BY DR MARTIN CROTTY
& DR RAYMOND EVANS
The federal government has committed this country to join the US and Britain in a legally dubious, highly immoral, massive unprovoked military attack on Iraq.
The lessons of history, we are told, are that dangerous dictators such as Saddam Hussein cannot be "appeased". It is a facile argument on a number of counts, but contrary lessons from history about the dangers of unilateral action, of blindly following our allies into areas where we are not welcome and about the general futility of war, appear set to be disregarded.
We might still learn other lessons from Australia's experience of past wars, lessons that might yet mitigate the potential harm our involvement in an attack on Iraq might do to our society.
One of the major dangers Australia faces comes not from Iraq, nor from al Qaeda, but from ourselves.
As the projected attack on Iraq proceeds, there will no doubt be more calls for all Australians to band together, to support our fighting forces overseas and to be "as one" in the so-called "finest traditions of our ANZAC heritage". A closer look at this heritage suggests, however, that going to war, especially to an unpopular, unjust or unnecessary war, is likely to cause immense and destructive division on the homefront. The signs of this are already obvious.
War has rarely unified Australia. More often it has turned Australian against Australian, has exacerbated existing tensions and has led to the harassment and persecution of ethnic minorities and those opposed to involvement in war.
In World War I, for example, the German-Australian community was, in effect, destroyed. As authorities whipped up an anti-German scare, a previously well integrated part of the Australian civic body was progressively marginalised. Thousands of ethnic Germans, including not only naturalised British subjects (then the equivalent of being an Australian citizen) but also many who were actually born in Australia, were detained merely on suspicion, with no rights of appeal and no access to the legal system, and 6150 were deported at the war's close.
Scores of German place names were wiped off the map, Lutheran schools were closed, descendants of German immigrants were dismissed from their jobs, ethnic rioting broke out frequently and petty harassment, both from the authorities and from non-government organisations and individuals, was rife. There was, in fact, not a single incident of German-Australians endangering the Australian war effort, but the enemy was the enemy, and a German past, even a German sounding name, seemed to many to be proof that one could not be a "true Britisher".
In a heated, war-enhanced atmosphere, the perception of a threat was more important than the reality. This sorry tale of paranoia and xenophobia was widely repeated, albeit without some of the worst excesses, in World War II.
Ideological dissenters have received similarly short shrift. In both world wars, certain political groupings were banned: the Industrial Workers of the World organisation was smashed by show trials, heavy imprisonments and deportations during World War I and the Communist Party, Jehovah's Witnesses and others were proscribed for a time during WWII.
Pacifists and conscientious objectors were dealt a heavy hand. Anti-war activists of various political complexions attracted intense surveillance, censorship and harassment, as legislation such as the draconian War Precautions Act and National Security Act enormously reduced civil liberties. If the last of the federal government's "anti-terrorist" legislation is passed later this year, we should brace ourselves for similar outcomes.
After World War I, anti-radical, anti-alien rioting, often led by returned soldiers, was widespread and brought considerable social disruption to many major cities. Following both major wars, industrial disputes were rife, resulting in unprecedented strike waves.
The long Vietnam War campaign provoked the birth of wide-scale student protest and civil disobedience that, along with worker resistance, led to some of the largest street demonstrations in Australian history: the largest, that is, apart from the breathtakingly enormous anti-war rallies we have witnessed here in the face of the current war.
Overall, along with the impact of casualties, bereavement and generally blighted lives, war involvement has usually resulted in the erosion of democratic rights, an increase of intolerance, bitterness and social polarisation and an unwelcome expansion of state power to the detriment of individual freedoms. These are the normally undiscussed, hidden legacies of the ANZAC tradition.
The possibility of a repeat of these divisions and excesses is not as remote as it might seem. Indeed, many of the signs are ominous. The graffiti on existing mosques, the extraordinary opposition to the erection of a mosque in Baulkham Hills in Sydney, the police questioning of Muslim leaders, the street harassment of Muslim residents — particularly women wearing the chador or hijab, the increasingly unsympathetic attitude towards asylum seekers and the widespread use of the term "un-Australian" show that the antipathy towards anything ethnically or ideologically "foreign" remains deeply embedded in Australia's collective vision of itself.
We saw a lot of this ugliness during the 1991 Gulf War. Just as we could not distinguish German-Australians from "Huns" or Russians from "Bolsheviks" earlier last century, so too do some of us appear unable or unwilling to distinguish Muslim Australians from terrorists, or dissenters from subverters.
It is all a matter of scale. The mounting Iraqi conflict does not yet carry the same terrifying resonances as the "Great War", just as the Bali bombing is unequal to the tragedies of Gallipoli or Singapore.
Yet we hardly know where the pre-emptive, unilateral action of an unprecedented military nature which this country has now embarked upon will lead the global community, and nor do we know what the effects will eventually be upon the Australian homeland.
Australia professes to be a free, democratic and multicultural society. There is a yawning gap between this profession and the actuality. Yet if Australia is to become truly committed to these values, or ever to practise what it preaches, the marginalisation and persecution of either ethnic minorities or ideological dissenters - seemingly a knee-jerk reaction in past conflicts - must be resisted at all costs. It is one lesson from history that we cannot ignore.
[Martin Crotty and Raymond Evans are academics at the University of Queensland.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
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