overthrow of governments in competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Washington has resorted to political assassinations, surrogate death squads, and unseemly freedom fighters (e.g., bin Laden). It masterminded the killing of Lumumba and Allende; and it unsuccessfully tried to put to death Castro, Khadafi, and Saddam Hussein… and vetoed all efforts to rein in not only Israel’s violation of international agreements and UN resolutions but also its practice of pre-emptive state terror.”

This unfortunately, is quite correct; ‘but’ nothing.

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The question of oil: access or control?

From the middle of last century Washington’s foreign policy priority in the Middle East was to establish US control over what the State Department described as “a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the great material prizes in world history”, namely the region’s vast reserves of crude oil. Middle Eastern oil was regarded in Washington as “probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment”, in what President Eisenhower described as the most “strategically important area in the world”.

Control could be most easily maintained via a number of despotic feudal oligarchies in the Gulf which ensured the extraordinary wealth of region would be shared between a small number of ruling families and US oil companies, rather than European commercial competitors or the population of these states. Until recently the US has not required the oil for itself though it needed to ensure that the oil price stayed within a desirable range or band – not too low for profit making or too high to discourage consumption and induce inflation. A side benefit of this control over such a vital industrial resource is the influence it gives the US over economic development in rival countries such as Japan.

The greatest threat to this control has always been independent economic nationalism, especially nationalist politicians within the oil-producing region who, unlike the feudal oligarchies of the Gulf states, would channel wealth into endogenous development priorities rather than to US transnationals.

True.

The US wants to secure reliable access to the world’s second largest oil reserves, 112 billion barrels already known with possibly double that figure still to be mapped and claimed, thus depriving France and Russia of commercial advantages they have developed in Iraq over the last decade when US companies have been excluded. Just as importantly, access to Iraqi oil would also make the US less reliant upon – and therefore less supportive of – the regime in Saudi Arabia. The geo-political dynamics of the Middle East would be transformed.

If Russia and France maintain their inside track on Iraqi oil, then US corporations will be partially shut out from an enormous resource prize. No US administration is likely to accept that scenario. Meanwhile, Iraqi dissidents close to Washington have promised to cancel all existing oil contracts awarded to firms which do not assist the US to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Regime change in Baghdad could therefore be a bonanza for US oil companies and a disaster for Russian and French companies which have painstakingly built up their relations with the Iraqi dictator since the Gulf war. When Iraq’s oil comes fully back on stream, as many as 5 million barrels of oil (or 6.5%) could be added to the world’s daily supply. The implications of this for existing suppliers, the global spot price, economic growth, OPEC and the world’s consumers are enormous.

This is not an issue of access, it is primarily about control. The US was just as concerned to control Middle East oil producing regions when it didn’t depend on them at all. Until about 30 years ago, North America was the largest producer and the US scarcely used Middle East oil at all. Since then Venezuela has normally been the largest oil exporter to the United States. US intelligence projections suggest that in coming years the US will rely primarily on Western Hemisphere resources: primarily the Atlantic basin – Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, probably Colombia, but also possibly Canada, which has huge potential reserves if they become economically competitive. Imported supplies accounted for 50% of US oil consumption in 2000 and by 2020 the figure is expected to rise to 66%.

Control over the world’s greatest concentration of energy resources has two goals: (1) economic: huge profits for energy corporations, construction firms, arms producers, as well as petrodollars recycled to US treasury, etc; and (2) it’s a lever of global geo-political control. For those trying to understand the motives behind US behaviour towards Iraq, it is impossible to underestimate the importance which oil has in the minds of Washington’s strategic planners.

True. But here we do have a ‘but’. Only a fool would assert that oil is not involved in this conflict. But Saddam’s means of closing his grip on the world’s oil is not just conventional forces. It is, to use that phrase immortalized by Graham Richardson, whatever it takes, chemical, biological, and nuclear means included. As noted above, Saddam’s past efforts, if they had all been successful, would have likely given him control over around 60 percent of the world’s oil, and arguably close to 70 percent had he defeated Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and extracted concessions.

Attempts to discredit arguments about US access to Iraqi oil by claiming that it if it is interested in access to supplies it could more easily strike a deal with Saddam to satisfy its “thirst for oil” rather than overthrow him, entirely miss the crucial issue – control. (The Australian, 2 January, 2003)

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The credibility of the UN and Canberra

In September 2002, the Iraq issue in Australia suddenly centred on the honour and integrity of the UN, a subject not previously thought to have concerned the Howard Government. The international community “can’t afford” to have its authority “brushed aside,” argued foreign minister Alexander Downer, otherwise it will “look meaningless and weak, completely ineffectual.” According to the Prime Minister, “if the United Nations Security Council doesn’t rise to its responsibilities on this occasion it will badly weaken its credibility”.

Former chief weapons inspector and Australian Ambassador to the UN, Richard Butler, argued that the Security Council faces the “challenge of its life” and its future would be “terminal” if it didn’t hold Iraq to account this time. His predecessor at the UN, Michael Costello, agrees. “If the UN Security Council won’t enforce its own resolutions against Iraq, the whole UN collective security system will be badly wounded, perhaps fatally.”

One might have thought that the credibility of the UN Security Council had been badly weakened before now, say in Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994 or in East Timor in 1999 to cite only three recent cases when it failed to protect defenceless civilians from slaughter. Palestinians might wonder why the organisation’s authority hasn’t been “brushed aside” by Israel’s consistent non-compliance with numerous Security Council resolutions calling for its withdrawal from occupied territories, from resolution 242 in 1967 to resolution 1402 in March 2002.

There is no doubt about that, and the proposition that governments should be allowed to do as they please within their own (‘nationally sovereign’) borders is getting well past its use by date in the eyes of an increasing number. There is a court in the Hague to deal with offenders, and Saddam knows he could well follow his colleague Milosovic into it in the near future.

Washington clearly has an idiosyncratic view about states complying with UN Security Council resolutions. If the US objects to non-compliance, the country is attacked. If the US favors non-compliance it either vetoes the resolution or disregards it, in which case it is as good as vetoed. Since the early 1970s, for example, the US has vetoed 22 draft Security Council resolutions on Palestine alone – this figure doesn’t include 7 vetoes relating to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s.

Agreed, double standards are not hard to find. But how much does that tell us about how the world should handle an outlaw like Saddam Hussein? Is the answer to therefore leave him alone? If it is, then it should be spelt out.

At the National Press Club and later on commercial talkback radio, Mr Howard seemed to think that because Israel was a democracy it shouldn’t be judged by the same standards as Iraq. The future of the UN Security Council is not apparently terminal when its resolutions regarding Palestine and Israel are flouted. He should be reminded that democracies are just as obliged to observe international law as authoritarian dictatorships – there is no exemption. In fact we should expect a higher commitment to the rule of law from countries which pronounce their democratic credentials. Later, the argument shifted slightly. Israel wasn’t obliged to observe UN Security Council Resolutions because they are only invoked under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter, rather than Chapter 7. This is a novel interpretation of international law, to put it kindly.

Agreed. If international law is a tar baby, then John Howard is Brer Rabbit.

Despite rhetoric which portrays the UN as a foreign body at its moment of truth, it is nothing more than the states which comprise it – including Australia and the US. If it has become dysfunctional, it is those member states which manipulate it for their own individual purposes which are to blame. Those who think the credibility of the UN is suddenly at risk over the question of Iraq might like to explain why non-compliance now is suddenly a pretext for an imminent attack on Iraq when Baghdad has been in violation of UN Security Council resolutions for four years.

The Prime Minister asks if Iraq has “nothing to hide and nothing to conceal from the world community, why has it repeatedly refused to comply with the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council”?

Perhaps it’s for the same reason that he restricts the UN from entering Australia’s refugee detention centres? Or for the same reason Israel would not allow the UN to inspect its research institute at Nes Ziona near Tel Aviv which produces chemical and biological weapons, a stockpile of chemical agents Mr Howard claims he is “not aware” of. If he had bothered to inquire, Mr Howard would have found that “there is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weaponswhich is not manufactured at the institute”, according to a biologist who held a senior post in Israeli intelligence. Nes Ziona does not work on defensive and protective devices, but only biological weapons for attack, claims the British Foreign Report (Chomsky 1999, pp.xiii-xiv).

The Prime Minister believes that Iraq’s “aspiration to develop a nuclear capacity” might be a sufficient pretext for war. He has repeatedly claimed that “there is already a mountain of evidence in the public domain,” though he didn’t say what any of it actually proved beyond the existing public record, or how it established that the United States faces a specific, grave and imminent threat from Iraq which can only be averted by the use of force.

According to the Prime Minister, the mountain of evidence includes an IISS report which actually found Saddam was much less dangerous now than in the past when he was backed by the West. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, described the IISS report as little more than conjecture. “It’s absurd. It has zero factual basis. It’s all rhetoric…speculative and meaningless.” There was a similar response to President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 12 September, which outlined Iraq’s breaches of international law. According to conservative Middle East expert Anthony Cordesman, Bush’s speech was “clumsy and shallow” and little more than “a glorified press release.” It offered little, if anything, that wasn’t already on the public record. More a trough than a mountain.

At the UN on 13 September, Foreign Minister Downer claimed that “Iraq’s flagrant and persistent defiance is a direct challenge to the United Nations, to the authority of the Security Council, to international law, and to the will of the international community”. Four days later in the Australian Parliament Mr Downer repeated the charges, that Iraq “directly challenges the authority of the United Nations and international law,” that it poses “a grave threat” to the world, that it “has flouted and frustrated UN resolutionspersistently defied legally binding obligations” and is therefore “a serial transgressor.” Every one of these comments could also have been made about Israel. However, for reasons not explained there are to be no dossiers presented to the Parliament outlining its breaches of UN resolutions, it won’t be called “a serial transgressor” of international law, nor has it’s long history of defying Security Council resolutions ever meant that “the authority of the United Nations was at stake.”

If Washington bypasses the Security Council or cannot get UN authorisation for a strike against Iraq but unilaterally attacks the country regardless, it will have done much greater damage to the UN’s credibility than years of Iraqi non-compliance with Security Council resolutions.

***

Canberra’s new approach to the United Nations

“We have no intention, as Australians, of playing any part in anything which would be illegal in breach of the law Australia has no intention of doing anything which is in breach of international law (Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Lateline, ABC TV 24 September, 2002).

“Until I know and the Government knows what has come out of the United Nations Security Council position – I mean you could have a situation where you have a resolution carried 13-2, and one of the two is a permanent member, and the permanent member says “I am going to veto the resolution.”

“Now in those circumstances we would have to make a decision, the Americans would have to make a decision, and potentially others. And I know there are other countries that would in those circumstances regard such a veto as capricious and regard a vote of 13-2 in favour of action as being Security Council endorsement and they wouldn’t allow that capricious veto to hold them back.” (Prime Minister John Howard, 7.30 Report, ABC TV, 23 January, 2003).

There is an obvious contraction in these two remarks. Five points are worth noting about the Prime Minister’s new attitude to United Nations Security Council resolutions.

(1) The process whereby international law is made – via the passing of UN Security Council Resolutions – can now be disregarded if the outcome isn’t welcome. The veto powers of the permanent five members apparently don’t count if the desired result doesn’t eventuate. This is an interesting approach to ‘due process’ and displays extraordinary contempt for the UN Charter which specifies the respective powers of UN Security Council members and the process for passing resolutions.

We have a crisis of UN credibility, and it has been building up for a while.

(2) If the UN Security Council decides not to authorise an attack against Iraq, the use of force against Baghdad would constitute a crime of aggression – a breach of international law. Few credible international lawyers argue that existing breaches of UN Security Council resolutions by Iraq provide a legal defence for the use of force against it.

The international community doesn’t only express its views when UN Security Council resolutions are passed. It is speaking just as loudly when it rejects draft resolutions passed by member-states. The rule of law may not be a high priority for Washington given that the United States is the only country to have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law, but this is not a precedent which Canberra should follow (Chomsky 1999a, p.74).

(3) If Canberra opposes the current process which allows the permanent five members of the Security Council to veto resolutions, what steps has it taken to alter this power through proposals to reform the UN?

(4) What are the implications of this new policy for relations with Israel? Since the early 1970s, the US has vetoed 22 draft Security Council resolutions on Palestine alone – this figure doesn’t include 7 vetoes relating to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. The US has normally been outvoted 14-1 on these resolutions, though it is difficult to recall Mr Howard condemning Washington’s “capricious” use of its veto in these cases. According to the principle Mr Howard has recently articulated, 14-1 votes in the Security Council where the single vote against is a veto can nevertheless be regarded as constituting Security Council endorsement for, not against, the resolution.

Agreed again, double standards are not hard to find. But again how much does that tell us about how the world should handle Saddam Hussein? I fear here that the unspoken invitiation is to do as Baldwin and Eden did in response to Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, namely nothing.

The crucial opening step in Hitler’s drive towards WW2 occurred when he ordered his army to move into the areas of the Rhineland facing France which had been demilitarized under the Versailles treaty of 1918 and the Locarno pact of 1925.

The French Government wanted to move against him and asked the British to assist. The British led by Baldwin and Eden declined to do so. Hitler later said: “The 48 hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-wracking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military forces at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.” (Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, Fontana 1993, p.570)

This was not appeasement, which only came later. This was paralysis on the part of the only powers in a position to stop Hitler. From 1936 on Hitler held the initiative, and it was downhill all the way to WW2. But in 1936 he feared a crushing defeat, which unfortunately for the whole of Europe never came.

Had France and Britain moved against Hitler at that time it is likely that a movement to let Hitler advance no further would have been set in place, and WW2 might have been averted. (But bear in mind that ‘if’ and ‘if only’ are rather forlorn expressions as far as the historian is concerned.) None the less, had they done so, a contemporary Scott Burchill could have opposed such action, pointing to the relative weakness of Hitler, to the thousands of innocent civilians likely to be killed or maimed, and to the appalling historical record of the British in the world at large, including involvement in the trade in slaves and opium (which brought them to war with China in 1840) and the plunder of much of the world; and then could have gone on to catalogue the sins of the French.

I was in the Australian movement against the Vietnam War right from the start, but I try to keep my mind open and resist the temptation to a knee jerk response. (On a recent visit to the US I was amazed by the strength of both feeling and uncertainty against war in Iraq.) At the same time I make it my business to read all I can on the issues from journalists and commentators across the political spectrum. All my reading has convinced me of one thing: The issues in this are not simple, and the choice is not easy. Those who attempt to present the choice as a simple one, and the case against Bush, Blair and Howard as a lay down misere, are fooling themselves and, through their dismissive approach to those they oppose, clouding the issue.

Journalism and letters to the nation’s editors (11-1 against according to the SMH 5.2.03) are generally against intervention in Iraq. But a majority of the public according to the polls remains in favour, provided the UNSC gives its support. The UN certainly recognises the danger of a WMD armed Saddam, which is why the inspectors are there on their present wild goose chase. If Saddam were as weak as many portay him to be, I doubt the UN would bother.

Israel is a permanent thorn in the side of the world, and with hindsight a strong case can be made that it should never have been set up after WW2, and certainly not in the way it was, as a brutal act of colonization in Palestine under the umbrella of British occupation. It gives Saddam and his ilk a fine target on which to focus the frustration and anger of the Arabs in general, and should Saddam acquire nuclear weapons, an Iraqi-Israeli nuclear exchange in the not so distant future is a distinct possibility.

The Howard Government has stated that one reason Israel’s defiance of UN Security Council resolutions cannot be compared with Iraq’s is because the resolutions Israel ignores are not Chapter 7 enforcement resolutions (as Iraq’s are). The reason for this is because Washington routinely and capriciously vetoes all enforcement resolutions against Tel Aviv. Presumably these vetoes can be dismissed in the future? Or according to Mr Howard’s new principle, from now on member states of the UN shouldn’t allow Washington’s “capricious” use of its veto power to “hold them back” from bringing Israel to account for its breaches of international law.

Howard has left himself wide open here. Just because he developed the concept of the non-core promise, it does not mean that he can master everything.

(5) Canberra’s new policy echoes both the ALP’s and the British Government’s positions. According to the Leader of the Opposition, “the exception to this position [of only supporting UN authorised action against Iraq] might occur in the case of overwhelming UN Security Council support for military action, but where support for such action was subject to veto” (The Australian Financial Review, 15 January, 2003).

Prime Minister Blair has said that if one country on the Security Council imposed an “unreasonable or unilateral” block “we can’t be in a position where we are confined in that way” (The Age, 15 January, 2003).

Crean, Blair and now Howard are saying that the moral authority of the UN depends on whether it does the bidding of Washington and its allies. If it reflects a different view, it’s very legitimacy is in question and therefore the process by which it has been passing Security Council resolutions since the 1940s can be disregarded. You can see what they mean when they say that the future of the UN is at stake over the question of Iraq.

