Public Speeches

Public Meeting on Iraq

Melbourne Town Hall, 25 February 2003

I want to make a couple of general observations about UN resolutions, public opinion versus government opinion and then reflect on the changing rationales for war that have been raised by the Howard Government.

First, a personal observation: In the 1980s during the Second Cold War, those campaigning in Europe against the deployment of new nuclear weapons - including Edward Thompson and END - were arguing for unilateral nuclear disarmament. They were criticised by Reaganites and Thatcherites for advocating a policy which would leave the UK vulnerable to an alleged Soviet attack. The only sensible policy, according to London and Washington, was deterrence - and the deployment of Cruise and Tomahawk missiles was said to be crucial to the maintenance of MAD.

Now the roles have reversed. The peace movement is arguing that containment and deterrence has worked and will continue to keep Saddam Hussein in his box - in other words deploying Cold War doctrines to bolster their anti-war arguments. While the neo-conservatives behind Bush and their subsidiaries in Canberra and London are calling for Iraq's unilateral disarmament as the only way to pacify the Middle East. There is something ironic here.

In the UN it is important to stress the fact that a draft Security Council (SC) resolution which is vetoed by one of the P5 has the same legal status as a bill presented to the Parliament which is defeated in the Senate - ie no legal status. There is no legal precedent for recognising or resuscitating resolutions which have not been passed by the SC, regardless of whether a "capricious" veto - to use Prime Minister Howard's words - is used. There is clearly no such thing as a "moral majority" in the SC. Just ask the Israelis, who have benefited from a US veto on more occasions than any other state, frequently in a 14-1 vote.

In any examination of the new UN SC draft resolution, it is important to put to one side - just for the moment - widespread doubts amongst international lawyers that the resolution would be sufficient to authorise a United States-led attack on Iraq under international law (see Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Feb 03; 27 Feb 03), and focus on the key question of process.

I say this knowing that the overwhelming opinion of international lawyers is that existing SC resolutions do not authorise a further attack on Iraq, which probably explains the Howard Government's reluctance to release its own legal advice on the issue. As Christine Gray at Cambridge University has argued in a seminal paper, attempts to revive the implied authority contained within existing SC resolutions such as 687, and arguing that war can be justified because Iraq has breached the terms of the 1991 ceasefire which required it to disclose and destroy its WMD arsenal, is a very thin argument indeed - if only because war would hardly be a proportionate response to the breach.

It is generally agreed that in liberal democracies it is popular consent which confers legitimacy on public policy. This means 'due process,' where individuals or entities can express their agreement or disagreement with policy free of intimidation. In any legal system which values the rule of law, decisions or testimony are considered worthless if they result from coercion. The Vienna Convention, for example, declares a treaty void if procured by threats or the use of force, though there is some ambiguity about what constitutes "force" and a Security Council vote is not strictly a treaty.

However, one way to examine and explain the new resolution on Iraq is to distinguish between a legal resolution and a legitimate one. The question of legitimacy arises when coercion is used to secure it. This occurred in 1990 in the lead up to UNSC 687 when the US used bribes and threats against states such as Yemen, in order to get the resolution through the Council. It is highly likely that this situation is being repeated and that, in the increasingly unlikely event that a new resolution is passed, it will be of dubious legitimacy if technically legal. This is an important point, given the consequence that will flow from a new resolution.

The yawning gulf between popular antipathy to war in Iraq and Government enthusiasm is a profoundly significant development across the world, from Australia to the UK, in Spain, Italy, Mexico and elsewhere. There are few signs that the gap will close. In Turkey 96% of the population are opposed to war, according to recent surveys. Unsurprisingly, authorities there "are finding it difficult to disregard the public's anti-war feelings" (The New York Times, 18 Feb 03). Here in Australia, the Government and its cheerleaders in the Murdoch empire have no such difficulty, accusing hundreds of thousands of peace marchers of just about everything short of being enemies of the state .

In truth, such a claim wouldn't be wildly inaccurate.

According to Patrick Tyler in The New York Times, President Bush and the coalition which is preparing to re-landscape Mesopotamia now face a "tenacious new adversary" - the public (17 Feb 03). They just won't buy the Administration's arguments. According to Tyler, we're heading into a new bipolar world with two superpowers: the US (meaning the government in Washington) and public opinion. It's a development which raises uncomfortable questions about the state of representative government in the liberal democracies.

One of the remarkable features of the moment is the extraordinary linkages and solidarity which are being established by people around the world in total disregard - and in some cases in defiance - of their governments. Opposition to the war is increasingly unmediated by government and mainstream information sources, thanks largely to the internet where individuals can access arguments and details which would never see the light of day in a broadsheet newspaper. Governments cannot filter the dissemination of information or control the debate, and are left to demonise their opponents.

The division of populations into two distinct groups - political elites in favour of war and the people opposed - is dramatically revealing to the latter that the former do not always act in their interests - despite the PM's much chanted mantra about 'national interests'. This explains why Howard, Blair and Bush are so worried.

Having failed to produce or fabricate an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, and in the absence of any WMD actually being found by UNMOVIC's inspectors, Anglo-Saxon war-enthusiasts have revived their earlier tactic of demonising Saddam Hussein in an increasingly desperate search for a pretext which will engender war fever amongst the citizenry.

