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News: Globalisation & social justice
Labor, Iraq & the UN04 October 2002
Margo Kingston highlights the Doc's legacy.
When politics is in the bloodBy Margo KingstonI was at high school in the mid-1970s when the Vietnam War was large in our minds. We learnt that we once did what Britain wanted, but after John Curtin said in December 1941 that "Australia looks to America", we did what it asked. We were alone down under, threatened by alien countries to our north. To encourage the United States to help if attacked, we paid insurance premiums. Korea and Vietnam were cited. We weren't told what would happen if we missed a payment, but we were invited to critically assess whether we were right to go to Vietnam.
In July, with the US threatening to invade Iraq and the government effectively promising to join it, the Chief of the Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, said "we probably shouldn't have gone" to Vietnam. The Vietnam veteran went further. The Iraq debate was "in full swing and it should play out". "It's an important issue for the Australian people" and debate was vigorous "on a number of different levels". The RSL president, Major-General Peter Phillips, another Vietnam veteran, commented: "It's timely that the issue is raised now, given the possibility of an American invasion of Iraq." Now the US asks Australia to invade another country - a country which, unlike Afghanistan, has not housed the attackers of September 11. We've never done that before. We defend countries from attack and repel attackers when the US, with UN backing, demands it, but we are a peaceful nation. We see the Middle East on TV every night and are thankful the mess is nothing to do with us. Now the US asks us to become embroiled in it and won't tell us what it plans after "regime change" or how long we'll have to stay on. But saying no to the US? Terrifying, even before George Bush said over and over that "you are with us or against us". At first blush the politics couldn't be worse for Labor. Its bleeding left flank could gush with deserters for the anti-war Greens. Its solid pro-US members and supporters would insist on supporting the US. The party split over Vietnam, with many against Arthur Calwell's opposition - in defiance of public opinion - to Robert Menzies sending a battalion to fight there in 1965. Labor feared John Howard would go for Tampa 2, a wedge to finish it off. So in March it prepared a detailed policy. Kevin Rudd has done every interview offered ever since. Labor won't say yes without strong evidence of an immediate threat from Iraq. The UN should authorise an attack. We'll leave open the issue of supporting a unilateral military attack. The unifying theme is support for the UN, a fundamental Labor commitment since Doc Evatt helped construct the UN after World War II to deny any nation the right to invade another without good cause and to declare the Security Council the supreme global policeman. Evatt believed, as does Labor, that international law is the best protection for middle powers like us. A Labor heavy says it's "knots in the gut" time as Labor prays for Iraqi capitulation or a UN mandate for attack. It's rare for Howard's gut instinct to be awry. He said yes instantly and suggested an armoured brigade for a unilateral strike. He felt no need to explain, leaving it to Bush to sell the case to Australians. And he tried the wedge. Weeks before Cosgrove's remarks, Downer said "only a fool" wanted "a policy of appeasement", predicted a US strike and told Americans "the Australian people don't have a natural inclination to support acts of appeasement". Australians didn't buy it. The majority wants firm evidence that Iraq poses an immediate threat. Without that we want everyone else on the cart with us via UN authorisation because we don't want to be singled out as a target. Especially, some whisper, because the world's superpower mightn't be thinking straight. After all, the US Republican establishment - political and military - publicly split on Bush's plan, some arguing it would trigger more, not less, terrorism. Traditional allies Canada and New Zealand said no to a unilateral strike, as did Europe, and the British people are unconvinced. Some Australians don't trust the US not to worsen the mess it helped create in Iraq. Others are appalled by Howard's naked me-tooism. Foreign policy is an avowal of our national identity, and Howard hurt our national pride. And some, convinced by Howard's demonisation of Muslim boat people and enamoured with Fortress Australia, ask why we should liberate "the ragheads". Howard reversed hard. Suddenly, the UN was important, "we won't just automatically click our heels and follow the Americans", and talk of what military assistance we could offer and an assessment of the increased risk to our homeland security was hypothetical. In the Coalition party room meeting this week, there was no dissent from Howard's "all the way with GWB" position, despite its echo of Harold Holt's Vietnam war line. The talk was about "explaining it to the troops", Liberal slang for voters. Marginal seat holders were on edge. Peter Lindsay had just publicly opposed a unilateral strike in an unofficially authorised break with public unity. Lindsay owns the marginal North Queensland seat of Herbert, which houses defence force bases. He got local hero coverage in the local papers and he's done his representative duty, but he shocked many with his venom. "For a nation to just unilaterally decide to go in without proper reason or proper support for the UN, I think, puts that nation in the same basket as the terrorists." Coalition members think that if Howard says yes to war without UN backing, patriotism, waving the troops off and all that will do the trick on public opinion. No-one asked Howard what he'd do if the UN said no and Labor said no and the Yanks went in. They think that when the chips are down, Labor will fold its hand. If it doesn't, Howard would be alone at the docks waving off our troops. The absence of Simon Crean, coupled with a lack of majority support, would mean Australia had not taken a collective decision to spill the blood of young Australians in the national interest. The blood would be on Howard's hands. If Howard cannot turn public opinion around, he cannot send our troops to war. The legitimacy of Australians dying for us requires that the majority of us endorse the sacrifice in the national interest. The stakes are too high. As Doc Evatt predicted, we need the UN to deliver. Margo Kingston writes for the Sydney Morning Herald, where this column first appeared on 27 September 2002. Republished with the kind permission of the author. Also on the Evatt site:
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| Email: | evatt@unsw.edu.au |
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