The UN Security Council was set up as a way to reconcile opening membership of the UN to all nations with the fact that the US and a small number of others either had nuclear weapons or were developing them with the resources than available to them, and demanded a privileged position on that basis. Again, there are consequences for the UN in not supporting regime change in Iraq, and others for doing so. The choice is not easy for any of us.

As the possibility of a new UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force fades, it is increasingly clear that Washington, London and possibly Canberra will construct tortured and unconvincing legal arguments which claim that existing resolutions breached by Iraq since 1990 already legitimate the use of force (see Rai 2002, pp.145-50). This is disputed by most independent international lawyers. In Australia the argument has taken a novel turn.

Neil Mitchell: It does seem the United Nations is the key to it and the public support seems to be predicated on support for action with United Nations approval. Is there a possibility of the Australian Government supporting action without United Nations approval?

Prime Minister Howard: You can’t give a clear cut answer to that until you know the final outcome of the UN process and the reason for that is that the final outcome is very likely to be either black or white. People assume that at the end of the day the UN will either 15-0 explicitly, without argument, authorise the use of force or alternatively heavily say under no circumstances should force at any time be used. Now, I’m afraid that it’s not going to quite end up that way. You’re going to have something in between. You may remember the NATO intervention in Kosovo at the time when the NATO countries decided to attack Serbia because of the ethnic cleansing that was occurring in Kosovo. That was not authorised by the United Nations. (24 January 2003, Radio 3AW).

Washington’s wars in Indochina were never bought before the United Nations, for obvious legal and political reasons. However, the problem with the Kosovo precedent is that NATO’s attack on Serbia was almost certainly illegal. Security Council authorisation was not sought by Washington or London in 1999 because of Moscow’s likely use of its veto power, thus a very dubious claim to ‘the right of humanitarian intervention’ was invoked (Gray 2000, pp.31-42). No such right to humanitarian intervention can be, or is being claimed in the case of Iraq, so the Kosovo precedent is irrelevant to contemporary events.

***

Conclusion

Neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Minister have answered the key question: Where is the new evidence that makes military action against Iraq more urgent now than it has been since December 1998 when Richard Butler withdrew UNSCOM from Iraq?

Or more exactly, when Richard Butler withdrew UNSCOM from Iraq after Saddam’s men made its work impossible.

Prime Minister Howard claims the onus is on the critics of his Government’s approach to articulate an alternative (The Australian, 1 January, 2003). What about the policy of containment his Government comfortably lived with between 1996 and 2002? As two conservative realists have noted:

“… the belief that Saddam’s past behaviour shows that he cannot be contained rests on distorted history and dubious logic. In fact, the historical record shows that the United States can contain Iraq effectively – even if Saddam has nuclear weapons – just as it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And that conclusion carries an obvious implication: there is no good reason to attack Iraq at this time” (Mearsheimer & Walt 2002).

I submit that the combination of Saddam’s past record, his present position and his clear and steadfastly held strategic objective of domination of the Middle East makes a statement like this unreliable at best, and at worst, an invitation to step into a fool’s paradise.

Had it not been for the demands made by members of the US led coalition in the Gulf War, Saddam could have been relatively easily ousted then. My weighing of the issues for and against has convinced me that the choice is certainly not easy. However, I am convinced that both Iraq and the world will be so much better off without Saddam and his WMD that I am prepared to join the 60 percent of Australians who support the Australian government on this issue, and the 6 percent who support the position of the US. I say this in full awareness that many of my friends and colleagues disagree. As the reader by now will be aware, the arguments of Burchill and others do not convince me.

Iraq must be relieved of both its WMD capacity, and preferably, of Saddam as well. Otherwise the world faces the disintegration of the non-proliferation treaties on WMD and a boxcar effect of nuclear and WMD armament continuing until such armament is the rule rather than the exception.

Hi. Howard’s pretence might bite him back.

Most of us believed long ago that he’d already committed to war if the US pushed the button, and now George Bush has confirmed it. He could have done what Britain did and said long ago he’d go all the way with Bush in a unilateral strike. If he had, he’d be locked in, having already worn the flak for his decision.

But now Howard’s overseas on what he calls a peace mission rejecting the German/French peace proposal as “hypothetical”. He’s now in the excruciating position where, according to his word, he faces a decision whether or not to join a United States war as world opinion potentially rallies around a plan for peaceful disarmament. How would he justify his oft-stated preference for peace? That war is the very last resort….? Stay tuned for the next episode….

And don’t you just love the twist in the liar, liar tale? The US ambassador tells Labor that calling Howard a liar means they’re calling Bush a liar. Bush tells the truth, and Howard denies it – Howard calls Bush a liar?

I’ve just published Polly Bush’s very funny take on the terror kit Dear fellow Australian… and a detailed response to Scott Burchill’s ‘Counterspin’ piece by Ian MacDougall called Saddam as Stalin: The case for war. More from you in the next entry.

A word on last night’s Media Watch. I’ve been copping flak in the weblog world since I wrote in Let’s find our elders and give them a go about a couple of changes of habit I’ve adopted this year. They were buried in a piece about Rick Farley’s idea for an environment levy and a Sustainibility Commission, where I suggested that spreading some some basic info about how changing habits can help conservation would be a good idea. All I was doing was illustrating the big difference a lot of people changing small habits can make. Why pay $2 a bottle for water then piss the same stuff against the wall, so to speak? When I was little, a neighbour used the no-flush principle to save money – why not do it now to save what’s become a precious resource? My Mum and grandmother both took string bags to the shops – that habit died in a generation, producing dire results for the environment.

Ever since I’ve got the standard stuff – lots of ‘golden shower” jokes etc. Weird how the mention of certain bodily functions give permission to the anally retentive to get all excited. Anyway, the comments got a run onMedia Watch last night:

Margo Kingston should be made a Dame Commander for the stimulating ideas she pours into her famous Sydney Morning Herald web diary.

“After hanging round with greenies lately, I’ve done one little thing: stopped buying tailor mades and started smoking rollies instead. Thats 11,000 cigarette butts a year I won’t be inflicting on the environment.”

Margo, forget the environment. Save yourself. She had more.

“I’ve also learned that theres no need to flush the toilet after peeing its just wasting water. A little thing, but something.”

You’re right Margo.

Thanks, David. Since your kind remarks, a couple of experts let me know in no uncertain terms that rollies were WORSE for you than tailor mades. I know fags are bad for you full stop – but I had imagined that I might be doing a little better than I was health wise. It took a few days of withdrawal systems after I started on rollies to get used to the change, so I figured there must be other bad stuff in the tailor-mades. But no.

Bill King, VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control, The Cancer Council Victoria: There is a need for more public health information about the dubiousness of widespread beliefs about ryo cigarettes and “chemical free” cigarettes. It’s amazing how widely held these beliefs are. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “Rollies aren’t as bad for you because they haven’t got all the chemicals” and the variant “Why don’t you guys campaign to get the chemicals out of cigarettes and then there would be a lot less lung cancer.”

Simon Chapman, Professor School of Public Health, University of Sydney Thanks to Media Watch, the world now knows about your decision to switch to rollies. Often people say they are doing this for “health reasons” because rollies are more “natural” etc. You might be interested to a paper I’ve just done on additives in Australian cigs – roll your own tobacco is actually MUCH higher in additives and weird stuff than tailor mades …. sorry!!

Margo: Simon says he’ll put the paper on his website tomorrow. If you’re interested, go to tobaccohealth

Hi. I’ve got too many emails on Iraq to read, let alone publish. Here’s a selection, pro and anti-war – including debate on Karen Jackson’s controversial “10 reasons to be anti-American” piece and Helen Darville’s Webdiary debut – and a grab-bag of protest actions on the go.

I interviewed Paul McGeough on the war, and his book From Manhattan to Baghdad, yesterday (the links are in the right-hand column of Webdiary). To those warbloggers fearful I might get my gear off at Saturday’s Byron Bay “Disrobe to Disarm’ protest, I’m off to Perth tomorrow to speak at the arts festival and intend to remain fully clothed in public. Webdiary will resume on Monday.

Recommendations

I recommend “In the politicians we trust?” by Gary Sauer-Thompson.

J. Russell recommends ‘Can we justify killing the children of Iraq?’ by Jonathan Glover in The Guardian.

Melody Kemp recommends George Monbiot’s ‘Act now against war’ at The Guardian for non-violent civil disobedience ideas. See also Oxford Research Group.

David Makinson recommends umich for a transcript of a Wall Street Journal advertisement by Republicans against the war.

Scott Burchill likes this quote from Hunter S. Thompson in Kingdom of Fear (Simon & Schuster, New York 2003, p.xix):

It would be easy to say that we owe it all to the Bush family from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled this country for the last 20 years, and arguably for the past 200. They take orders well, and they don’t ask too many questions.

The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it.They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.

Helen Darville likes this HL Mencken quote: To every complex problem, there’s always a simple solution. And it’s always wrong.

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Activism

A Just Australia wants people to post their fridge (‘fear’) magnets to Philip Ruddock “to tell him that we want the detention camps closed down and a system for dealing with asylum seekers based on justice not fear”.

Vanessa Wilson and many others like the idea of marking their terrorism kit “return to sender” and dropping it in the nearest mailbox. Ruediger Landmann suggests adding an anti-war message, eg Peace Takes Brains, Anything War Can Do, Peace Can Do Better, War is Expensive, Peace is Priceless, Read Between the Pipelines, Power to the Peaceful, How Many Lives Per Gallon?

Elliott Orr passes on this protest idea. “Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them.” Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or padded mailing envelope) and address them to: Prime Minister John Howard, House of Representatives, Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600. He writes:

“In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a ‘Feed Thine Enemy’ campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White House with a tag quoting the Bible, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him.” As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly, no rice was ever sent to China. What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly wasn’t going to consider using nuclear weapons against them.”

***

Rachel Thompson in London

Greetings from London. I’ve often felt disconnected from Australia even while living there, and do so now. I don’t think I have ever seen such a simplistic debate on something so major. It’s only about oil say Europeans and others who use far more Iraqi oil than the US does (but don’t actually know this). It’s about Daddy. It’s a proxy for getting Osama. It’s about dominating the world by threat of force. It’s about whatever you hate about George W. Bush and his cohort – tax policy, Kyoto, prayers in the office at 7am every morning, loose use of the words good and evil.

There’s a lot to dislike distrust about GWB but has it occurred to anyone in Herald Land that you’re making Iraq (because it involves threat of force) a global referendum on the entire Bush Presidency and everything else you don’t like about America (and Howard’s Australia)? Personally I’m reminded of Churchill – got 95% of everything wrong, often due to narrow minded prejudice. Got Nazi Germany right.

Further, has anyone who’s freaked out by all the Bush-Rummy-Rice hard talk stopped to wonder if it ain’t actually you they’re trying to freak out, but Mr Hussein? That the leaks about 800 cruise missiles a day are meant to spook Iraq’s leaders? The gullibility of people everywhere to bog-standard megaphone diplomacy in the era of the internet is truly frightening – the inability to sort out who the message is for – and makes me wonder what would have happened to your heads in any standard fascist country when bombarded with same. Camp guards, quite a lot of you.

Here’s my take on what this is “ABOUT”. For twenty years, one region of the world has been exporting terrorism and oil while everyone else has been getting on with exporting the products of your basic Sydney consumer yuppie lifestyle.

Yes, the US had a hand in creating some of the enabling conditions. So did most every other member of the full Security Council circa 2003. Bush had Iraq on his list of “Clinton unfinished business” when he “got” into office but Sept 11 reordered it up his priority list. Not because of daddy, or oil, or Osama proxy hunting, but because of all the unaccounted for stuff that Hans Blix is so worried about and that is on the wish list of al-Qaeda’s “nouvelle vague”.

The other agenda is to start reordering the Middle East for a mix of reasons. Since 1973 the status quo you all love so much has served the world, and above all the people of the Middle East, really badly. Check out another wing of the UN on this, last year’s Middle East Human Development Report, including what it has to say on that other “ogre”, Israel.

The truly interesting stuff all the polling/commentariat can’t tell me is whether Australians are motivated by recognition they live in a mildly to seriously anti-US region, economic self-interest (who cared about the Asian economic crisis so long as Ozzie didn’t suffer) or genuine care for those Iraqi bastards we don’t want coming in boats.

I’ll put my money on base self-interest every time. Or just possibly maybe, Australia is becoming like Europe – a genuinely ‘post-war’ entity, notwithstanding the evidence of ANZAC Day martial nostalgia, the revival of blood and innocence metaphors over Bali and cricket’s ongoing place in national self-esteem.

On the oil thing: What has been well leaked over and over but doesn’t seem to make it to Australia is that the US intends to give the country to the opposition groups a la Afghanistan, so the benefits accrue from the opposition coalition-soon-to-be-running-the-joint to those who stood with them and the US. The Australian energy services industry is very well placed indeed. It should add at least a point to Australian GDP next year. But by then this year’s history will have been pocketed by those who hate George Bush so much they hate the few smart things he does. And so it goes.

One of the tests of individual motivation on all this will be how people react to the scenes of jubilation in Baghdad, Basra etc when Mr Hussein walks at the last minute or the 101st airborne and 4th armoured infantry prevail at surprisingly low civilian cost and infrastructure damage. With shared jubilation mixed with sorrow it took so long or with cynicism I-was-still-right cliches? Not to mention the dawning realisation that effective deterrence and coercive disarmament has been updated from the depths of 1963 for the post-Sept 11, post-Bali, 21st century borderless world.

There is a much bigger story here. The “Yanks” leadership don’t have it all right but they do have a clearer set of eyes than most of us, like them or not. (And I don’t.)

The real issue basically isn’t “WHY”, but “Why right now” this year? To which my answer is that four fifths of the Iraqi people are nearly starving, dependant on nice guy Clinton’s oil-for-food system that lets chemicals and dual use equipment in while depriving the people of basic economic rights. Next year is too far off for them.

Bring it on and get it over with quickly.

***

LEFT/RIGHT

Helen Darville

The left may be right, but they’ll never win the argument while they belittle the opposition.

The best comment any Webdiarist has made about the left’s tendency to ‘seize the moral high ground’ is from M. Mercurius in Alternatives to war. S/he notes:

“The doves can get down off their high horse and stop lumping the hawks in the same camp as SH and that debating chestnut, Adolf Hitler. Please. If the doves want to raise the rhetorical stakes like that, I could draw parallels between the present pacifists and the attitude of the pre-WWII British and Europeans who simply ignored the evidence and disbelieved that anything like the holocaust could possibly be happening in the ‘civilised’ West – or the post-WWII world that ignored the ethnic cleansing in Serbia until it was too late.”

Daniel Maurice’s criticisms of Webdiary and the left (Placing confidence in a Loving God) may seem a tad intemperate (Jack Stack’s are probably just plain intemperate), but in the light of the above, I can see where both are coming from, even though I think there’s a little more light and shade out there – at least as far as Webdiary goes. I’ve personally been on the receiving end of attacks from lefties mounted on high horses, and it’s very, very unpleasant – not to mention self-defeating.

I think the lefties are probably right on Iraq, almost certainly right on Israel-Palestine and definitely right on SIEV-X. However – apart from Iraq – they’re losing or have already lost the argument on the other issues, and are in danger of snatching defeat from the gaping jaws of victory on Iraq, especially if the UN Security Council passes a resolution authorising military action. There are a whole slew of further issues I haven’t even touched on that could go the same way.

It seems to work like this: lefties make fun of GWB’s low IQ, Howard’s toadying, the fact that Ariel Sharon has the misfortune to have a face like a Nazi caricature, US foreign policy, whatever.

This ‘fun’ (it is almost never legitimate, factual criticism) is couched in terms that compares the individual in question to Hitler, makes snide assumptions about his lack of intelligence, and assumes that he has lousy taste in music, clothing and literature. ‘GWB reads far too many Tom Clancy novels’ was one comment that turned up on a usenet group from someone who was clearly horse-riding with the ‘moral classes’. The tendency to be short on facts and long on moral worthiness is something that several Webdiarists have pointed out in relation to Carmen Lawrence’s less than authoritative contributions to the Iraq debate.

M. Mercurius is right, by the way – Hitler is brought up in every high school debate, often by both affirmative and negative, and often in support of diametrically opposed points. There’s nothing like a portmanteau historical figure, I suppose.

In the past it was Pauline Hanson – she copped the unforgettable tag-line ‘lumpenproletariat hag’ from one member of the chattering classes [Malcolm McGregor in the Financial Review, July 8, 1996]. Ruddock, meanwhile, has been labelled racist so often now that the term risks being drained of all meaning. What happens – once we have turned good, strong words like ‘racist’ and ‘anti-semite’ to mush – when we encounter examples of the real thing? I believe the phenomenon in question is known as ‘crying wolf’.

