Howard's profound mistake
By Margo Kingston
March 25 2003
Several people I respect, including Webdiarist David Makinson and
Australian Financial Review defence commentator Geoffrey Barker, believe
the best parliamentary speech on John Howard's decision to invade Iraq was
that of Kim Beazley. Mr Beazley is a long-time enthusiast of our alliance
with the US, and his position on this war is conservative and pragmatic. It
is focused on the interests of Australia, interests which have been
forgotten or buried by most commentators on the war, and by all editorials
in the Murdoch press.
Here is his speech, delivered on Tuesday, March 18.
KIM BEAZLEY (Brand) (5.52 p.m.)
Eighteen months ago the world was united in horror at the events of
September 11 in the United States. Right across the globe, among
governments and among peoples, there was an outpouring of support for the
United States, which subsequently manifested itself in practical measures
to deal with terrorism.
We saw a remodelling of the Western alliance. For the first time, ANZUS and
NATO declared an attack on one of their members and demanded that all
members cohere to support the United States in this particular instance
against the threat which had occurred to them.
All those members of the Western alliance defined the issues of
international terrorism as a common security interest. The United States
was joined by old enemies in the process. For me, the symbol of that was
when I and others in the parliament visited Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan - an old
part of the Soviet Union - and saw there, 150 kilometres from the Chinese
border, a base in which there were Australian, French and American forces
operating under an American commander. We saw the Chinese government
acquiesce in what, in other circumstances at other times, would have been
regarded as encirclement, and the Russian government support the diplomacy
of the United States to get that base put in place. And the United Nations
itself was activated in a comprehensive approach to the issues of
terrorism, urging all countries to adopt measures specific to dealing with
terrorism within their borders, dealing with international financing of
terrorism and dealing with the international movement of terrorists.
I suppose it reached a peak - this comity of nations' support; a comity
shared by their peoples - in resolution 1441, passed by the UN in November
last year. I think it is true to say that, while the United States saw
that, in part at least, in the context of the campaign against terror, most
other nations saw it as a different problem. They saw it as a problem of
the continuing delinquency of Saddam Hussein and they were prepared to be
supportive of the United States, whether or not they agreed with all the
American conclusions, because the disarmament of Saddam Hussein was right.
All that now lies in shattered ruins. We have the American alliance with
Europe disintegrating; we have the support that had been raised among
ex-enemy states of the United States, Russia and China, disintegrating; we
have the popular support that was there globally for the United States and
the war on terror disintegrating - as manifest by those demonstrations -
and we have the CIA and the FBI warning against a heightened risk of
terrorism.
Whatever may be the long-term consequences of terrorists for this
particular action, two things emerge with absolute clarity. The first is
that the terrorist threat is now immediately augmented by these actions and
the second is that the potential is there to create a further base within
the Islamic world of those who feel a sense of injustice taken a degree
further to the point where they may themselves as individuals commit to
acts of terror.
This is a disaster. Let us not walk away from it: what we are witnessing
here is a diplomatic disaster of the first order. We need to have an
analysis as to why we have got to this point and we need to understand the
implications of it, because the implications are very serious indeed.
The only person who is joyful today - and I hope he is joyful in the
context of running from safe house to safe house with people in hot pursuit
of him - is Osama bin Laden. Osama has no interest, of course, in the
survival of Saddam's regime. He hates Saddam - regards him as an infidel.
But Osama has a heck of an interest in building up a sense of injustice
about all this to enhance his recruitment base. The point about getting UN
approval and having the patience to get UN approval for all of this is that
at least it mitigated the capacity of people like bin Laden to portray this
as something which it is not: as an attack on the Islamic populations of
the world. When the United Nations says, No, it is not; it is about
disarmament of Saddam Hussein, it mitigates the propaganda. That is the
whole point.
