BY PIP HINMAN
The 58th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima takes place in a year that has been marked by the biggest mass anti-war protests ever to take place before a war had been launched.
Some 30 million people took part in the February 14-16 international day of action against the war on Iraq, making it the biggest ever global protest against an imperialist war. In Australia, more than 1 million took to the streets that weekend.
After the invasion, the war seemed to gain more support in the US and Australia. However, more of the imperialists' lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been exposed, and their occupation has continued to be resisted by Iraqis.
Just three months after the invasion, this unravelling of the justification for the war — combined with the mounting death toll of occupying US and British soldiers — provoked another shift in public opinion in the US.
A Gallup poll published on July 1, for example, found that US citizens were increasingly dubious about the benefits of the war on Iraq. In mid-April, after the US had taken control of Baghdad, 73% said it had been "worth going to war over", with 23% disagreeing. Three months later, 56% of respondents said the war was "worth" it, while 42% disagreed.
In most other Western countries, there has never been majority support for the war. In Australia, even after the collapse of the Baathist regime, the polls showed the population evenly divided. A Newspoll published in the July 22 Australian found that 67% believed that the Coalition government had misled them on Iraq's weapons, and 36% said that they thought it had done so knowingly.
As the Iraqi opposition to occupation grows, and the body bags are returned in greater numbers, more questions are being asked — particularly in the US, which has 146,000 troops in Iraq and which is currently spending more than US$3.9 billion a month on its occupation.
A new coalition, Military Families Speak Out, has just launched a campaign — Bring the Troops Home Now! — in conjunction with various Vietnam War veterans' groups. This type of outcry from the troops (who have been threatened with courts-martial) only happened at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
We can expect that the anti-occupation sentiment will grow and provide the anti-war movement with new openings to galvanise mass dissent. Our challenge is to defeat the imperialists' attempts to justify keeping their armies in the Middle East (and in other staging posts for aggression), and to make sure that future aggressions have little popular support.
Splitting the movement
In this context, it's incomprehensible that some leaders of the peace movement in Sydney are trying to split the movement.
Two of the three conveners of Sydney's successful Walk Against the War Coalition — Communist Party of Australia member Hannah Middleton and former ALP senator Bruce Childs — organised an invitation-only meeting on July 7 to set up a new organisation, the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition. They did not advise the third coalition convenor, Democratic Socialist Party member Nick Everett, of this meeting, nor did they tell many of the coalition's 66 affiliates.
The leaders of SPJC claim that difficulties working with members of the DSP, the International Socialist Organisation and Socialist Alternative prompted the split. However, despite the hetereogenous nature of the Walk Against the War Coalition, a number of very impressive mass rallies were organised by it, sometimes in quick succession.
Despite disagreements on a variety of tactical and strategic matters, the coalition held together because most affiliates felt there was a political imperative to maximise opposition to the Iraq war. Disunity the previous year had clearly limited the movement's political potential. (Three peace groups — the Palm Sunday Committee, Network for Peace and No War on Iraq — decided in September 2002 to form the Walk Against the War Coalition.)
SPJC claims to have approached the No War on Iraq group for an "amicable reorganisation of the peace movement" and that No War on Iraq "rejected this approach". In fact, a fait accompli was offered to No War — to take a third of the money, accept that Walk Against the War be wound up without a meeting of its affiliates and accept exclusion from the new group. This is hardly "amicable".
The right to form new organisations is not in question here. What is, is the exclusion of some forces on political grounds. Any successful united front organisation — such as Walk Against the War — comprises a range of groups and individuals with different political outlooks, united on a political aim, in this case to stop the war on Iraq.
This, as we know, wasn't achieved. However, the movement's reason to exist hasn't disappeared. It has to oppose US occupation and promote self-determination for the Iraqi people.
A debate has arisen — here and overseas — over the role, if any, for the United Nations in Iraq today. No-one would disagree with the UN putting more effort into providing practical assistance to get basic services functioning across Iraq or to assist in ensuring free and democratic elections. But this does not require the blue berets.
The founders of the SPJC have placed the UN Charter at the centre of their founding statement which is written in vague enough terms to be interpreted in a variety of ways. It supports a "strong UN oversight of the transition to Iraqi self-rule and national sovereignty", but says nothing about opposing the US occupation of Iraq.
UN debate
In the current context, promoting a greater UN role in Iraq simply provides greater cover for the US occupation forces. In fact, the UN is already complicit in the occupation of Iraq and the carve-up and privatisation of its vast oil resources.
In this debate, it's useful to remind ourselves of the precise role of the UN in Iraq. At the behest of the US, it was responsible for enforcing 12 years of sanctions that took more than 1.5 million Iraqi lives and caused untold misery and destruction.
The US, Britain and Australia flouted international law by invading Iraq. But the UN refused to call the invaders to account. On May 22, the UN Security Council adopted UN resolution 1483 which legitimised the US-British occupation of Iraq and approved the entire dismantling of the Iraqi nation and the looting of its resources by US multinationals.
The European governments calling for UN troops to go to Iraq — France and Germany — capitulated to the US once the bombing had begun. French president Jaques Chirac announced that France would assure smooth passage of US bombers across its airspace, and the German government stated it hoped for the rapid collapse of resistance to the invasion. Russian president Vladimir Putin also expressed his support for a decisive coalition victory in Iraq.
Now, as the casualties mount (some 243 US troops have been killed) and the cost of occupation increases, some US officials want other countries to share the load. Washington officials are currently touring the world trying to force US allies such as El Salvador, India and Pakistan to foot some of the bill and send troops.
However, so long as no real power is ceded by the US in its UN-approved occupation of Iraq, the US has everything to gain from the UN blessing its aggression and occupation.
The difference over the role of the UN in Iraq, however, should not be used as a pretext to split the peace movement. There have always been differences over this question, and many others. This is no grounds to split what has become a powerful social movement.
There is broad agreement on calling on the US occupation forces to leave Iraq, and for a rapid transition to Iraqi self-rule. There is also broad agreement to campaign for freedom and justice in Palestine, to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction and to end the arms race and arms trade.
But making agreement with a particular perspective on the role of the UN in Iraq a pre-requisite for joining the SPJC unnecessarily restricts broad unity of the peace movement. Such differences did not restrict the Walk Against the War coalition's ability to call and organise the major anti-war demonstrations this year and last.
Those interested in supporting the call for a united peace movement can ring Nick Everett on 0409 762 081 and should come to the Walk Against the War meeting at Trades Hall on August 18 at 6.30pm.
[Pip Hinman is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and has represented Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific in the Walk Against the War Coalition.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 6, 2003.
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