Stephen King once memorably described the sort of lefties who assume the ‘moral high ground’ as a matter of course as ‘the Whale people’. “It’s about being right [….] They’re the new Puritans, as far as I’m concerned, people who believe that if you don’t think the way they do, you’re going to Hell – only their version of Hell is a place where all you can get on the radio is hillbilly music and all you can find to eat is chicken-fried steak.” [Insomnia, p 262].

Substitute ‘country and western’ for ‘hillbilly music’ and ‘meat pies’ for ‘chicken-fried steak’ and this comment becomes true of Australia.

My point is simple: no-one likes a sanctimonious prig. In my experience most Australians run a mile when confronted by churchmen who ‘come on all moral’. Is it any wonder that we do likewise when told by journalists and intellectuals that support for a war on Iraq is ‘stupid’, that George W Bush is ‘stupid’, that we are ‘stupid’ (not to mention racist) for supporting Howard and Ruddock on the detention of asylum seekers, or for criticising the sillier manifestations of multiculturalism?

I’ll never forget when Robert Manne put support for Hanson’s views on Aborigines on a par with a belief in UFOs or channelling, commenting that “many mainstream Australians endorse the truth of the latter”. And this proves what? That he had the good fortune to receive a university education? That being a public intellectual automatically insulates him from believing in ridiculous claptrap? Yeah, right.

If the left are going to win any of these arguments, they need to get off their high horses and share a few meat pies with the people whose views they are so fond of deriding. It’s that simple.

***

Robert Lawton of Adelaide, in London

Dipped in to Webdiary today after many weeks away … oh for the days when as a leisurely servant of the people I could write 300 words on my chosen topic! Now I’m a harassed postgrad trying to get by in an English winter.

I wanted to write however and praise M. Mercurius – her or his views on the painful realities for both the pro and antiwar camps compelled me to write something too.

I have to say that in the end, the peacemakers can only point to the devastation of carpet bombing from which Iraq will be saved; the civilian deaths that will not take place; the horrors of chemical and biological – to say nothing of nuclear – weapons that the region will be saved. They can ONLY point to these things because they cannot argue with any force that Saddam’s rule in Iraq is ending; that there is any prospect of his being overthrown without outside intervention; or that he is good for his country or the region, or holds his country by valid means.

Nor are these things true of people like Kim Il Sung, Robert Mugabe, the Burmese SLORC, or the hideous and little-known president of tiny Gabon in West Africa, Omar Bongo, who has held power without democratic interruption since 1967.

But the twin realities of Saddam’s lengthy continuing terror campaign against the Kurds and the southern Shi’ites and the failure of Allied nerve in January 1991 when the opportunity to remove his regime existed, signify to me that any measured US effort to enforce the UN resolutions which followed Gulf War I is justified and indeed overdue.

Of course oil men and women are driving this war. Of course the tyranny of the Security Council and the nature of the global economy block the potential for “just wars” to liberate the Tibetans from China, or the Chechens from the murderous Russian army. Of course the post war wash-up might be appalling, and a new US client in Iraq might turn on his master again in 20 years or less.

But “good wars” can be fought from bad motives. Consider Russia’s war on Germany from 1942, or the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia which bought the Khmer Rouge down.

In the end one must decide whether loss of life, even massive loss, vast destruction of property, and the potential of a trail of misery in Iraq stretching years into the future, can let one call a war “just”.

I say that although America’s war rhetoric over 50 years has cheapened justice as a motive, we cannot assume peace to be the only solution to all international conflict only because war has grown so very dreadful.

We cannot fight all the just wars. Are we then to fight none of them?

I still wonder why Britain and Australia (among others) are required on the ground, however. Lend the bases, the satellites and the computers, OK. But for my money, US politics cut the last war short and it is Bush’s job – not Blair’s, Howard’s or anyone else’s – to remove Saddam and assure US interests in Iraq. The cars that need Iraqi oil are overwhelmingly in Dallas, San Diego and Chicago, not Brisbane or Bristol.

The great lie that Tony Blair mouths about Iraq’s threat to the UK makes the rest of his position far weaker. The US doesn’t need allies. They are only a figleaf, and naked war is what we will be getting soon. Honesty is better than hypocrisy, even in these circumstances.

***

David Makinson

History will teach us…. what? It is a common tactic of those supporting the forthcoming suppression of Iraq to cite historical events as supporting “evidence” for their case. They have to. Their interpretations of history – and how they think it might influence coming events – are pretty much all they have.

History also helps to understand the “context”, they tell us. On this aspect, perhaps they are right – to a degree – though I think it’s fair to be very sceptical of this approach. History may indeed provide background context, but it is just too much of a stretch to say that it will determine what’s likely to happen next. Those of us who are opposed to the coming war are sometimes sucked into these historical arguments, tricked into playing the pro-war game. I know I’ve fallen into this trap myself sometimes.

The key question we face today is: Is this war necessary? I believe the question can only be answered honestly and objectively if we view it in the context of today, and the probabilities and risks that today’s circumstances generate. I am not arguing that we should dismiss history as an indicator, but if we are to make a genuine effort to assess the risks, we need to relegate history to its appropriate place. It is a factor amongst many. It can and probably should influence your consideration, but it cannot be key.

History can only become truly relevant to today’s crisis if you think the motives and intentions of the people in power remain static. Our responses must live and breathe in the here and now.

Is it relevant to argue that the US once viewed Saddam Hussein with favour? That the US has in the past turned a blind eye to his evils? I doubt it. These facts raises questions about motives and events at that time, but they provide no real pointers as to what’s likely to happen now.

Is it relevant for the pro-war lobby to use WW2 to support their case? Is Saddam the new Hitler? This seems deeply silly. Is it relevant for the anti-war lobby to use Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, etc to support their case? Ditto, I’m afraid.

Is it relevant to point to John Howard’s long list of past deceptions and and omissions? No – it’s today’s untruths that matter. And so on.

For those who feel history deserves a place much higher up the ladder of our assessment, Can Saddam Be Contained? History Says Yes is an outstanding essay by two American professors that uses this approach (owing to a recent case of mistaken identity, I am quite interested in professors these days). In a similar vein, see Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box . [The second piece was published in the New York Times earlier this week. Some of this material has also been used by Paul Kelly in The Australian].

These pieces make heavy use of historical “evidence” but this time from an anti-war perspective. More importantly they go on to make a compelling case that containment/deterrence has worked, will continue to work, and is a far lower risk option than war. In short, the war is unnecessary. The risks of war far outweigh the risks of containment/deterrence. I note that these are American voices – yet more reasons to be pro-American.

I wrote recently on the facile manner in which right-wing politicians and commentators use this catch-cry to summarily dismiss opposition (In defence of America). I set out a case for being pro-American, even if anti-Administration. Most people have accepted my point, but it’s also been pointed out to me by quite a few people that anti-Americanism is not only real, but is becoming more and more common.

This does not mean anti-American opinion should be dismissed only on that basis, but it certainly renders those commentators vulnerable to accusations of entrenched bias. Headlines like “Confronting Empire” are not going to help the people of Iraq, so I’m not sure this is a particularly useful or productive tactic. In this sense those commentators could be seen to be similar to the pro-war lobby that they oppose.

That said, the pro-war side seems to see deliberate bias as a virtue, so their everlasting whining about anti-Americanism is expedient at best.

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Neil Watson

Do you or any of your correspondents have any sympathy at all for Iron Jack Howard? I recall that in late 1999 he was being excoriated and branded as ‘gutless for refusing to invade East Timor until there was a UN backed force.

The war with Indonesia crowd wanted Aussie bayonets blooded immediately, damn the collateral damage and the consequences for children, just stick it up the Javanese and their collaborators. Ample justification under international law for unilateral action, they cried. No thought for consequent relations with the Muslim world or with Indonesia.

I do hope the clerics now arguing against any kind of action against Iraq are not the Church militants who wanted death and destruction – in a good cause, of course – in East Timor. The thought that war doesn’t solve anything was lost in 1999 amid hysterical jingoism. Waiting for the UN didn’t help us anyway, as we are now top of Ossie’s hit list, as enunciated in one of his video clips.

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THE ‘ANTI-AMERICANISM’ DEBATE

John Steele in Miami, FL

As an American, I was fascinated by the comments of Karen Jackson in Alternatives to war. After ripping the US up one side and down the other in Oh Superman, she apparently felt the need to apologize ever so slightly – after all she was rather cross at the time – then proceeded to explain her vision for a Utopian world with a truly effective United Nations.

Ms. Jackson wants a world where human rights are respected, people engage in true participatory democracy and poverty and violence are eliminated. Well guess what, we all want that Ms. Jackson, even Americans. But surprise, playing John Lennon or singing Kumbaya is not going to get us there. Unfortunately, there are people in the world like bin Laden, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler … the litany goes on and on. It isn’t the story of America, it’s the story of mankind and it’s been going on since we climbed down from the trees.

Ms Jackson wants liberation for Iraq – if she had been paying attention that’s what President Bush is talking about: liberation.

She wishes for ongoing aid to help rebuild and recover and using Iraq’s oil wealth to feed and educate the population. Who said that won’t happen? Why does she assume that America is planning to steal the oil from Iraq to run our SUVs? She’s willing to accept that we mean exactly what we say about disarming Saddam, but not willing to accept that we mean what we said about the oil revenues being used to rebuild Iraq.

She criticizes a mere $5 million to build a new hospital in Afghanistan, neglecting that $5 million is a king’s ransom in their present economy. $5 million may not go far in Australia or America, but it will build and equip quite a hospital in Kabul. She doesn’t want to hear about the 300 plus schools that have been repaired or rebuilt by American soldiers since the fall of the Taliban, quite aside from the significant humanitarian work by other coalition partners.

As Americans we’ve often fallen short of perfection, but at least we’ve tried. Sometimes it seems that we get blamed for everything wrong in the world, whether we had anything to do with it or not. We seem to get lambasted if we do something wrong, and we get blamed if something is wrong and we don’t fix it.

In some circles we’ve been blamed for having created Hussein, an assertion I would question – he was already a tyrant when we found him. However, if one accepts that we may have been involved in helping him along the way, now we get criticized for trying to correct the error.

Until Ms Jackson’s utopia arrives, the responsibility of the President of the United States is first and foremost to protect our country. If, along the way, Ms Jackson’s safety is improved that’s fine, but at the end of the day our President must act in our interest – with or without the approval of Ms Jackson, France or the United Nations. I’d hope that Ms Jackson would expect Mr. Howard to do the same for her.

In closing however, I thought it was particularly generous of her to propose that America expend our sons and daughters to police the world when directed to do so by her newly invigorated United Nations. In her UN utopia, Ms. Kingston can sleep tight, apparently secure in the knowledge that American soldiers are ready to die for her if the Security Council tells us to. Thanks, I think we’ll take a pass.

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Damian Lataan in Verdun, South Australia

Why don’t we just cut straight to the chase. Anyone who believes that George Bush wants to invade and/or occupy Iraq because Saddam Hussein has WMD and is a threat to world peace is simply living in mainstream media argumentively politically correct ga-ga-land.

It’s straightforward. George W. Bush wants to occupy Iraq – by any means as long as he ends up occupying it – so that the US has hegemony over the region both militarily and economically. This is not something he and his neoconservative cronies have just dreamt up and it has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘War on Terrorism’.

Bush, with his side-kicks Tony Blair and John Howard, have – almost – conned the rest of the so-called Western World into thinking that, while Iraq may or may not have had anything to do with terrorism in the past, it may well do so in the future if it is allowed to continue to exist with Saddam at the helm. If this was their only concern then containment via a strong permanent UN presence is all that would be needed. So why the need to have several tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people dead in order to achieve this? Simple. Containment denies Bush and his cronies control over the region.

As for the idea of Bush and his mates having dreams of global dominance, of which all of what is happening now is a result, look no further than The Project for the New American Century website. Here you will find a list of all of Bush’s mates who have signed up to the grand plan of Being In Charge of Everything in the World. The ideas expressed are frightening. The problem is, of course, that the world has fallen for it.

Bush and Blair have cajoled, bribed and threatened the governments of many of the involved nations, in most cases against the will of their people, to allow Bush and his cohorts to have their way in Iraq. And this is just the first step in their grand plan for the New American Century. The most frightening aspect is the fact that the United Nations, the only vehicle this planet has to ensure a stable war-free world, has been used, no, abused, by Bush and his mates to push forward with their hideous ideas.

The upshot is that no matter what happens now, the United Nations is buggered. If the UN Security Council gives the green light for Bush and his allies to go into Iraq then the UN has simply become subservient to Bush’s hegemonic dreams of global economic and military domination. If the UNSC does not give the go-ahead and Bush and his allies take it upon themselves to go in anyway, then the UN will have demonstrated its willingness to be dominated by Bush. To be subservient to, or dominated by, amounts to the same thing.

If the UN, that peak body which the world looks to for the maintenance of peace and negotiated settlements to disputes, becomes dominated by the US, a nation that seems quite willing to use economic and/or military force whenever it thinks it can get away with it on any nation that is not willing to bend to their interests, then the whole world is in big trouble.

The answer? All the people of this entire planet have to collectively stand up as one and, from wherever they are in the world, face in the general direction of Washington, DC, and, with the back of the hand pointing in the same direction and raised high, show Bush the middle finger! Go to a demonstration near you. Do not be afraid of showing your fear of a world dominated by the likes of Bush.

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SIEV-X and IRAQ

Tony Kevin

There are important connections between establishing accountability for the SIEV-X tragedy, and the growing debate over whether Australia should take part in a US-led invasion of Iraq.

Of the 353 people including 146 children and 142 women who drowned when the asylum-seeker vessel known SIEV-X sank on its way to Christmas Island on 19 October 2001, the majority were Iraqi refugees from Saddam’s regime. There is growing evidence that SIEV X was deliberately overloaded and sabotaged to sink, as a final deterrent solution to halt people smuggling from Indonesia to Australia. And it worked the flow of boats stopped almost immediately.

Evidence steadily accumulates that the Egyptian people smuggler who admits he co-organised the SIEV X voyage, Abu Quassey ( aka Mootaz Hasan) could have been an undercover sting agent working with Indonesian Police special people smuggling disruption teams that had been set up, trained, funded and equipped by the Australian Federal Polices people smuggling disruption program, run out of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

There has been intense Senate concern over this case. Two opposition majority motions were passed on 10 and 11 December, calling for a full powers independent judicial inquiry into the sinking of SIEV-X , and calling for serious efforts by the Australian and Indonesian governments to bring Abu Quassey and his associates to justice for the sinking of SIEV X.

Labor Senate Leader John Faulkner has strongly questioned since September the legality of the disruption program, and the Australian Governments possible involvement in the sinking of asylum-seeker boats.

Since early December, Australian Justice Minister (Senator Chris Ellison) and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner (Mick Keelty) have claimed repeatedly that AFP is seriously trying to bring Abu Quassey to Australia to face people smuggling charges.

Now the hollowness of those claims has been exposed by Indonesia’s Justice Minister Mahendra, who was reported last Saturday as saying that Australian authorities were not making any real effort to negotiate with his government for the deportation of Quassey to Australia. Mahendra said his government would consider seriously any such request if it were made. If not, Mahendra said, Quassey will be deported to Egypt.

What are the connections with an Iraq war? If Australian agencies are trying to cover up accountability in the deaths of 353 asylum-seekers most of whom were Iraqi refugees, what does this tell the world about Australian Government concern for Iraqi lives?

Can a government that fears judicial scrutiny be trusted to make sound policy judgements over involving Australia in a war that may kill or render homeless huge numbers of Iraqi civilians?

After SIEV-X, one would have thought that any responsible Australian government would consider very carefully the ethics of a decision to take part in an unjust war against Iraq.

And one would also think that with such a war in the offing, any responsible Australian government would be urgently concerned to establish the full truth of what happened to sink SIEV-X and drown 353 people.

Yet if the Australian Senate and Mr Mahendra are to be believed, the present Australian Government just does not care.

Margo: For the latest news go to sievx

This is Laurie Brereton’s speech to federal Parliament yesterday on war with Iraq.

 

(For Brereton’s foreign policy approach – and to see how drastically the Coalition has transformed our foreign policy – see Brereton’s pre-election speech as Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman at Brereton Vision.)

When this House debated the prospect of war with Iraq on 17 September last year, I was in New York, representing the Parliament as part of Australia’s delegation to the United Nations. There I had an opportunity to observe the working of the Security Council, the principle UN body charged with keeping the peace.

Outside the entrance of the Council, the place where Security Council representatives make statements to the press, there hangs a reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s most celebrated work Guernica. The story of Guernica is well known but deserves to be told again.

