Military, corporate elite divided on war

BY ALISON DELLIT

It is usual for newspapers to canvass a range of opinions following major government speeches such as Prime Minister John Howard’s National Press Club address on March 13 in which he presented his government's case for Australian participation in a US-led war against Iraq. What was unusual about the opinions solicited for the March 14 Sydney Morning Herald, however, was that they were all current or former military and intelligence officers.

Paul Barratt, secretary of the defence department in 1998-99, told the SMH: "I thought [Howard's speech] was quite unconvincing. The prime minister relied on the depth of his own opinion, how nasty Osama bin Laden was and how anxious he is to get weapons of mass destruction. That doesn't make a case for attacking Saddam Hussein. The rationale is indirect. There is no clear and present danger. It's the first time Australia has participated in an unprovoked invasion of another country."

While Barratt's memory may be selective — Australia has participated in the invasions of many countries (for example, Turkey in World War I, Korea and Vietnam) without having been attacked by them — his argument expressed doubts of many establishment figures on the need for a war against Iraq.

Their criticisms of Howard's pro-war policy came in the wake of the March 11 resignation of senior intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie in protest against the war drive. Wilkie worked for the Office of National Assessments (ONA), which is the smallest of Australia’s spy agencies, but whose job is to collate intelligence information gathered by other agencies, analyse it and prepare briefings for government ministers.

Prior to resigning, Wilkie was on standby to join an intelligence assessment team monitoring the war against Iraq. He has not pulled his punches when expressing his view that Howard’s push for war is wrong. He told the Bulletin, in an article published on March 11: “[Iraq’s] military is very weak. It’s a fraction of the size it was when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Most of what remains is poorly trained, poorly equipped and of questionable loyalty to the regime. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program is, I believe, genuinely contained... The bottom line is that this war is totally unrelated to the war on terror.”

Wilkie and Barratt are not alone in their criticism. Former chiefs of the defence forces General Peter Gration and Admiral Alan Beaumont, former chief of naval staff Michael Hudson, Returned Services League president Major-General Peter Phillips and former foreign affairs department head Richard Woolcott have all condemned Howard’s push for war. Howard has also come under blistering attack from conservative politicians, including former PM Malcolm Fraser and former Liberal leader John Hewson.

And while the Murdoch-owned press in Australia, and around the world, continues to scream the need for war from the rooftops, its main print competitor, the Fairfax group, has remained more circumspect. Editorials in the Fairfax-owned Illawarra Mercury, Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age have all argued that Howard’s position is “risky”, and have criticised his uncritical support for the US.

“[Howard’s press club speech] was powerful stuff. But none of it can hide the fact that the world is on the brink of throwing out the multilateral system of global governance because the world’s most powerful nations have mismanaged the post-Cold War era”, the March 14 AFR editorial commented. A majority of opinion pieces published in the Fairfax-owned papers have been critical of the government's pro-war position, with headlines such as “Logic too simple to convince” and “The blood of the dead will be on our hands.”

Of course, the Fairfax press is not interested in building and supporting the anti-war movement — and reflects the ruling class consensus that Iraq must be “disarmed”, whether by crippling economic sanctions or by military conquest. The Age’s March 15 editorial, for example, described Howard’s case for war as “powerful” and “compelling”, merely criticising him for having jumped “too quickly on board with the United States view on pre-emption and the need to tackle rogue states head on, before they were in a position to threaten us”.

In one of the most insightful articles to come from the corporate scribblers, the AFR published a two-part article on the reasons for the war on March 10 and 12. Written by columnist Peter Hartcher, the article explained that an invasion of Iraq has been on the cards for some time, since shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991.

Arguing that the invasion of Iraq is just the beginning of a US “revolution”, Hartcher wrote: “The US will pre-empt threats to preserve hegemony. And hegemony is a nice way of saying preponderant and unchallengeable global domination.”

Not all sections of the ruling elite are convinced that cuddling up as close as possible to the United States will be worth the political cost — both the exposure to a population opposed to war of the lack of democracy in this society, and the potential instability for Australian business interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

This unease is also giving some courage to the ALP to continue arguing for a “softly, softly” line — amounting to support for a later, UN-supported attack on Iraq.

And for Wilkie, who was responsible for preparing ONA’s report into the humanitarian crisis that a war against Iraq will create, he may very well oppose the war because he understands all too well the devastation, misery and despair that it will bring. We can only congratulate and welcome all such dissenters from the establishment who join the ranks of the anti-war movement.

From Green Left Weekly, March 19, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.