BY
PIP HINMAN
As the US-led war on Iraq began in earnest on March 20, the mass outpouring of anger across the world surprised even some seasoned campaigners. In Australia, around 90,000 people took their protest to the streets in all the major cities and many regional towns on just a couple of hours' notice. Some downed tools and walked out of workplaces.
This response answered a question that has been deliberately amplified by the pro-war media in the last week is there still a point to these protests now that the war is definitely on? Isn't it too late to force the US, UK and Australian governments to stop this unjust war? And are they going to listen? After all, the anti-war movement, for the first time ever, has mobilised millions before the war was officially begun and yet our political rulers seemed to take no notice.
We could dismiss this as part of the psy-war" that is in full gear (just watch the sick war-game-style TV news coverage) which it is. But it is a psy-war that touches on real questions some anti-war activists are asking. What can protests do, now that the biggest military power in the world has vowed it won't stop until the Iraqi regime (not to mention thousands of innocent civilians) is crushed?
First, is it really true that US President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard aren't listening? No. They are watching the global protests nervously. But, as yet, the political pressure is not at the level at which these war makers are forced to back down.
Secondly, protests have to continue because they are the best and most democratic way the majority of the world's peoples have of registering our opposition to this immoral and illegal war. And even if they fail to stop this war, or at least cut it short, we will help delegitimise it and make future wars of aggression which the US rulers have planned harder to pursue. We owe it to the future of the world to keep on marching.
We need a sustained campaign. One half-million-strong march is not enough. We need a sustained campaign of mass protests, which are complemented by strikes, walk-outs and peaceful civil disobedience actions.
The US, UK and Australian governments have thrown out the rule book, so why shouldn't we?", was a common sentiment on the street during the Sydney emergency protest on March 20. People are beginning to challenge the constraints of the normal channels" of political action.
High school students have taken a lead in this country with their powerful anti-war statement on March 5, with another strike planned for March 26. The best of the trade union leaderships particularly in Western Australia and Victoria are also urging their members to get more involved in building the anti-war protests. But they are an exception. It's actually more the case of the leaderships struggling to catch up with mass sentiment and initiative including that of their members.
Having committed Australian troops to the war without any real parliamentary debate, and in defiance of the will of the majority of the people, we must demand that John Howard's government face the people in fresh elections. This could bring forward the threat of an immediate electoral price for the war and would set in train new alliances that could inflict further political costs on Howard and the reactionary forces he represents.
The Socialist Alliance has initiated such a call, and is seeking to work with the Greens, ALP and Democrats to build public support for the opposition parties in the Senate to block the supply bills for the next federal budget as a way of forcing Howard to call a new national election.
Predictably, Labor leader Simon Crean has rejected any such move, arguing that to do so would deny support to our forces overseas ... [and] make their position untenable and extremely dangerous".
At the same time, Crean argues that the government should be pressured to bring the troops home immediately. Wouldn't denying the government the funds to support our forces overseas, i.e., in invading Iraq, force the government to bring them home straight away?
They can fool some of the people some of the time, but they are not fooling us now. We see the chorus of international condemnation. We see the resignations of British Labour ministers and even a US ambassador in protest against the war. We see Bush and Blair isolated in the UN. We see the despair of the aid workers. We hear the cries of the children of Iraq.
And most importantly, we see our potential power in the streets. Let's use this growing power of our collective action to put the maximum pressure on the government to either change its policy on the war or to bring about a change of government.
[Pip Hinman is a member of the Socialist Alliance and an activist in Sydney's Walk Against the War coalition.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 26, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.