On 26 April 1937, German bombers attacked the town of Guernica in northern Spain. The village was left in ruins with sixteen hundred civilians killed or wounded. This act of terror – the first large scale aerial attack against a civilian population centre – outraged the world. It compelled Picasso, then living in Paris, to begin the work that would become his testament against the horrors of war and one of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century.

I’m told that the UN’s Guernica was donated by the philanthropist Nelson A Rockefeller in 1985. Unfortunately, it is now no longer on display. According to press reports, on 27 January this year a large blue curtain was hung to cover it up. Questioned why the painting had been covered, UN press spokesman Fred Eckhard said the blue curtain was a technically better background for the cameras covering statements being made outside the Security Council.

This may be the official explanation, but the same media reports quote unnamed diplomats observing that it would not be appropriate for the US Ambassador at the UN John Negroponte or Secretary of State Colin Powell to talk about war with Iraq against a backdrop depicting images of women and children and animals crying with horror and showing the suffering of war.

Whatever the reasons, there is a profound symbolism in pulling a shroud over this great work of art. For throughout the debate on Iraq, whether at the UN, in the US, or here in Australia, there has been a remarkable degree of obfuscation, evasion and denial, and never more so than when it comes to the grim realities of military action.

Our Prime Minister denies, of course, that he has committed Australian troops to war.

He denies that he shares the Bush Administration’s goal of “regime change” in Baghdad.

He doesn’t rule out supporting a unilateral attack, an attack not authorised by the UN, even though this would constitute a gross violation of international law.

The Prime Minister has nothing to say about the long-term implications of invading and occupying Iraq – either for the stability of the Middle East or for terrorist threat to Australia.

And the Prime Minister has only platitudes to offer about the humanitarian cost of war. He has nothing to say about the thousands of lives that may be lost, the homes, hospitals and schools that will be destroyed or the hundreds of thousands of refugees who will be forced to flee their homes.

All along the Prime Minister dissembles, denies and evades. From the very beginning of this debate he has sought to pull his own curtain of deceit over his war diplomacy.

We are certainly on the brink of war. Matters will probably come to a head in the second half of this month. The US and the UK will seek a measure of endorsement for military action from the Security Council. Given the immense US leverage, this may be forthcoming. It appears more likely than it did some weeks ago. Failing that the US and the UK will attack Iraq anyway.

But the case for war has not been made.

Of course, Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, responsible for appalling war crimes and abuse of human rights. But overthrowing the government of a sovereign state is an extraordinary undertaking. I haven’t seen much evidence to suggest that human rights is a driving element of US or UK policy.

Nor is this part of the war against terrorism. Despicable as he is, Saddam Hussein has not been linked to the events of September 11, 2001. Nor has evidence been presented indicating Iraq has given or plans to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist organisations.

Secretary of State Powell will apparently present new information to the Security Council, but I think we would have already heard of any definitive evidence linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The Americans are already telling the world they haven’t got a smoking gun.

Nor has the international community exhausted all the diplomatic options to secure the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capability. Iraq has accepted the resumption of UN weapon inspections and has so far not restricted their activities. It is argued, that Iraq should cooperate more positively. This may well be so, but a lack of pro-active cooperation is no case for war.

It must also be recognised that Saddam Hussein’s overwhelming interest is in survival. Why would he unleash a weapon of mass destruction that would invite overwhelming US retaliation? Paradoxically, a military effort to eliminate Hussein is precisely the circumstance most likely to prompt Iraq to use any capability it possess. It may indeed be the circumstance in which Hussein hands chemical and biological agents to terrorist networks.

But this is a risk the United States is apparently prepared to take in order to impose its will.

The truth is US policy toward Iraq is less about the threat of weapons of mass destruction than it is about redrawing the strategic map of the Middle East. As I have said on previous occasions, “regime change” is precisely what is says. It is about installing a pro-American regime in Baghdad. It is about changing the regime that controls Iraq’s oil wealth. It’s about putting in place a regime supportive of the US military presence in the Middle East.

And in the process, the US may unleash events with unpredictable consequences – especially in the longer term. The US is already engaged in an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan. The occupation and reconstruction of Iraq will be a vastly greater undertaking with unpredictable consequences for the whole Middle East.

Rebuilding Iraq under a new pro-American government will be a task fraught with difficulty. It will require the support of the broad international community – support the US has failed so far to mobilise.

Coupled with the ongoing horror of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a US-led assault on Iraq will fuel Islamic extremism and provide many new recruits for terrorist groups.

The US may rapidly achieve its military objectives, but these may prove to be steps into a strategic and political morass.

Here in this debate, the Howard Government hasn’t anything to say about the long-term implications of military action and the prospective occupation of Iraq. Our Government will support whatever action the US takes – it’s as simple as that.

And while Australia’s military commitment to an attack will be but a small part of the US-led force, our Government’s rhetoric has put Australia in the very front rank of George Bush’s cheer squad. With all this flag waving for Bush, comes an increased risk of future terrorist attacks against Australians both overseas and at home.

Since the US President asserted his right to take unilateral military action against any threat he perceived to his country’s interests, only the UK and Australia have declared enthusiastic support. And now the Prime Minister is preparing to scurry off to Washington, hoping to make the Bush-Blair duo a triumvirate.

Australia’s outspoken identification with the US and the UK as global enforcers places us at substantially greater risk of terrorist attack. By his rhetoric and his actions, the Prime Minister has incited and invited extremist attention towards Australia.

The danger will be greatest for Australians overseas – for Australian embassies and consulates, for Australian businesses and our tourists as we have already seen so tragically with the Bali bombings.

If the Government were honest in its anti-terrorism advertising campaign, it would warn Australians very clearly and directly of the increased risk of further terrorist horror if we are involved in a US-led attack on Iraq.

And where should Australia be standing on this whole issue? I put it to this House that we should be standing for the rule of international law. We should be standing with the collective authority of the United Nations. We should be arguing against unilateralism. We should be making it clear that the case for military action has not been made out. We should make it clear that there can be no case for military action while weapons inspections are continuing.

In the event of Iraqi obstruction, military action should only follow with explicit authorisation by the Security Council. A further Security Council resolution is essential for military action to have any legitimacy.

For our part, Australia should not support military action without this explicit authority. Nor should we support military action that extends beyond the terms of an explicit mandate.

In the event that the UN does authorise military force, it is my firm view that Australia’s involvement should be limited to the present naval enforcement of UN sanctions and our bilateral logistical and intelligence cooperation with the United States.

UN authorisation should not be the determining factor in whether Australian ground troops are committed. Nor does our strong alliance with the US oblige Australia to automatically lend our ground troops in direct support of each and every American military action.

Australia did not commit ground troops in the 1991 Gulf War – and that was in response to the invasion of Kuwait. No compelling case has been made out for Australian troops to fight in Iraq now.

And we should all be mindful of what will follow any invasion. Pentagon planning provides for an extended occupation and administration of Iraq. The degree to which an occupation force and interim administration would operate under UN auspices is unclear.

The US will be anxious to maintain a broad coalition in the post-attack period. Washington may well press its allies to rotate our military contingents and replace strike forces with units more suited to occupation duties. Australia could well be asked to contribute transport and logistic units, medical support units and possibly regular infantry. This is an issue that has to date received virtually no attention.

Australian involvement in a longer-term US-occupation of Iraq has the potential to cause significant international and regional problems for us. Adverse reactions will likely follow in both the Middle East and South East Asia.

It is an absolute tragedy that our Prime Minister has taken Australia such a long way down this road to war. And its all been done through dissembling and deceit.

Hopefully today’s debate will not be the last before the Prime Minister announces that our troops are going into action and that a state of war exists between Australia and Iraq. Hopefully this won’t be the last opportunity for debate before we see demonstrated the enormous devastation that can be wrought by the world’s most advanced bombers and missiles.

We may well live in the age of the so-called “smart bomb”, but the horror on the ground will be just the same as that visited upon the villagers of Guernica sixty-five years ago. Innocent Iraqis – men, women and children will pay a terrible price. And it won’t be possible to pull a curtain over that.

 

The photo that inspired Grace Knight

Non-political people all over Australia have fired up over Iraq, coming up with all sorts of ways to express their opposition to Australia invading Iraq. Grace Knight, singer and songwriter, saw a photo late last week, put the rest of her life on hold, and got the ball rolling on an anti-war ‘action’ called DISROBE TO DISARM.

The former lead singer of Eurogliders lives in the Byron Bay hinterland settlement of Federal, where she’s working on the lyrics for an album she’ll record with her ex-partner Bernie Lynch. But after seeing the photo and reading the story of a few ordinary American women getting it off to protest the war (commondreams and ptreyeslight) she emailed an “invitation to the women of the shire of Byron” to join her this Saturday to “disrobe and show them we are willing to go to any lengths to have our feelings respected”.

“In recent weeks a a group of American women – mothers, school teachers, shop assistants, lawyers, couriers, actresses, hippies and housewives – joined forces, took off their clothes and lay down in a paddock to spell out their protest. Their naked female bodies, arranged in letters that spelt out “NO WAR” made a powerful picture to present to their president and the world,” she wrote. Why naked?

1. Because it attracts attention. We need the male-dominated parties of Australia to hear us. They are unlikely to listen unless we get their attention.

2. Because of its powerful symbolism. Stripped bare of any clothing or adornment that label and separate us, we become united as a single entity. We are simply female human beings who, in this moment in time, want one thing – PEACE.

3. Because although it’s difficult, it makes a powerful statement. For some free-spirited Nimbin babies this might not mean a lot, but for most of us it is at best an uncomfortable idea and at worst, absolutely excruciating. Many of us have already signed petitions which have their value, but how useful does that really make us feel? Do you ask yourself – “What more can I do?” “How much of a sacrifice am I willing to make?” If nakedness is uncomfortable and embarrassing for us, think how uncomfortable and embarrassing the pictures of Iraqi citizens or Australian soldiers blown to bits will be.”

Grace’s idea has taken off, with women now planning similar protests in Sydney and elsewhere. “I feel helpless, and I feel angry,” she told me yesterday. “I’m angry that children are dying and are about to be murdered. As much as I love my son, what makes him more special than an Iraqi son is to his mother?”

“I don’t believe Australia has ever invaded a country before, and to do it on the back of George Bush terrifies me. Although my political views might be wrong, this should not be happening! And how can anyone by politically aware these days – there’s so many layers, so much history, so much propaganda, we all get lost.”

Grace believes many women feel as she does – desperate, helpless, and afraid to speak up because “they’re not able to back it up with political analysis”.

She says she’s never done anything like this before, and the momentum her email has generated “thrills me but scares me as well”. She’s nervous about stripping off, as are most women who’ve agreed to come, and she asked me not to reveal the location of the protest for fear of unwanted onlookers. If you’re interested in her action, or in doing one yourself, her email is graceknight5@bigpond.com.

Since Grace saw the photo and got her action off the ground, she’s begun writing anti-war lyrics. Here’s the first draft of a song she might sing on Saturday.

how the hell did we end up here

life is worthless, to live in fear.

Are our children’s lives merely dust

to be wiped from the coat of the president?

*

Who owns the voice that speaks for me

*

Caught in a trap, that only HE can’t see

Open the door, I’m not going in

*

……… this is wrong

*

How the hell did it come this far

when we send our children to die in war

No fuckin way will you lay your hands

on a child of mine to fulfill your plans

*

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.

What else is going to go wrong in 2003?!, a number of Webdiarists ask after the space shuttle disaster. We can debate the symbolism of the tragedy later – today, a report from Webdiary reader Lucia Dulin Hawkins on the ground in Texas, an eBay press statement in response to the gruesome news that debris of the shuttle is already been hawked around as ‘a collectable’, and a piece by engineer, aerospace technology enthusiast and Webdiarist Malcolm Street with background, links, and the bizarre resonance of the disaster with a 1997 novel by sci-fi writer Stephen Baxter. Malcolm firmly believes the space program should continue.

 

Before we start, Malcolm’s speculative piece on whether Australia and Britain were trying to stay in good with the Yanks in order to to participate in “anti-gravity” military technology raced around the world after a mention on prominent US website instapundit. Malcolm’s Anti-gravity and us was the second most viewed Webdiary article of last month. Malcolm writes: “I’ve had emails today about it from a fellow in Indiana USA and, wait for it, a friend’s ex-husband, who’d been sent a message about it from a US friend! Maybe I’ve created a monster :-). The Indiana correspondent has put me on an interesting tangent; appears it may not be anti-gravity as such but electric “propellantless” thrust which can, of course, be used to generate extra lift. A phenomenon called the Bifeld-Brown effect is at the bottom of it supposedly. Watch this space!” Sites which have pointed to Malcolm’s piece include “the journal of strange phenomena” forteantimes and anomalist.

The top five Webdiary entries in January by page impressions were Harry Heidelberg’s What to make of the Australian diaspora, ‘Anti-gravity and us’, Always willing, we’re off to war again, New Year resolutions andOh Superman. Scott Burchill’s ‘Counterspin’ piece would have made the top five if we hadn’t published it via the news section instead of Webdiary. The most read Webdiary entry written before January was Manifesto for World Dictatorship.

Webdiary received most referrals in January from instapundit, Fortean Times, whatreallyhappened, timblairblogspot and bowlingforcolumbine, which has linked to ‘Manifesto for world dictatorship’.

***

Lucia Dulin Hawkins (received at 6.47am yesterday)

I am an Australian living in East Texas, U.S.A. This morning at approximately 8 a.m. our house grumbled, rumbled and shook. My first thought was an earthquake! I ran out the back door and my husband headed out the front to see what happened. The rumbling seemed to last for minutes. We immediately thought the house next door had blown up. Other neighbours were standing in our street trying to fathom what was happening. We looked overhead and saw a wide vapor trail.

Then, from TV, we learned what had really happened: The Columbia Space Shuttle had exploded upon re-entry.

Now, five hours after the explosion, the day continues to have a surreal feel to it. The stillness of this clear, bright and beautiful January day is riveted by jets flying overhead tracking the Columbia’s final route. Strewn around East Texas and within 15 miles our peaceful lakefront home on Lake Palestine home, shreds of what is left from this momentous mission are gradually being discovered.

***

eBay press statement, Sunday:

eBay and its community of users are deeply saddened by the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia and its brave crew. Our sympathies go out to the families of the crew and all those affected by this terrible tragedy. The handling of any debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia is potentially dangerous and against Federal law. Any listing of shuttle debris on eBay, now or in the future, will be immediately removed from the site. In addition, eBay will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies requesting information about users attempting to list illegal items.

***

Malcolm Street in Canberra

I’m still numb from the loss of Columbia; it’s probably hitting space fans like myself even more than the general community.

Within the sci.space. internet newsgroups there’s long been an undercurrent of anxiety over the age of the shuttle and its compromised design, and what would happen to manned space flight in general if another one was lost before a replacement was ready around 2010. It’s the worst nightmare come true.

From the start of the shuttle program in the 70s two aspects of the design have been repeatedly criticised for cost-cutting in potentially lethal areas – the solid rocket boosters and the ceramic heat protection tiles, each covering one of the critical flight phases (launch and re-entry). Now it appears we have examples of failures in each of these causing the loss of a vehicle and all crew (Challenger and Columbia).

nasawatch has a memorial page up along with many articles (the webmaster is a disenchanted former NASA insider), and spacedaily (originally based in Sydney) is also covering it exhaustively.

For general background on the Shuttle and its history see nasa, in particular “The Space Shuttle Decision – NASA’s Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle”, which goes exhaustively into how the Shuttle concept and rationale changed during the early 70s as funds were cut back post-Apollo, and the political processes that led to its final approval. It’s as much economic and political history as technological, and highly recommended. Note that the cost justification for the shuttle was done on the basis of around fifty flights per year; even before the Challenger disaster the most NASA was able to achieve was eight, largely due to the extremely labour-intensive checks needed on the thousands of heat protection tiles.

John Huxley’s article in today’s smh is personal and moving and may go some way to explaining why some like myself see as so important for humanity something that many regard with justification as just a wildly expensive piece of nationalist self-indulgence.

AFP has an article, published on spacedaily at spacedaily, detailing the successive reentry and landing phases of a shuttle mission and where within that the Columbia disintegrated.

Finally, there’s a nasty parallel with fiction. In 1997 British science fiction writer Stephen Baxter (see sjbradshaw) published a devastating dystopian novel called Titan (see geocities for a perceptive review). Criticised at the time for its pessimism and supposed ignorance of the US political process (“It couldn’t happen here” etc), it forsaw a near future (starting in 2004) of the US narrowly electing a militaristic, nationalistic, Christian fundamentalist government which stops building a space station mid-way through construction, scraps the civilian space program, allocates whatever space functions remain to the US Air Force and hence militarising space, does nothing in the face of an international environmental crisis, and encourages an increased interest in creationism and decreased interest in science throughout US popular culture and institutions. Attempts at total military containment of a resurgent China backfire when the Chinese come up with a desperate gambit that goes horribly wrong.