Let me make it clear: it is not in our interests for the United States to
lose this war; nor is it in our interests to see this war prolonged or
violent. The US are our ally, and we always wish them well. It is not in
our interests to see the American commitment to global activity damaged as
a result of the experience that they have in this conflict or, as is more
likely, by the experience they will endure when they are the administrators
of Iraq after this war is over.
Our hearts are with the allied soldiers and the Australian troops. May the
Lord hold them in his hands until this is over and bring them home safely.
That is where our hearts lie, and our hearts lie too with the Iraqi
civilians who will be killed over the next few days in whatever numbers
they will be killed. But our heads lead us to conclude that this is a
profound mistake.
The origins of this error lie in divided counsel in the United States. I
have always had profound respect for US administrations. I have
collaborated with them and, indeed, organised Australian military
commitments to particular objectives of the United States at a time when it
was not necessarily internationally popular to do so. Ironically, one of
them related to Iraq in the context of the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
But this administration is an administration of divided counsel. We are
where we are now because two parallel strategies have suddenly taken a turn
inwards and intersected.
One is pursued by Powell, which is the classic American conservative
internationalism, responsive to the system imposed by the United States
after World War II and agreed by all. It is a system based around the
United Nations, international law, alliances and American relationships
with other countries to do the things it needs to do.
On the other side there is a new doctrine of conservative unilateralism
which despises all of that, which says, 'There is an opportunity here to
test a new doctrine on pre-emption, an opportunity to test the proposition
that, if we hammer this particular nation hard enough, one or two Islamic
nations in the area that may have an inclination to harbour terrorists will
respond to it.' Most of those Islamic nations have been responding to the
terrorist threat quite nicely over the last 18 months. I do not know how
you are going to measure their response being greater than that in this
particular conflict.
We had those two doctrines. And that pre-emption doctrine requires a bit of
consideration too because that pre-emption doctrine is essentially this: if
you see a development in another nation which could conceivably or arguably
be a threat to us in the future, you have a right to act against it. You do
not have to agree with the Pope when he says that this is a licence to
commit mass murder to see that there is a substantial problem with this and
lessons may be learned by others, and if I have time for it I will get to them.
The point is that the troop build-up occurred in accordance with the second
of those two doctrines. That came to dominate the timetable for the first.
In the end, the pace at which the troops were built up and the failure to
get other allied nations to intersect with that build-up at different
points of time meant that you could not get at the end of the day a process
in place which demonstrated to the satisfaction of the rest of the world
that everything had been done that could have been done reasonably to
disarm Iraq and that the only alternative now was armed action. I for one
happen to believe that sooner or later we would have arrived at that
conclusion.
But it is in Australia's national interest that, when that conclusion is
reached, a substantial majority of the United Nations concludes so as well
in order that we be protected as a nation against the capacity of those who
wish us ill and who wish the United States ill to exploit that commitment
for their own nefarious purposes.
We have left ourselves, and the United States has left itself,
extraordinarily vulnerable.
Many will learn from this doctrine of pre-emption. India will learn from it
in relation to Pakistan; China may learn from it in relation to Taiwan;
North Korea may learn from it in relation to South Korea; and, God forbid,
in certain circumstances one might even see Indonesia learning from it in
relation to Papua New Guinea if they confront a substantial OPM threat at
some point in time. Many will learn and the United States will not be able
to teach them.
These are developments not in Australian interests. These are developments
we should have resisted and been alert to politically when they came on the
scene as possible consequences of our actions.
We in the Labor Party support the troops in the field; always do. We in the
Labor Party believe they should not be there. We in the Labor Party look to
domestic harmony, not conflict, in this situation. I agree with what the
Prime Minister had to say about the Muslim population. I would add to that
the Jewish population because one of the ironies of the last few years is
that, while our focus has been on the Muslim population, acts of
anti-Semitism have dramatically increased over the last two or three years,
including the fire bombings of synagogues and schools. Our concerns are
with them; our concerns are with the troops.
But this is a profound mistake, a profound mistake we should not have
blundered into.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/25/1048354593681.html
