Howard's dishonest case for war
Prime Minister John Howard's March 13 address to the National Press Club clarified one thing the Australian people have no reason at all to support a war on Iraq. In a speech littered with emotional rhetoric, Howard recycled the usual smoke and mirrors arguments coming from Washington to justify a war that will result in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
Howard's speech contained three main arguments for war maintaining the US-Australia alliance; protecting Australians by preventing foreign terrorists from getting hold of weapons of mass destruction; and liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship.
Howard has not even established that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The UN weapons inspections, restarted late last year, have simply confirmed the assessment of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter that as of December 1998, when weapons inspectors left Iraq, we had fundamentally disarmed Iraq. Nothing that chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has found has disproved this.
Nor has Howard provided any evidence that there is a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, the alleged perpetrator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Howard's merely demonstrated that al Qaeda wanted to get hold of WMD.
In November last year, Daniel Benjamin, the former terrorism adviser to the US National Security Council declared that while there have been contacts between Iraqi officials and al Qaeda, there is no cooperation... no substantial, noteworthy relationship. Numerous military and intelligence officers have confirmed this assessment, including Andrew Wilkie, who was until his March 10 resignation, a senior analyst with the Office of National Assessments.
When asked for evidence of his claim that Baghdad has any intention of providing any weapons to al Qaeda, Howard repeats the same mantra there isn't enough evidence to convict in the central criminal court in Darlinghurst, but if we wait for it, we're looking at another Pearl Harbor.
The hypothetical scenario of mass deaths from al Qaeda using WMD is being used to justify waging a war against a country that has no demonstrated WMD and no demonstrated connections with al Qaeda!
Howard, in fact, argues that every rogue state (i.e., every country that Washington is hostile toward) could be a potential supplier of WMD to terrorists, and therefore a target for pre-emptive attack. In his speech, Howard declared that if the world is incapable of dealing strongly and effectively with Iraq, it will not effectively discipline North Korea a clear signal that Howard is willing to back a US war against North Korea.
Of course, there is an argument for the worldwide eradication of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons but that would need to start with the country with the largest arsenal of such weapons, the United States.
It is ludicrous to imagine that a decline in the proliferation of WMD will result from launching a war against Iraq on the grounds that all rogue states need to be disciplined. Countries threatened with such discipline will strive to attain nuclear weapons in order to deter any military attack on them by the US and its allies. It is precisely the North Koreans' fear that Washington intends launch a pre-emptive attack on them, that is driving them to develop a nuclear deterrent.
Howard's third argument for waging war against Iraq is his rather belated discovery of the enormous humanitarian cost, not least to the people of Iraq, of Saddam Hussein remaining in charge. He then proceeded to detail some of the more horrific acts of the Iraqi regime, but failed to explain why these humanitarian concerns had only become a reason for invading Iraq 35 years after Saddam Hussein had come to power. What protests did Howard make at any time over the last 35 years against Hussein's treatment of his fellow Iraqis?
Compounding the hypocrisy was Howard's failure to mention the horrific treatment refugees from Hussein's terror receive in Australia, his failure to mention the US intention to leave much of the existing regime intact or the appalling human rights situation in liberated Afghanistan.
Howard's argument for war against Iraq was, of course, buttressed by the usual covert racism throughout the speech. Describing terrorism as an attack on Western values, at one point Howard even claimed that terrorism of the random, mass casualty kind was borne of radical Islam.
The first point of his argument for war, skipped over very briefly in his March 13 speech, was in fact the most important for Howard. Alliances are two way processes, he argued, and our alliance with the US is no exception. Australians should remember that no nation is more important to our long-term stability than the United States.
This is Howard-speak for Australian business needs the support of the US to keep its favoured, exploitative status in the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of the day, even the deputy-sheriff must pay his dues.
From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
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