It must have seemed far-fetched in the Clinton years, but looks uncomfortably prescient now with Bush Jr in control.

In the novel the remnants of the US manned space program are thrown together for one last fling, a manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. The deterioration of life on earth is paralleled with the deterioration of the life on board this jury-rigged spaceship built around the shuttle Discovery.

And what’s one of the catalysts setting all this in motion, the collapse of interest in the US in civilian manned spaceflight and in science and reason in general, with in the long run catastrophic consequences for humanity?

The loss of a second space shuttle. Columbia. While returning to earth…

Stop Press: The impending war is boosting support for the Greens in the NSW state election due in March – could this be why the Greens number 3 candidate for the Upper House, Ben Oquist, has just withdrawn his candidacy? A few months ago the Greens thought they had a bit of a chance of their number 2 getting up! Ben, who is Bob Brown’s adviser in Canberra and has his sights set on a Senate spot, assured me late last year there was no chance he’d get elected in NSW so he’d hang in there.

 

Now we’re at the pointy end of the war debate writers and Webdiarists are proposing alternatives to an invasion of Iraq and thinking about how to avoid such wars in future.

In the Herald yesterday, Christopher Kremmer suggested a massive expansion in the weapons inspectors’ manpower and resources:“Expanding the inspectorate would bolster confidence in its findings. Giving it permanent tenure would send a strong signal to Baghdad that certification and an end to sanctions could be postponed indefinitely unless it sees reason and disarms fully.” (smh)

Jack Robertson’s column today, Looking for John Curtin, sets out a detailed proposal to reconcile the UN and the US. It’s a great piece which I highly recommend. In this entry, M. Mercurius in Sydney tells the hawks and the doves they’re both wrong. American reader Ralph Boecker, Webdiarist Mike Lyvers, an American in Queensland, and Queensland Webdiarist Karen Jackson suggest ways to avoid a unilateral strike or prevent a repeat crisis, and John Nicolay (nom de plume) replies in detail to yesterday’s Carmen Lawrence column, The price of war. To end Nicholas Crouch, who’s contributed once before to Webdiary by commenting on the forum itself, debuts on a substantive issue with a piece putting the case for war. No Webdiary tomorrow – back Monday.

John Wojdylo’s column today is on the ethics of Webdiary (John30Jan). I asked him for a couple of pars on the topic for inclusion in a chapter I’m writing on adapting my ethical obligations – drafted for hard copy journalism – to the net. Naturally I got an essay instead, and as usual its top quality.

For John Pilger’s white-hot reaction to the Bush speech go to mirror and for Christopher Hitchens’ latest on why the war is necessary go to mirror.

For the reaction of American weblogger and Webdiary reader Dawn Rivers Baker to the Bush speech, go to microenterprisejournal

American reader Tony Wisniewski pulls me up on my statement yesterday that “it was telling that he devoted such a long portion of his speech to the disadvantaged and the world’s environmental crisis – a crisis the world is trying to address without – so far – support from America”.

What appears to be constantly overlooked is that America is a multi-faceted country. Here’s data: usaiddevelopment and usaidenvironment.

I’m certain you will pull links that denounce the US for what we have not done or what we have disagreed with. That’s fine. They too should constitute a data-driven discussion. Please remember that America is not one collective mind. One man, president or not, does not wield empirical power. The beauty of this country is that people are free to think, act, feel, give and react differently from one another. We cherish that ability. Because of it you will find that the government espousing war is the same one providing assistance to the environment and the less fortunate worldwide. I welcome your opinions. Whether I agree or disagree, all viewpoints must be considered when attempting to make an informed opinion . It is absolutely important however that you base your comments on data. What I ask is that you make certain to craft your opinion on fact not rhetoric. Those of us once curious in your opinion will stop listening if you continue to defend baseless statements.”

***

M. Mercurius in Summer Hill, Sydney

One of the luxuries in trying to filter through the Iraq/SH debate is that if anybody offers you a simple solution, you automatically know they’re wrong.

“Bomb Iraq” is wrong. “Do nothing” is also wrong.

Naturally, and for all the right reasons, the doves are outraged by the needless slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians that will take place if we go to war. But if they’re so worried about the fate of the Iraqi people, where has their concern been for the last 20 years while SH has systematically gaoled, tortured and massacred those people, and then corrupted the UN sanctions so that they do nothing but starve civilian populations of food, medicine and education?

I would like to see the pacifists apply the same passion they apply to the question of what happens to the Iraqi people if we go to war to the question of what happens to the Iraqi people if we let SH terrorise them for another 20 years.

Ethically, we are confronted the same question as a doctor with a terminal patient – if you don’t operate, the patient will die a slow painful death, if you do operate, the patient may not survive the surgery. What do you do?

Naturally, and for all the right reasons, the hawks are worried that SH is a dangerous menace. But if he’s a dangerous menace now, he was even more of dangerous menace 20 years ago, but back then he was OUR dangerous menace, so that was OK.

This is why the hypocrisy of the hawks is so transparent to many people – we are reacting in our gut to the knowledge that Western interests aided and abetted SH in his war on Iran and his subsequent chemical weapons programme he so infamously tested on the Kurds. We know that if a deranged pit bull goes on the rampage, it is the pit bull’s trainer who is responsible – and collectively, that’s us.

So the doves quite rightly don’t buy the argument that war on Iraq is about liberating the Iraqi people, because we know if that were the reason it would have happened 20 years ago. We know the hawks’ message is hypocritical because SH is their Frankenstein’s monster.

But we also see that the doves’ high-handed rhetoric is misguided because they’ve suddenly whipped up a concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people that has been conspicuously absent until now.

The doves are also rightfully suspicious of the hawks ever-changing rationale for war. First the priority was a war on terrorists, then ‘regime change’ in Iraq, then weapons of mass destruction. If the hawks can’t get their story straight, why shouldn’t we be extremely skeptical about their motives?

Meanwhile, on the domestic scene, those loud voices who call the doves “traitors” and call to “lock them up” are showing that they have the same tyrannical and dictatorial instincts as SH. Locking up anybody who disagrees with you is a practice of which SH would be proud.

Every thinking person knows that the defence of freedom and democracy means the defence of other people’s right to say and do things that you despise. Locking up dissidents, conscientious objectors and the like is exactly what we berate SH for doing, so let’s not become the pot calling the kettle black.

And the doves can get down off their high horse and stop lumping the hawks in the same camp as SH and that debating chestnut, Adolf Hitler. Please. If the doves want to raise the rhetorical stakes like that, I could draw parallels between the present pacifists with the attitude of the pre-WWII British and Europeans who simply ignored the evidence and disbelieved that anything like the holocaust could possibly be happening in the ‘civilised’ West – or the post-WWII world that ignored the ethnic cleansing in Serbia until it was too late.

To dogmatically rule out war as a viable option is to ignore 1500 years of debate which has helped to define and refine the principle of ‘Just War’. You remain ignorant of that kind of intellectual inheritance at your peril.

A lot of the ill-will and name-calling can be taken out of this debate if we recognise that we all dropped the ball on this one. The hawks created a monster and now try to seize the moral high ground when he doesn’t do as he’s told. The doves have ignored Iraq’s 20-year nightmare and now try to seize the moral high ground with claims they want peace because they have a concern for human rights in that country.

Nobody wants a war, and nobody wants SH to continue raping Iraq. OK hotshot, you tell ME what we should do?

***

Ralph Boecker

I’m probably not your usual emailer, being an American, but your topic touched very close to home so I thought I’d take time to write you. I view web pages from around the world (English-speaking as I’m mono-lingual) as part of my job and like to read tomorrow’s newspaper today.

President Bush’s speech was reassuring, and frightening.

Both my parents grew up in Germany on the receiving end of an Allied coalition and have conveyed some of the horror of war. I drove past the Pentagon when it had a gaping hole and blackened walls and cried because I’d worked there in the past. And I know things about Saddam Hussein that make me nervous. With that behind me, I’ll give my personal take on things.

A simple visit to multiple web sites humbles me with the power and influence of my country. There is no doubt that we can kick the butts of just about any takers while sipping a beer and watching TV. But having won, what do we do?

Twelve years ago, Saddam raped Kuwait, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. I understand that many of the cars that were shipped back to Baghdad are still being driven by favored political cronies. There is no opposition outside of a cemetery. And Iraqi leaders say they are preparing for chemical combat because the US might use it on them, despite the fact that, other than side effects from Agent Orange, we have avoided chemical warfare for 85 years.

Still, I’m not completely convinced that we need a war to remove Hussein and Company (it’s not just him, after all). And we have a terrible record as kingmakers. So I’d like to propose a compromise solution.

Why don’t we (the US) go ahead and get rid of the rascal, and the rest of the powers (maybe the UN or EU) can offer to step in and help rebuild so we don’t get accused of wanting too much. The world community has been doing nothing long enough. Whether or not war is the right answer, in the silence that follows requests for original solutions it seems to be about the only thing left.

***

Mike Lyvers

There is a clear middle path available. The U.S. threatened war, forcing the U.N. to take action by resuming inspections. As long as those inspections are happening, there is little that Saddam can do (he doesn’t dare bring out his hidden arsenals, for example). So Saddam is effectively bottled up by the inspections. 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.

***

Karen Jackson, member of the Democrats, Queensland

I feel the need to make a few comments about my ‘Ten Reasons to be Anti-American’ piece (Oh Superman). Firstly, yes, I was rather cross when I wrote it, so it is a little extreme in places and I apologise for that.David Makinson’s comments in In Defence of America express in a far better way why people shouldn’t use this term.

At the same time, I still think those ten points are very good reasons to feel angry at the US. Indeed, many of them lie at the heart of peoples distrust of their current motives.

Mike Lyvers in Waiting for George correctly picked me up on this sentence: “What’s more, the propaganda that says the terrorists hate our freedom is just so much bullshit. It’s not freedom that these people hate; it’s America’s hypocrisy.” I don’t doubt that Islamist terrorists do hate our freedoms – women’s freedom from masculine oppression, the freedom to express sexuality, the freedom to follow ones own religion, or do without it.

Nonetheless, I also think that groups such as al-Qaeda also have a political motive, based on a hatred of the way the US treats the rest of the world, most particularly in the case of Israel where their hypocrisy is most glaring.

David’s piece defending the US, along with Bush’s conciliatory speech, has made me want to clarify where I stand in opposition to this war. The fact is, I don’t want to be accused – as you were by Jack Stack(Placing confidence in a Loving God) of defending dictators and oppressive regimes. I realise, when it comes down to it, that liberating Iraq would be a wonderful thing. It’s just that I don’t agree with the way it’s happening.

So it’s time for me to crank up John Lennon’s Imagine, get all starry eyed, and articulate what I think should be done.

Ideally, I want to see a world where human rights are respected, where people engage in true participatory democracy, and where the true causes of terrorism and violence are addressed – ie we work toward eliminating poverty and ignorance. (Let’s pause while all those macho critics out there laugh and call me names. Yes, of course I’m a bleeding heart. You’re right, how loony of me to imagine such a utopia.)

Yes, I want this for Iraq. And for Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia. For Pakistan. For Indonesia, East Timor, North Korea, Iran. And for Australia.

So this is where the UN comes in, but not the UN we have now. What I want to see is an impartial UN completely supported in all its efforts by all member nations, especially the United States. I want the UN to be well funded, well organised, and respected as a legitimate entity by the entire world.

I want to see the UN become the worlds policeman, not the US following its own agenda. I want it to make sure every country is democratic and respecting human rights, *without exception*. I also want it to become the real forum for airing grievances, the global court of King Solomon, where all know they will get a fair hearing, where there are no vetoes based on self interest.

And I want the US to be its main right hand, so all that money and influence and, yes, firepower can be used for the greater good, not just for those lucky few who were born in America. So that, for example, when the UN says to Robert Mugabe: Hold fair elections and stop persecuting your people, he might actually do what he’s told, or the US will use its considerable force.

What’s the difference between this idea and the current situation?

For a start no-one would be accusing the UN of being “impotent” or defying international law because it was perceived to be biased or useless. When it came to Iraq, any dispute would be conducted in a far more diplomatic nature than has occurred so far. If the Iraqis trusted the UN, they would perhaps be more inclined to co-operate. Yes, that is a big IF, but, like John Howard, I’m talking hypothetically here. And if they can do it with North Korea, how hard can it really be?

If it came to an attack, it would be legal. It wouldn’t be an invasion. Police don’t invade; they keep the peace. And police dont get to keep what they find when they attend a domestic disturbance. They make sure nothing else gets broken and leave it to the owners.

In my little utopian vision, any attack on Iraq would really be about liberating the Iraqi people. And it would be followed up with a great deal of aid and support to help rebuild that nation. It would mean that Iraq’s oil wealth could go toward feeding and education Iraq’s population.

You wouldn’t get newspaper articles crowing about the $5 million dollars generously donated to build a hospital in Afghanistan. You’d get real, ongoing help to rebuild and stabilise a new democratic nation.

And you’d know that it wasn’t just a selective thing, based purely upon greed for oil. You’d know that every other country in the world would face the same thing if they didn’t toe the UN line on democracy and human rights.

If we HAVE to accept the US as the only superpower in the world, we want it to be decent and fair – we want it to live up to its own hyperbole about democracy and freedom – because at the moment these words seem awfully hollow. We really do want it to use its power for good, not evil – and yes, killing people to gain control of oil reserves is just as evil as flying planes into office towers.

We don’t like hypocrisy. We want consistency and fairness in how “difficult nations” are dealt with. We want less greed colouring international relations. We don’t want to kill people if it is at all possible.

And I think we really just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace. Not just us – the Iraqis, the Koreans, the East Timorese – they feel the same way too.

Is it all too simplistic? Perhaps. But at least now I have a simple reply to the with-us-or-agin us argument. Integrity, co-operation, democracy, human rights. For all.

***

John Nicolay

I read Dr Lawrence’s column with a mix of disbelief, exasperation and despair. Is this sort of emotive, patronising nonsense really what passes for analysis and argument on the left these days? I have been a member of the ALP since my teenage years, but if this is the sort of analysis and reasoning that she would bring to decisions of state, I would have trouble voting in good conscience for Labor at any election that was likely to install Dr Lawrence in a position of responsibility.

What is missing entirely from her screed is an understanding of the fact that ALL available options have consequences that must be analysed. She seems to think that if she can point to bad things that might happen if one option were pursued, there is no need to apply her imagination to possible horrors if the other is followed – it has already won the argument!

In my view, you simply cannot be taken seriously as an opponent of war unless you are prepared to acknowledge what sort of leader Saddam Hussein is, extrapolate what his record suggests about his intentions and ambitions, and recognise that his conduct towards weapons inspections leaves no other rational possibility other than that he has or is developing weapons of mass destruction and intends to keep them.

By no means does recognising all those facts lead inexorably to the conclusion that war is necessary, but it is only once you do take these things into account that you engage in the duty that real policy-makers have in a situation like this: of considering all possible outcomes and choosing the one with the least worst results.

Dr Lawrence goes on to repeat a series of propaganda points that fall into the “no sane person with basic research skills could possibly believe” category. For example, the cant about sanctions “killing” over 500,000 Iraqi children.

Let us for a moment assume that, indeed, 500,000 Iraqi children have died since 1991 as a result of inadequate nutrition and medicine. This is not a country where the resources to provide properly simply do not exist. We know exactly what resources Iraq has – they sell large quantities of oil under a U.N. program. But Saddam’s regime chooses to spend massive amounts of that revenue on things like palaces and weapons programs, in preference to food and medical supplies. How, exactly, then, are the results of those spending priorities the fault of the sanctions? This is supposed to be an argument in favour of leaving Saddam Hussein in place?

I wonder also whether Dr Lawrence has any idea of the source of the “500,000 children” factoid. In fact, the Madeleine Albright quote she uses comes from the very exchange that gave the figure its currency. In 1996, Secretary Albright was confronted by Lesley Stahl of the American 60 Minutes program, who asserted that figure (on the basis of “evidence” that turned out to be manifestly untrue) and asked her whether it was “worth it”. Secretary Albright responded with the quote that Dr. Lawrence reproduced – and she has subsequently, repeatedly and vociferously, repudiated both the asserted figure and her response when put on the spot by Ms. Stahl.

The closest real source for the “500,000 Iraqi children” figure I can find is a UNICEF report that states that “if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998”. In other words, the figure is based on an extrapolation of the rate of decline in the 1980s throughout the following decade – an heroic assumption to begin with – and involves no attempt to isolate the various possible causes for the discrepency – one of which just might have been that during the period, Iraq launched an offensive war against a neighbouring state. To use the UNICEF figure to make the assertion Dr. Lawrence repeats is, simply, foolish.

And then to repeat the “predictions” of MedAct, the left-wing UK anti-war group, as if they were some sort of scientific estimate as opposed to a clever piece of press-release advocacy . . . just how gullible does Dr. Lawrence think her audience is? Would it surprise anyone to learn that MedAct also opposed U.S. action in Afghanistan, warning that it would result in a “massive humanitarian disaster”.

Dr Lawrence also fails to note that the “group of health workers based at Cambridge University” that she cites as an additional source for casualty estimates has a name, which is “Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq”. I don’t know much about this group, but I’m prepared to go out on a limb and bet that it is not composed of disinterested observers with no axe to grind.

Speaking of bets, I’m also prepared to lay one that Dr Lawrence’s sole source for all of the studies that she cites was a single MedAct press release, rather than her independent review of those sources, as she implies. Just so we know whose word we’re taking . . .

Next, Dr Lawrence seems to go out of her way to prove her credulousness by repeating the report that the U.S. is “said to be planning” to use nuclear weapons. She, and her selective quoting, makes it sound like a decision has been made that they will be used, or at least that they will be used in certain circumstances.

In fact, all the article actually asserts is that possible uses of nuclear weapons are being studied as part of the overall planning process . . . well, duh! They’ve got ’em, so they ought every now and then fire up the old brain cells and work out in what circumstances they’d actually use ’em.

Something else about the article should have occurred to Dr Lawrence – the source. The report was based on “multiple sources close to the [planning] process” that is being undertaken within the U.S. Strategic Command. Did it not occur to Dr. Lawrence that it was unlikely that “multiple sources” at the top of the U.S. military planning process were unlikely to have spilled their guts just by accident, or to have become so overcome by remorse at what they were considering that they all felt the need to rush out and let the LA Times know what they were up to?

No. This was a deliberate release of information by the U.S. military. Can anyone guess why? Might it possibly be that they decided that they wanted the Iraqi top brass – the only people who are actually able to prevent a war by getting rid of Saddam Hussein – to reach certain conclusions about their personal safety in the event that war is not averted?

Congratulations, Dr Lawrence: you have become a dupe of the U.S. military. It’s a little sad that this is likely to be her most significant contribution to averting war!

Finally, Dr Lawrence wheels out the old line that the United States and United Kingdom used to tolerate bad old Saddam, and even helped him with his early attempts to acquire the weapons of which they now complain. The only sensible response to that argument is “so what”?

If it is a problem today, what possible difference does that history make to the logic of the case for or against action? You could take it one step further: If Saddam is really the monster of the U.S. and U.K., surely it is more, rather than less, incumbent upon them to neutralise the threat for the safety of themselves and the rest of the world.

God knows we need prominent voices leading a debate on this, especially given that our Government is so reluctant to give us one. But surely there is a case to be made against the war that is rational, serious and honest.

Not firmly in one camp or the other, I find myself most persuaded of the need for war when I contemplate the possibility that rubbish like this is the best that the antiwar side can come up with.

***

Nicholas Couch

If America invades and occupies Iraq there will be civilian casualties. It is difficult to estimate, but certainly they would be in the thousands. Margo, you and those like you don’t want thousands of innocent people to die. I understand that. It sounds reasonable. But how many innocent Iraqi civilians will die if there is NO war? How many more people will Saddam kill? Given his past history surely you must say thousands.

Given Saddam’s age and his seeming incredibly strong hold on power, he could reign for another 15 years. And when he dies what then? It is no certainty that he will be replaced by anything better – very likely one of his sons or murderous generals will take over, and how many more people will die as the new dictator exerts his authority?

So Margo, if those of you who are working so hard to prevent war miraculously succeed, then by all means you will be able to say that you helped save many thousands of innocent Iraqis from being killed in a war. But you must then also accept the consequences of stopping the war – and those are the effects of the continued reign of Saddam Hussein and his successors, and the thousands of innocent Iraqis that will die because of that. It is no good starting sentences with “I don’t like Saddam Hussein but…” If you don’t like Saddam, and you have the capacity to, then you have to DO something about it.

People on the left of this issue are full of good intentions and your aims are noble – unlike the far right whose aims are based in bigotry and hate – but just because the far left has good intentions does not make it less dangerous. Jimmy Carter is almost universally acknowledged as the worst US President in modern history. He also probably had the best intentions, the best ideals – and still does. I like him, but he is a far better former president than he was a President.

Sometimes good intentions and noble sentiment can’t solve the world’s problems. Sometimes it takes missiles and bullets and a few weeks of darkness, so that the sun will shine brighter for the years to come.

Those against the war are prepared to allow the skies to be overcast for the people of Iraq indefinitely. Living under dictatorship and tyranny is a constant dreary, grey day. People struggle to just stay alive. No one is really living, not as we people who have freedom understand it.

The far left’s views are nice to listen to. We all want to avoid war where we can – everyone prefers to live in peace – but sometimes the price of peace is too high to pay.

I heard a political analyst recalling how former US president Teddy Roosevelt made a speech during his presidency regarding the US civil war which is relevant to the current situation. Roosevelt said the easiest thing for the North to do would have been to make peace with the South, and overlook their practise of slavery. It would have saved the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost during the war. And surely a number of people living in slavery was not worth costing hundreds of thousands of deaths, not to mention the economic impact on the still relatively young republic.

But Roosevelt concluded that there are fates in life worse than death, and living under tyranny is one of those. Sacrificing principles for convenience is not always an acceptable option.

The USA is willing to put the lives of its sons and daughters on the line for principle, for people’s freedom, for a safer nation and a safer world.

The easiest thing to do would be to do nothing and hope Saddam never uses his weapons of mass destruction and never develops nuclear weapons and never uses them. There is probably a good chance he never would. But are we prepared to take the risk?

Jimmy Carter would be, so are you Margo, but a real leader wouldn’t. A real leader would stand up and say that he was stronger than Iraq, and therefore do not have to be bullied by Iraq or constantly worried about a threat to their security.

George W. Bush is such a leader. I don’t like his domestic agenda – I’m a moderate lefty myself in most matters – but we don’t have to be weak to be compassionate, and we have to realise that having a nation that values liberty so much and has no appetite for conquest as the world’s sole superpower is a good thing, and that our special relationship with that superpower is to our advantage.

With the overthrow of Saddam everyone will win. The Iraqi people will have the UN sanctions lifted and will be able to prosper again. Their government will be free of the barbaric practices of Saddam, and eventually democracy will reign. The free world will be rid of the threat posed by a genocidal mad-man who has a history of military aggression and a disturbing obsession with weapons of mass destruction and a history of using them.

And yes, the USA – and the rest of the developed world – will have greater security of oil supply and price.

But to suggest that this is the only, or even primary reason for war with Iraq is outrageous. To suggest that Western World leaders would wage war on another country purely to secure a resource is an unforgivable slur. That sort of thing might have happened back in the days of the British empire, but to suggest that it is happening today is foolish and uninformed.

I said that “Everybody wins” from a war with Iraq – I mean everybody except those who are killed. This is the reality, that people will have to make sacrifices for a greater cause. Some of them may be allied soldiers who walk into their duty with their eyes open, others may be Iraqi women and children who die after being hit by an off-target US bomb, whilst they are sheltering in a basement in Baghdad, scared out of their minds. None of this is pleasant, it is just reality.

Yes it is sad, and unfortunate, but doing nothing is even worse. Doing nothing leaves our principles and security compromised. The deaths of all those who die from the torture and executions that are routine in Iraq under Saddam are no less sad, but they happen every day. It is no good coming up with a way to prevent people dying from US bombs without coming up with a way to stop them dying anyway, but with no benefit from their sacrifice.

After September 11 most people agreed that Afghanistan had to be invaded. It was unacceptable for a country to provide safe haven for terrorists. It seems so obvious now, but if an American president had proposed to invade Afghanistan well before September 11 2001, would the reaction have been the same? No, people like you Margo would have said that nothing major had happened, and the evidence on all the training camps there was a bit fuzzy, and think about all the poor innocent Afghan people that would die from the US bombs.

A lot of lives could have been saved if Afghanistan was invaded shortly after the Taliban came to power, and began allowing terrorists to use the country as a training ground. If the US did nothing about Iraq, and in 7 years time a dying Saddam decided to use his new and secretly developed Nuclear weapons on Tel Aviv or gave weapons to terrorists so he could see revenge exacted on Washington DC or another American city, everyone would agree that something should have been done years before. People would say: “He’d used WMD before! How could we not see this coming. We ruined his country – of course he would have his revenge”.

The American administration has seen the danger posed to its security by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and they want to act before he does something, and the world needs to understand why.

If the US had had their pre-emptive doctrine when Osama Bin-Laden was first given refuge in Afghanistan then thousands of US lives would have been saved. The USA has learnt from its mistakes and I don’t blame them.

Imagine giving a speech you know will be watched by the world, a speech which must at once unite your people behind you and convince the rest of the world to stand with you. George Bush is the head of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. He personifies America.

What was your reaction to George Bush’s state of the union address? See smh.

I thought he was polished and flawless in presentation, although the strain of appealing to two vastly different audiences was always going to prevent perfection. The constant stand-up, applaud, cheer ritual – the certainty, the self-righteousness, the insistence that God was on his side – must go down well over there, and is guaranteed to grate with both acolyte nations and enemies of empire.

To me, it was telling that he devoted such a long portion of his speech to the disadvantaged and the world’s environmental crisis – a crisis the world is trying to address without – so far – support from America. Whether he means it or not, whether he’ll press hard for implementation or not, the emphasis on a caring, sharing America showed just how anxious he is to convince a divided country to pull together, and to rebuild America’s moral authority to mollify antagonistic world opinion. This part of speech could easily have been said by Bill Clinton. His pledge to apply compassion to “the homeless, the fatherless, the addicted” was one right out of the box. And his program to address the AIDS epidemic in Africa resonated strongly with Tony Blair’s focus on Africa in his vision speech after September 11.

On Iraq, he set the timetable for war. On February 5, The American’s most credible spokesman in the eyes of the world, Colin Powell, will give the Security Council America’s evidence for war – evidence it will be hard-pressed to make convincing since it’s come so late, and only after America gave itself no choice but war by amassing an invading force in the Gulf.

Bush’s rhetoric has transformed over the past year – he no longer insisted the goal was regime change. The invasion, he now says, will be to disarm Saddam. He said nothing about his plans for Iraq after winning the war or of the implications for the region. Tragically, the region’s most pressing problem, the Israeli/Palestinian war, rated a throwaway line.

But he dropped his constant refrain that nations were either with America or its enemy. Overall, I felt his tone and rhetoric were more conciliatory than previously.

I thought it very significant that Bush kept the heat on Iran, one of the “axis of evil” nations he identified in last year’s state of the union address, while at the same time indicating that he had no plans to do an Iraq on it. It was a “behave and you’ll be OK, for now” message. The world will notice, of course, that he singled out a former client state and said nothing about the many middle-eastern client states with similar records.

It was a compelling hours viewing. Maybe he was just throwing trinkets to the natives to get them onside, maybe he was just being calm and reasonable to in over the home front in the dash to war in the world’s most volatile region. Whatever he’s doing, he’s the most powerful man on earth, the man to whom John Howard has handed the fate of our troops, and of our nation. We’re with you George, like it or not. And crossing our fingers.

I’ve devoted this entry to critics of Webdiary’s coverage of the war, and to a critic of a critic.

***

Jack Stack

Don’t get your knickers in a knot, love. The so-called war in Iraq is not going to be a war. Why? because the moment the US fires the first shot the Iraqis will crap their pants and start running just as they did in The Gulf War. It was OK for the Fascist thug Saddam to invade the Kuwaitis, gas the Kurds, slaughter the Shi’ites, execute his opponents and torture dissenters because they couldn’t fight back, but when the big boy on the block confronts the bully we see the stuff these cowards are really made of.

I expect to see Saddam either on a plane to Libya where he can live next door to that raving nutcase Kaddaffi (maybe they can swap outfits), dangling like Mussolini from a pole or being machine gunned by his own people like Ceaucescu.

I would suggest you get your moral compass repaired because it has lost its direction. That’s why the Left always found excuses for Soviet expansionism, brutality and oppression but castigated the US as they defended the West. You are the spiritual heirs of the people who turned their back on Hitler’s aims and his persecution of the Jews, overlooked Mussolini’s murder of the Ethiopians and Libyans, ignored Turkey’s slaughter of Armenians, excused Stalin as he starved Russian peasants and praised the Soviet “experiment” even as the commissars consigned millions to the wasteland of the Gulags.

You didn’t give a damn about Japan’s atrocities in China or Communist China’s persecution of peasants, minorities and dissenters. Need I add Cambodia, Tibet, Rwanda, Serbia and the post-war purges and executions in Vietnam. You praise Castro while ignoring the thousands who flee every year, the dissenters he jails, the Gays he persecutes, the artists he punishes. You paraded for “peace” during the years of The Cold War.

Now let’s tell it as it is: You aren’t concerned about a war, you just hate the US and Americans. You hate this George Bush like you hated the last George Bush and Reagan before him and Eisenhower and Truman and any other US President who has a clear policy of standing up to aggressors.

And don’t give me BS about the US being the aggressor because if it wasn’t for its sacrifice we’d be pulling rickshaws, most of Europe would be speaking German and South Koreans would be as hungry as their kin in the North. And if it’s about OIL (that tired old shibboleth) why didn’t the US stay in Kuwait and steal their oil?

As an Australian-born American citizen, I wish the US would retreat to its pre-WW2 policy of isolationism, kick the UN into Geneva, stop foreign aid, defend only North and Central America and let the world go to hell. Within months you’d be begging for those “rotten Yanks” to come out of retirement.

Margo: Jack, I’m a small-l Liberal. I’m often critical of the traditional left. I believe in finding consensus if at all possible. I believe in open debate. The bedrock of my beliefs is a commitment to the UN universal declaration of human rights. I’ve never supported the communist or fascist regimes you mentioned. Never.

I am not anti-American, but I have strong doubts about the war. I fear it could increase the risk of terrorism worldwide, including in Australia. I fear the consequences of a unilateral American invasion of a country in the most volatile and dangerous region in the world, especially in the light of America’s record in the region. I’m concerned that invading another country would create a dangerous precedent in international law. I fear the implications of America’s new national security strategy, which asserts the absolute right to pick and chose countries which flout the UN to punish, and to withdraw from UN treaties and not comply with international norms itself. I’m very concerned that neither the government of the United States or of Australia will address these matters.

***

Below is an exchange of emails today between occasional Webdiarist Richard Moss and I. I’ve said this before and it remains true – readers critical of me or my views have a much better chance of being published than those who praise me or agree with me. Webdiary readers decide the tone and overall views of this forum. It’s self-selecting. Most readers are either small l liberals or lefties, and this is why I privilege reader’ contributions which aren’t in that vein. I want discussion, I want people to think, and I want people to understand what other people think, and why. What gets me about most of the hate mail I get is that those who write it don’t submit pieces explaining their views or why they disagree with others. Instead they blow up readers who do and hurl insults at me. There are many forums – right and left wing – in which people tell each other they’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. This isn’t one of them.

Richard Moss in Canberra

What a great pity that Webdiary, which started as a great experiment in media democracy, has degenerated as far as it has, into a tediously repetitious propaganda site for the trendy left. The outrageous bias, the metaphorical slogan shouting, the mindless anti-Americanism, the selective outrage, the repetitious preaching to the converted, the self-serving “analysis” and the sickening self congratulation have all become Webdiary’s constant characteristics and have made it a watchword in journalistic onanism.

It could have been so much better. Think of the real, intelligent debate that might have been possible on any number of topics, if only other voices had been able to be heard. The Iraq issue provides an excellent example. Rather than the mindless anti-American slogan shouting which characterises Webdiary’s “discussion” of the issue, it might have been possible for the other view to be heard, for other questions to be raised about how the world ought to react to such a situation.

But you and Webdiarists are not interested in such real analysis: it is much more satisfying to indulge in mutual applause and self congratulation. I guess if you are absolutely certain of your own righteousness, you really aren’t interested in discussing it.

I guess for me the low point was your decision to publish the insultingly moronic view from some European resident that our alliance with the world’s greatest democracies – an alliance which has saved the world from fascism at great cost – and our mutual desire to address the threat to the world presented by Saddam Hussein is due to some lingering Anglo-Saxon desire for Imperial glory. What puerile, racist, laughable nonsense – unworthy of even you, Margo.

It is revealing that you chose to publish such crap, while contributions I have provided in the past have been suppressed – eg my attempted analysis of the trendy lefty mindset last year. One can only surmise as to how much else you have suppressed in the interests of creating a site which clones your own views. Well congrats – you have succeeded, at the cost of any interest in the site from a cross-section of the community.

Margo: Hi Richard. I led with one of your anti-left pieces last year. I’ve published most of what you’ve written. Can’t remember the one you refer to. Four of my columnists write regularly about the war – two, John W. and Harry, are vehemently pro-war, and I’ve published acres of John’s analysis on the evils of Saddam. Since you find it tedious, I’m surprised you still read it.

Richard: I don’t very often these days.

The odd concession does little to relieve the consistent bias. Also, it’s the tone of so much of the material which is so troubling – the constant intemperate abuse of America (a liberal democracy) and its leadership, and the attribution of evil motives to our own leadership and all those who disagree with the accepted Webdiary viewpoint is extremely disturbing, and certainly not conducive to any rational debate. The “why America wants war” discussion is typical. But the views I mentioned in my first message about some sort of alleged desire to recreate the British Empire, really take the cake!

Margo: I’m publishing people’s views, not agreeing with them. If you read to get a feel for the feelings about the war of others, why slam-dunk the forum? Many readers of Webdiary would disagree with your views – does that mean I shouldn’t publish them?

***

Daniel Maurice (See Waiting for George for Daniel’s critique of my comments and my reply.).

Issue 1: “scorched earth/mass murder”

During the Second World War the allies routinely carpet-bombed German cities. While the bombings were not “indiscriminate” (they had military targets) they were also deliberately designed to destroy the German people’s will to fight. They led to huge numbers of civilian casualties because the allies lacked the technology to drop their bombs precisely onto designated targets. One infamous raid late in the War over Dresden is believed to have caused 60,000 civilian deaths IN ONE NIGHT. Certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of German civilians died in every raid.

Allied political leaders such Churchill, Roosevelt and Curtin (Australian airmen participated in the raids) clearly knew of, and authorised, these raids. By the morality standards you are seeking to impose today, these leaders were all “mass murderers”.

What happened in WW2 far exceeds anything that Bush has contemplated or will implement in Iraq. I haven’t seen one scrap of evidence that indiscriminate mass bombings of Baghdad is part of the US plans. The report that seems to have excited you refers to leaked plans about unleashing a concentrated wave of precision guided weapons which would be aimed to achieve a quick, demoralising blow to Saddam’s war capabilities. You’re too intelligent not to know that, so why resort to hysterical language and distortions?

It’s blindingly obvious that the US approach reflects the exact opposite of what you outrageously claim in your article, that is it seeks to keep Iraqi civilian casualties to a minimum. Indeed, if you want to take a different line, you should focus on the dangerous concept that somehow war can be made almost “painless” because technology allows it to be conducted with surgical precision.

Of course there will still be Iraqi casualties from any allied military action, no matter how carefully it is planned. However, I’ll pay more attention to your professed concern for these innocents and your moralising about Bush/Howard when you acknowledge the far more widespread suffering that the Iraqi people have suffered at the hands of the brutal Saddam regime over the last 25 years. Don’t the Iraqi people have the rights to life, liberty and freedom that you and I have? Is their liberation only to be pursued if it can be achieved at no cost?

Issue 2: Ethical Journalism

I began my last email with a quote from one of your Iraqi pieces earlier this week. Just a few days before that, you intro’ed another piece, this time on the HIH collapse, with these words:

“The (present Federal) government did a lot of crazy things in the name of neo-liberal ideology when it first came to power – often for the benefit of its big business benefactors at the expense of the citizens who elected it. Senior ministers – including Peter Costello, former finance minister John Fahey and former higher education minister David Kemp – grotesquely misconceived the role of government and completely failed to fulfil their duties to the people. The result has been disaster for the nation and its people, yet the perpetrators blithely refuse to admit error, rethink their principles for policy, or even wipe the self-satisfied smirks off their faces.”

Different issue, same crazy hyperbole! As always it’s not just enough for you to disagree with policies, you must attack motives and even the morality of those behind them. Others who do not share your views and values are not just wrong, or misguided, they’re plain EVIL! (Another example: in the refugee debate you regularly claim that the Government is “vilifying” asylum seekers. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.) John Howard is not actually the devil incarnate.

Margo, your approach toward reporting is essentially those that extremists everywhere adopt, whether their issues are religious, cultural or political. Extremists will not tolerate those who do not share their views and values and ultimately learn to justify any action on the grounds that it’s the necessary means to a noble. In your case, you are never justified in promoting HATRED of our political leaders or our democratic system, using exaggeration and extreme language to “prove” a point or passing off your prejudices as objective reporting.

I don’t pretend to know the nuances of ethics, but here’s a few rules I wish you would follow:

1. Always use moderate language – no hysteria or hyperbole. Read back your words and ask yourself “Do I REALLY believe what I have just written?”

2. Acknowledge that while you might disagree, strongly, with the views and policies of the Government, you do not claim moral superiority over it, and accept that those views are sincerely held and the policies are usually motivated by intentions that as as valid and “noble” as your own. Further acknowledge the that you understand that you are sometimes wrong.

3. Clearly separate out in your writing “fact” from “opinion”. Don’t pretend you’re reporting the former when actually you’re just giving us the latter.

4. Do not engage in vilification of the political system which gives you freedom to express your opinion. For all the faults you see in Australia you have the luxury of engaging in public criticism without fear for your own life and liberty. This is a luxury which very few of your trade have around the world. Care and nurture it, do not abuse it.

Margo: Hi again. Gee, you’re hard!!! There’s lots of reports around that the US could use nuclear weapons in Iraq – I didn’t mention that because I just can’t contemplate that they would, even though they’ve said they don’t rule it out. Sure, you don’t like my style, but I really don’t think that’s an ethical question. You seem to set extremely precise standards for me – I can’t think of any right wing commentator doing the rounds in the mainstream press who would come anywhere near meeting them! I also make a point of publishing just about all publishable criticism about my work – unlike most commentators.

As for the scorched earth point, the Pentagon official said in that article that nowhere in Baghdad would be safe and that it would be an unprecedented bombing campaign. I was talking about a unilateral invasion not sanctioned by the UN, not a defence to invasion like World War II. No-one questions the fact that Saddam is a systematic abuser of human rights. I’m talking about the human right to life here, the most basic human right of all.

On the style thing, in the first Webdiary this year, ‘New Year Resolutions’, I said I’d try to be more measured etc, and that’s what I am trying to do. The times require more measured discourse. However I stand by the HIH quotes. I have personal experience on the IT outsourcing issue – a lot of reasonable people tried to reason with/engage government ministers on this, and their eyes glazed. They weren’t open at all. They deserve strong criticism for this failure of policy, in my view. That’s just my view, of course. I’d be happy to run a piece from anyone with a contrary view. The government hasn’t sought to explain itself at all, just dropped it.

***

Mark Worthington

We live in interesting times. How reassuring to find the following quote from Daniel Maurice: “I despair. My last vestiges of respect for you as journalist, indeed a human being, have disappeared.”

A human being! Did he really SAY THAT! Oh yes he did, and thus (by dehumanising you Margo) he clears away all the coded language and reveals his true feelings. At last. You may recall Daniel Maurice doing all of this (and some) when we were debating the fate of the asylum seekers aboard the MV Tampa and SIEV-X. On that occasion he was careful to avoid direct language. Not so this time. Funny (not) that he should mention Hitler and Pol Pot in the same rant. Dehumanising people makes it so much easier to make them ‘disappear’ from your moral compass.

Maybe it’s the thrilling prospect of a war that makes someone so overexcited as to say such things. It can have this effect on people. Like sharks smelling blood in the water. Permit me to hold a mirror up to Daniel Maurice and bounce his own words, with slight modification in parentheses, back at him:

“All (that) I see now is a hate-filled ideologue, not interested in objective analysis or reporting, so determined are you to (digest) self-serving distortions of facts and motives to feed your own peculiar prejudices. Forget about Bush and Howard, it’s people like you I really fear.”

Yep, that sums up the way I feel about Daniel Maurice perfectly. But all that makes him very human. And if he doesn’t retract his appalling slur on you Margo (as he most certainly should) well that makes him all the more human, and therefore deserving of sympathy, and in equal parts contempt.

Hi. At 1 pm tomorrow George Bush will tell Australians what he, and therefore we, might do next. In the meantime, I’ve published a sample of the stacks of emails on yesterday’s question: Why does America want war?

In response to John Howard’s post Blix report press conference this afternoon, our war commentator Scott Burchill writes:

“The PM said he thought it was significant that Blix didn’t ask for more time to complete his work. Could someone explain to Mr Howard that Dr Blix didn’t need to? Today wasn’t a deadline for UNMOVIC. It was an interim report on progress, to be followed by subsequent reports. No-one in UNMOVIC regards today as a deadline for their work. They have another 350 sites to inspect. Assuming they had more time, why would they ask for more? Such is the poverty of ill-informed soundbites.”

Scott’s also intrigued by Colin Powell’s statement at Davos on Australia Day that “We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action on Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing.” “Really? What sovereign right would that be? Under the UN Charter, no member-state can take military action against another without explicit UN Security Council authorisation, or in self-defence. Neither conditions exist. In fact even UNSC 1441 only talks about a Security Council meeting following UNMOVIC reports. There is no authority for individual members to take unilateral action.”

“You can see where Powell, Downer and co are heading. Because UMNOVIC has failed to uncover any WMD, the Iraq issue has now become a question of “co-operation” rather than “disarmament”. They are going to have to argue the case for war on the basis of Iraq’s lack of enthusiasm for, and pro-active co-operation with, weapons inspectors. Good luck – they will need it.”

Scott has updated his January 14 essay, ‘Counterspin: Pro-war mythology’, at smh. His original essay is in New year resolutions.

***

Activism

Yvonne Francis, a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party in Queanbeyan, NSW: “On Sunday at the Governor-General’s Australia Day flag raising ceremony by Lake Burley Griffin, surrounded by police and the armed forces, Ben Smith and I waved placards saying NO WAR and NO BLOOD FOR OIL. We were not arrested. When an F18 screamed over a few feet above our heads children cried out and sobbed. TV cameras avoided us but the Anglican Bishop of Canberra George Browning walked over to shake hands and thank us.”

***

Recommendations

Jozef Imrich recommends “The State Of The Union Address I’d Like To Hear”, by Arianna Huffington, at workingforchange and ‘Why the Rush to War?’, by Robert Higgs, in independent.

Greenpeace have a set up for letters to go to the Security Council at greenpeace

Peter Kelly recommends “Why I will not rally around the president”, by Robert Jensen, at zmag or counterpunch.

A reader recommends American anti-war site unitedforpeace

Melody recommends ‘The U.S. Is Looking for an Excuse To Fight’, by Adam Hochschild, at alternet

***

Please, the American people are doing good

Alex Pollard

Criticisms of Americans often unconsciously confuse the USA (the nation) with Americans (who I shall call ‘United Staticians’).

While ordinary United Staticians are a bit too self-engrossed for their own good, the problem with the USA is its elite. The US elite is what crushes unions, directs covert ops and invents mind-boggling rationales for mass murder. The US elite claims the USA is a democracy, but since before World War Two it has been morphing from a Republic in to an Empire, and as the Romans found out, the two are incompatible.

The tradition of US isolationism comes straight from the Founding Fathers. The US media has forgotten all about that wisdom. It’s a credit to United Staticians that they are discerning the facts about Iraq in spite of their elites’ spin media, and are developing their own hypotheses.

***

Critics

Daniel Maurice in Sydney

Webdiary yesterday (Oh Superman) began: “John Howard’s decision to incorporate our troops into the United States invasion force means Australia has consented to its invasion plan. If yesterday’s reports about those plans are true, he has agreed to a scorched earth invasion which would indiscriminately kill a huge number of civilians. If the Yanks go to war without UN authorisation, just about every country in the region, Muslim nations around the world and many Australians would see this as mass murder. What are we doing? Why?”

Do you actually BELIEVE what you write? Do you honestly, in your heart, think that Bush or Howard or whoever in the US/Australian governments “has agreed to a scorched earth invasion which would indiscriminately kill a huge number of civilians”? Think of the power of those words. They mean that Bush or Howard rank in the Hitler, Pol Pot etc class of true genocidal maniacs. You REALLY believe this?

I despair. My last vestiges of respect for you as journalist, indeed a human being, have disappeared. All what I see now is a hate-filled ideologue, not interested in objective analysis or reporting, so determined are you to peddle a self-serving distortions of facts and motives to feed your own peculiar prejudices. Forget about Bush and Howard, it’s people like you I really fear!

What you are doing is not ethical journalism.

Margo: Sorry, but I don’t get your point here. I was careful to preface my comment by saying they were premised on the assumption that the reports were true. I don’t believe or disbelieve them. Time will tell. I hope they’re not, for the reasons you give. “It is based on a strategy known as “Shock and Awe”, conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War. ‘There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,’ a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. ‘The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.'”(smh).

***

Interplay

Mike Lyvers

Karen Jackson wrote in Oh Superman: “What’s more, the propaganda that says the terrorists hate our freedom is just so much bullshit. Its not freedom that these people hate; it’s America’s hypocrisy.” Karen chokes on her own bullshit here. Clearly from the terrorists’ frequent proclamations, hypocrisy is never once mentioned as a reason they hate us. Our lack of fundamentalist Islamic belief and behaviour is.

***

Priorities

Chris Murphy

You may have to read these at least twice. From the Washington Post, 27 January 2003: “In this era of globalization, it isn’t just the State Department that thinks beyond U.S. borders. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson says he has secured $5 million in the upcoming federal budget for health care in Afghanistan. The money, if approved by Congress, would rebuild a large women’s hospital in Kabul and four satellite clinics across the war-torn country, according to information released by Thompson’s office yesterday.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46889-2003Jan26.html)

From The Dawn (Pakistan), 3 December 2001: “The cost of the US campaign in Afghanistan will be relatively modest compared to recent military engagements such as the Gulf War of 1991 and the 1999 Kosovo campaign, experts and Pentagon figures suggest. The Defense Department calculated at 1.481 billion dollars the supplementary, or incremental, cost of operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ between the day of the terrorist onslaught September 11 and November 8, one month into the US bombing campaign that began October 7.”(dawn)

***

Apology

On rereading In Australia’s best interests, I reckon I was too rough on Steve Liebmann. My argument was that John Howard should not have fronted his terrorism ads with a media person not involved in the issue, but with someone who was, and thus accountable to the people, and able to answer their questions. I wasn’t meaning to disparage Steve’s professionalism, which is acute ( I worked briefly with Steve when I was at A Current Affair, so have some personal knowledge of this). Sorry, Steve.

***

WHY????

Yesterday in Oh Superman, I asked what you most feared for Australia if we joined a unilateral US attack. Harry Heidelberg asked: “What is the main reason for invading Iraq?

1. Weapons of mass destruction (apparently not – Scott Burchill and Jack Robertson have deconstructed this one out of the debate)

2. Oil (Europeans most strongly believe this one)

3. George Bush Jnr completing dad’s unfinished business

4. The start of a new order in the Middle East

5. A human rights improvement project

6. The US showing that it will implement a new security policy for global dictatorship

Andrew Asquith, in an isolated oil town in China

I was truly saddened tom read of the reported US strategy of using 800+ mega-bombs in 2 days. September 11 was so ghastly, it’s heart breaking to see it repeated. No matter what the leaders say it’s, still murder. My guess as to the reason? 1) Oil, 2) Doing it for Daddy.

***

Jackson Manning (nom de plume)

The world doesn’t trust George Bush and his regime because:

* It fears Bush’s administration of Hawks is fuelled by post-Cold War hubris and dreams of a (ruthless) hyper-power hegemony. Some of these Hawks are so cuckoo they reckon it’d be a good idea to attack China.

* It fears the Bush administration’s brief is to re-make the world for the benefit of its own benefactors – US corporations, many of them already shown to be mean and inhumane. Though most don’t protest in the streets, many share the suspicions and sentiments of anti-corporate protesters.

* The the administration has already thumbed its nose at the rest of the world through Kyoto and the International Criminal Court.

* Recent Republican administrations (in particular) have an ugly history of corrupt and arguably evil dealings (the bombing of Cambodia, Watergate, the Chilean coup, Iran-Contra etc etc).

* Although we may like their brainless sitcoms and nutritionless burgers, we still like to think we’re wary of swallowing any ol’ crud served up to us. Soylent Green anyone?

* Bush’s rhetoric is all cowboy, with little evidence there’s any cattle in his top paddock. This is real life, George, not a John Wayne movie!

*And ultimately, because no evidence has been given. It’s one thing for Bush, Blair and Howard to say they have no doubts Saddam has WMD, but we require incontrovertible proof before launching a war that will kill tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people. If the case for war is so strong, they must prove it.

What are my main fears about the possible consequences for Australia of joining a US invasion?

* that many Australian service personnel will be killed and maimed.

* that the Middle East will go ‘feral’ and we’ll quickly become a top line and relatively easy terrorist target. And for what? A Free Trade agreement that will likely kill off Medicare, subsidised medicine and force us to adopt a US-style health care system.

* that the UN will collapse, and with it a multilateral security system and 50 years of gains in human rights infrastructure.

***

Damien Jandes

1) Oil

2) NASDAQ a mess

3) Military like to use their toys from time to time.

4) Unfinished Family Business

5) Only real president’s can start a war.

6)Andersen, Enron, World Com too hard!

7) Easier than finding Osama.

8) Can find Iraq on map, also know who leader is.

9) Some sort of treaty thingy????

10) Human rights have been abused (ha ha joke)

***

Trevor Kerr

Do you reckon the US is aiming to plant itself as semi-permanent nuclear power in the Middle East, and that was the aim all along, not just the oil? The editorial in The Oz today talks up the Indyk proposal for Israel (Martin Indyk of Brookings/Saban): “So too is a proposal for Israel to hand the West Bank and Gaza to a temporary international protectorate with security maintained by a multinational force. This “trusteeship” would make way for Palestinian rule after a period of nation building.”

Indyk is trotting around a plan for US & UK & Oz to be trustees. I couldn’t see it before, because the US would not be allowed in. It makes more sense if the US is a major overseer of region, based in Iraq. Indyk has commentary in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/27/opinion/27INDY.html.

I really liked John Howard’s prompt reply to Kerry O’Brien last week that he wouldn’t countenance Ozzies going to a nuclear battleground. That sounded like he had special knowledge that Bush has sworn off nukes (for the sake of Israel). And now they are busy clarifying (what they have been quietly saying all along) that all bets will be off, and, anyway, since they have reclassified some nukes as ordinary weapons, who should care?

Now I can understand why the US wants the inspectors out as soon as possible.

And I guess it makes sense, that if you say you will use nukes if provoked, you had better be prepared to set them up in Iraq as part of the long-term occupancy. Having got to that point, it then becomes the dominant strategic focus. How will JH get himself out of this one? Maybe he has his sick certificate already filled out, bar the date.

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Mark Sergeant

Why doesn’t the world trust George Bush and his regime?

First: Anyone, anywhere, with a bit of education is at least vaguely aware of Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua. They know the list is a lot longer, but it gets hard to remember the details. And this is not just history today there is Israel/Palestine, Venezuela and, of course, Iraq. A large part of the world has pretty direct experience of US intervention, and the rest knows about it.

Second: See In Europe, don’t mention the Yanks. A lot of this applies to the rest of the world as well.

Third: “Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?” 83% in a Time poll say the US.

Check out the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Manifesto for world dictatorship). Keep in mind the first and second points above, and you may find yourself agreeing with the third.

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W Jansson

The only reason I can come up with that makes any sense (if war ever can) is to ensure a nice smooth supply of oil in case the US goes after the Saudis. Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and the US is well aware of anti-American sentiment in that country.

The US administration have been deadly silent on this fact, but for the US to do anything about that they would need a different supply of oil so as not to heavily cut into their strategic reserves. My guess is that it is about maintaining supply rather than total control in the event of a conflict with the Saudis (although total control is the likely outcome).

Iraq would also make a good staging point for any conflict with the Saudis. Nothing else makes sense to me, except that Bush is just plain crazy. It’s obvious no link can be drawn between Iraq and Al Qaeda, otherwise that would have been done by now.

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Peter Kelly

My opinion is No. 2 – oil followed by 6 – muscle flexing and 4 – remaking the Middle East. But oil is primarily what the war is about.

The world discovery curve has declined since 1962 and 80 % of today’s oil comes from fields discovered prior to 1973. Newer discoveries are both fewer and smaller. The world today discovers about 6 billion barrels of oil a year but the world uses four times this amount. The larger pre-1973 fields will need to be replaced by today’s smaller discoveries and for this reason oil production will decline from 2010, give or take a few years, causing permanent recession world wide.

The US will control Iraq’s oil to allow it to continue to grow its consumption. Allies who kow tow to the US will also benefit. This is probably the angle the US is using to strong arm Russia, Germany and France. Russia and France will lose their contracts if the US war is successful but will lose even more if they do not agree to US action. From Iraq the US may be able to control all the Middle East and its oil. Pretexts for intervention to achieve this can be manufactured. But for the US and allies to continue to insulate themselves, others will lose out.

These will be nations opposing the US and the third world, particularly China. China now has to import oil and its ascendancy in economic power is dependent on oil. The US wants to contain China. Part of the “big game” in central Asia is to keep pipe lines away from the Caspian Sea – China route and instead position them through to Turkey or to Pakistan and India via Afghanistan.

It is very ugly policy and in George Bush the US has the very worse president and an oil mafia in the White House. Should the war succeed the Bush administration will have learnt how to do it again for Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait. It is extremely dangerous. The world by 2010 will be infinitely more unstable than it is today.

I wonder who the “Germany” is when protagonists compare Iraq to 1930s Germany? The hegemonic militarist state looks like the USA.

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Jack Robertson in Sydney

I’m not sure whether or not Harry was being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but just to re-iterate – Scott Burchill and I have not tried to ‘deconstruct the WMD out of debate’ at all. What we have argued is more complicated and now far more urgent, as Hans Blix says he is worried about approximately 8,500 litres of anthrax and 6500 chemical warheads that is still ‘missing’. The crucial question regarding WMD remains – is a balls-and-all invasion and occupation the best way to safely disarm it if we haven’t got a clue where it is? If Hans can’t find this stuff in the pre-invasion calm, why will the 101st Airborne Division have any more luck during battle, and post the massive bombardment?

The next crucial question is: Does the US in fact know something about WMD locations that they aren’t telling UN inspectors? It’s surely dangerous to go chasing rattlesnakes with a sledge-hammer and both eyes closed, yet they’re readying themselves for the biggest conventional invasion/occupation since WW2. So will these large missing stockpiles suddenly’ turn up a few days after D-Day? Forgive me for sounding cynical, but an important safety tip with stuff like VX and anthrax is presumably to ensure that your own bombardments don’t blow stockpiles of it skyhigh, right?

So has the American High Command been told even vaguely where this stuff is? If not, how can they plan the biggest two-day Tomahawk barrage ever seen with confidence that they won’t inadvertently create a localised WMD disaster? And if so, they should tell the inspectors now. Either way, the US should stop just saying they have ‘secret evidence’ they’ll reveal ‘later’. We’re all on the same side here. Unless, that is, your side plans to invade Iraq no matter what the inspectors achieve. Or don’t. Or aren’t allowed to, now.

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G. Norton in France

As a European who lived in Australia for about 15 years, I would like to try and answer the question, as to why Australia, like Britain, is following the US into war. To me, who was not born in an English-speaking country, the answer is very straight-forward and simple – because John Howard and obviously a lot of his conservative party colleagues are still, deep in their hearts, bemoaning the loss of the Empire and the power and influence it brought.

They, like the British upper class in the case of Britain (the constant insistence on wielding a disproportionate influence on European politics and the continuing efforts to drive wedges between members of the EU in order to halt consensus are ample evidence of this), cannot come to terms with the fact that Australia is only one of many, that it is only a small country which therefore cannot expect to have much to say on a world scale.

But since they still dream of grandeur and more power than they deserve in a world that craves for democracy, they attach themselves to the US.

For any continental European, the banding together of the English-speaking world in the looming war speaks volumes! Evidence for the likely correctness of my analysis in the case of Howard is also his staunch support for the role of the queen as head of Australia. I do not think, that his support is only based on some attachment to the current queen, but rather to the institution it used to represent, The British Empire. Clinging to the US and acting as one with them is the next-best thing to bringing it back.

Webdiarist Malcolm Street has a unique theory on why Britain and Australia are backing Bush on Iraq. Welcome to the anti-gravity arms race.

Australia, the UK, anti-gravity and the Iraq crisis

by Malcolm Street, Canberra

Are you sitting down? Good, because this is going to blow your mind.

This item is going to sound like a bad reject from conspiracy publications like Nexus or New Dawn, or an X-Files fanzine. It isn’t. The indisputable fact is that both the US and the UK are putting serious money into anti-gravity research with military aerospace applications. The only question is how far it is from operational status. There is informed speculation that it is already used in the American B2 bomber.

I believe that access to this potentially revolutionary and obviously highly secret technology, perhaps via the JSF/F35 fighter program, could be behind the otherwise (in my view) inexplicable level of support given Bush over Iraq by Howard and Blair.

For the record I am a mechanical engineer who spent over two years at a British Aerospace guided missile R&D site in the early 1980s and have continued to take a strong interest in aerospace technology. I am a member of ASRI (Australian Space Research Institute). I am not a crank.

The most puzzling aspect to me of the American obsession with invading Iraq even without UN sanction is the continuing support provided by Tony Blair and John Howard. The USA’s reason is obvious; to gain control of a major oil supply as insurance against increasing instability in Saudi Arabia. (If it’s about human rights and weapons of mass destruction, why the kid gloves treatment of North Korea?)

One could stretch to say that Blair has the interests of BP and the half-British Shell oil companies, but if it comes to a vote in the Commons he could well be rolled. However nothing apart from blind loyalty seems to explain the support given by Australia, and even with a conservative government there are rumblings from Howard’s back benches and a population largely opposed.

So why are Blair and Howard, both consumate political operators, taking such a huge political risk for a war that no-one but the Americans want, which could destroy the structure of international law and result in both the UK and Australia becoming international pariahs?

My hypothesis is the supply of information from the United States that is so secret it is only known to the very highest levels of government and is of such strategic importance that it is worth taking such risks.

My initial thoughts were that the US was blackmailing both leaders over continued supply of intelligence information gained from the Echelon system via the UKASA agreement. But that could have been done at any time over the last couple of decades. However, the current timescale however coincides interestingly with the crucial development phase of the F35/JSF fighter aircraft program…

The JSF (Joint Strike Fighter), which is front-runner to replace the RAAF’s F-18s and F-111s in what would be our largest ever defence order, is quite unlike any previous supersonic US fighter project available for foreign allies. Unlike the earlier F104 Starfighter and F16 Falcon programs, there will be no generalised offset agreements, by which foreign manufacturers will be able to supply components to the whole program. Technology transfer in the JSF will be very tightly controlled, with only the UK (developing a version to replace the Harrier jump-jet) so far as an inner partner.

Australia is trying hard to get on board, with (according to a local TV news item some months ago) three firms in Canberra alone tendering for parts of the project.

There is a precedent for Australia sucking up to a larger power in the hopes of gaining access to its advanced weapons technology; the agreement given to conduct British nuclear tests on Australian territory in the 1950s in the hope of getting transfers of British atomic bomb technology. (See Dr Wayne Reynolds’ book “Australia’s bid for the Atomic Bomb”). In turn a major theme of this book is the use the UK made of its own program as a bargaining chip to get access to US atomic technology.

The July 2002 issue of the British magazine Air International had an article entitled “JSF UK – more than just an aircraft” by one Robert Hewson which deals with the JSF program, particularly the extensive participation of British companies (notably BAe Systems and Rolls-Royce) in its development:

“One reason the US is keeping such a tight hold over the industrial elements of the JSF is the thorny issue of “stealth” and how to control access to the classified stealth technologies which are built into every aspect of the JSF design. The US and UK have a special (and classified) agreement that allows the two countries to share data on common stealth research, but all other discussion of the subject is closed. The question of how the US will supply this sensitive set of technologies to other JSF customers goes unanswered – but the underlying message is that the US is reluctant to do so and that somehow there will be different standards in JSF “stealthiness” between friends, good friends and others.”

So we know there is a sweetheart classified deal between the US and UK over stealth technology in the JSF, and that apparently the full stealth technology will not be supplied to outside customers. Why couldn’t it cover other highly classified technology as well? What if this other US-UK technology was so revolutionary that the inner partners’ versions of the JSF would have a massive advantage over anything else in the air for years to come, something that could give them a colossal and unassailable strategic advantage, as great as, perhaps, the atomic bomb?

There is such a technology on the horizon: anti-gravity. Yes you read that right! Both the US and UK are publicly running research programs investigating anti-gravity under such headings as “propellantless propulsion”. The UK effort, run by BAe Systems, is called Project Greenglow (see bbc for an overview), while in the US Boeing is running an anti-gravity program in its Phantom Works (Boeing’s equivalent of Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works) in Seattle (see janes). In addition, NASA is looking into overlapping areas under the “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics” project (home page nasa). (An interesting selection of links on anti-gravity links, albeit with the odd crank, can be found at eskimo).

How far away is anti-gravity technology? It may already be operating…

Towards the end of an otherwise routine article on aircraft propulsion in Air International in January 2000, reprinted at aeronautics, well-known and highly respected aviation writer Bill Gunston speculated that the American Northrop B-2 Spirit heavy bomber already uses some form of anti-gravity technology:

“I have numerous documents, all published openly in the United States, which purport to explain how the B-2 is even stranger – far, far stranger – than it appears. Most are articles published in commercial magazines, some are openly published US Patents, while a few are open USAF publications by Wright Aeronautical Laboratory and Air Force Systems Command’s Astronautics Laboratory. They deal with such topics as electric-field propulsion, and electrogravitics (or anti-gravity), the transient alteration of not only thrust but also a body’s weight. Sci-Fi has nothing on this stuff.”

What really put the cat among the proverbial pigeons was a feature published in a March 1992 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology, entitled “Black world engineers, scientists, encourage using highly classified technology for civil applications”. For the first time in open literature, this article explained how the B-2’s sharp leading edge is charged to “many millions of volts”, while the corresponding negative charge is blown out in the jets from the four engines.

“Take-off thrust of the [B2 engine] F118- 100 at sea level is given as ‘19,000lb (84.5kN) class’ by Northrop Grumman and as ‘17,300lb (77.0kN)’ by the USAF. These are startlingly low figures for an aircraft whose take-off weight is said to be 336,5001b (152,635kg) and which was until recently said to weigh 376,0001b (170,550kg). Aircraft usually get heavier over the years, not 20 tones [sic] lighter. Even at the supposed reduced weight, the ratio of thrust to weight is a mere 0.2, an extraordinarily low value for a combat aircraft.”

In other words, Gunston is implying that the B2 is seriously underpowered unless there is some means of reducing its mass or of increasing its lift beyond that provided by conventional aerodynamic means.

“Other writers have commented on the size of the B-2 wing and noted that its stealth depends on the huge black skin being made of RAM (radar-absorbent material). This, say the physicists, is ‘a high-k, high-density dielectric ceramic, capable of generating an enormous electrogravitic lift force when charged’.”

So is this why the B2s cost US$1 billion each?

Gunston’s article is controversial, (an interesting discussion on it in the rec.aviation.military Internet newsgroup is archived at google under the title “B-2A and electrogravity”) but there is a precedent for a radical, cost-is-no-object, highly classified US military aircraft using two major sets of new technologies, one secret and the other VERY secret.

The legendary Lockheed A12/SR71 “Blackbird” reconnaissance aircraft was increasingly declassified in the late 70s/early 80s, with major details released on the structural and propulsion technologies that enabled that incredible aircraft, one of the great masterpieces of aeronautical engineering, to cruise at Mach 3. What wasn’t declassified until several years later, long after the F117 stealth fighter had been unveiled, was the fact that it was also a stealth design! While stealth took second place to speed, the fact was that stealth elements were a major factor in the airframe configuration, design of which dated back to the late 1950s,twenty years before stealth technology was even mentioned by the US government.

Another example is the even more legendary North American P-51 Mustang fighter of World War 2. For years its outstanding performance was explained by its “laminar flow” wing technology (also used in the B24 Liberator bomber).

Shortly before former senior manager and engineer at North American Aviation, Lee Atwood, died a few years ago he wrote articles for a couple of aircraft magazines (see, for example, airspacemag) giving the real explanation. Using a phenomenon known as the “Meredith Effect”, the Mustang’s characteristic under-fuselage duct for the engine’s radiator was so shaped internally that the heat from the radiator converted it into, effectively, a low-temperature ramjet, thrust from which at high speeds offset most of the drag produced by the radiator in the first place! Not even the servicing crews knew that this was the true function of the duct design!

We know that the JSF/F35 will incorporate a high degree of stealth, like the B-2, with the degree of stealth apparently varying between inner and outer customers. However, stealth is relatively old-hat; the F117, the first stealth aircraft, turns up regularly at air shows, much of the US 70s and 80s stealth program has been declassified and the general principles, if not specific applications, of stealth technology are now well-known in the unclassified world. I can’t see it being worth risking the fall of the UK or Australian governments.

So are Howard and Blair playing a very high-stakes game to gain access to a revolutionary military technology more secret, more important, than stealth, one that’s perhaps being pioneered on the US-only B-2? Like anti-gravity technology only available to the select inner partners of the JSF/F35 program? And has the US threatened to boot them out if they don’t toe the Bush line on Iraq?