Three weeks ago British PM Tony Blair claimed that at the basis of his "moral case" against the Beast of Baghdad was Saddam's "barbarous and detestable" human rights record, an "appalling situation [which] will continue" unless he is removed from power (The Age, 21 Feb 03). Joining the chorus, John Howard and Alexander Downer expressed astonishment that others weren't equally mortified by Saddam's horrifying treatment of both his neighbours and his own people.

One reason why so few Australians are following Washington's script is that unlike George, Tony, John and Alex, they haven't just discovered Saddam's brutality. A number of people who marched four weekends ago expressed their concerns back in the late 1980s when the Iraqi leader was at the peak of his crimes - gassing Iranian child soldiers and defenceless Kurdish villagers. Unsurprisingly, within the corridors of power at the time, their protests fell on deaf ears. It's easy, therefore, to imagine their anger at the calumny of those who, previously silent, are now lecturing them about the evils of Saddam's regime.

At the heart of the West's credibility on this issue is its response at the time these atrocities took place. What forms did outrage in Washington, London and Canberra take after Saddam killed 5000 Kurds in the town of Halabja on 17 March 1988? What steps did governments in these capitals take to bring him to account for his wicked crimes? The answers to these questions will tell us how seriously we should accept the arguments that are currently being mounted for war.

Washington was so offended by Saddam's behaviour in the 1980s that it backed him in Baghdad's war against Iran. Presidents Reagan and Bush Snr supplied the Iraqi leader with intelligence, satellite imagery, arms and billions of dollars in loans. Two decades later, Saddam's attack on Persia - about which at the time Washington was officially "neutral" - is being invoked by many of the same people as a reason for his annihilation.

More ominously, according to the report of a 1994 US Senate Banking Committee, the "United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual-use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs." According to the report, this assistance included "chemical warfare-agent precursors; chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical warfare-filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment." These technologies were sent to Iraq until December 1989, 20 months after the gassing of Halabja.

In February 1989, John Kelly, US Assistant Secretary of State, flew to Baghdad to tell Saddam Hussein that "you are a source for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq." This was eleven months after Halabja.

Now that's outrage.

In the UK, as journalist Mark Thomas notes, the conspicuous aspect of British Labour's attitude to Iraq has been the failure of Blair, Straw, Prescott, Blunkett, Cook or Hoon to register any concerns about Iraq's human rights record whenever the opportunity arose in the British Parliament during the 1980s and 1990s - and there were plenty of them (New Statesman, 9 Dec 02). No complaints or protests from these people were recorded.

Not a "moral case" in sight.

In Australia there is no evidence of either Mr Howard or Mr Downer ever raising any concerns about Saddam Hussein at the peak of his crimes in the late 1980s when he was using the chemical weapons they now find so personally abhorrent unless they are in the hands of friends. It's not as if they could plead ignorance - at least in this case. A cursory glance of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch reports for this period would have given them many opportunities to display their moral righteousness. None were taken.

So the Anglo-Saxons shouldn't feel bewildered by the public's failure to accept their arguments. It's because they have no credibility whatsoever on this question. When Prime Minister Howard claims that peace marchers "give comfort to Saddam Hussein," he is not just defaming thousands who walked in solidarity with the people of Iraq, he is conveniently forgetting who actually gave the dictator considerably more than comfort only a few years ago so that he could accomplish his gruesome deeds (The Age, 20 Feb 03).

The Australian, which is championing the pro-war case in the local press, might also care to reflect on why it thought the most regrettable aspect about Iraq's use of chemical weapons at Halabja was that it had "given Teheran a propaganda coup and may have destroyed Western hopes of achieving an embargo through quiet diplomacy" (The Australian, 22 Mar 88). In other words, the crime was giving comfort to the enemy in Iran rather than the murder of 5,000 innocent people. The newspaper might also explain why less than a week after the attack, it defended Saddam by quoting "senior military analysts in Israel" who claimed that Iraq's use of nerve agents and chemical weapons was "only against targets inside Iraq and only when important strategic positions, such as the city of Basra, were threatened" (The Australian, 8 Apr 88). Well that's OK then.

Supplementary arguments for war proposed by those who were untroubled by Saddam's behaviour in the 1980s, appear like new verses of Onward Christian Soldiers . They are revealing for what they omit.

We are told that only the threat of force got weapons inspectors back into Iraq. We are not told why the threat won't actually disarm him, why the threat of force failed in December 1998, or that under Chapter 1, Article 2 of the UN Charter all member states "shall refrain....from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."

We are informed that the very future of the UN is at stake if it doesn't do the bidding of a few Western states, but not why its credibility wasn't in question when the organisation betrayed the people of West Papua in 1969, Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, East Timor in 1999, Palestine continuously since 1948, etc, etc. Why is the enforcement of SC resolutions against Iraq a condition of the UN's ongoing credibility but not when longer standing resolutions against Israel and Turkey are defied without any implications for the UN?

[Incidentally, West Papua is currently a locus of state-sponsored terrorism, though despite its close proximity to Australia this fact elicits no concern in Canberra beyond a regular pledge of support for Jakarta's sovereign brutality and exploitation of the territory]

We have been told by Mr Downer and Mr Howard why international law and the authority of the UN must be respected by Iraq. At the same time, the Australian Government has indicated that it is prepared to disregard a SC veto by one of the Permanent Five if it regards the vote as "capricious" - meaning it doesn't like the result. Unsurprisingly, there are no legal precedents for such contempt for the rule of law - which is a qualifying clause for rogue states.

PM Howard has said that only legally authorised states should possess nuclear weapons, but won't outline the international agreements which permit Pakistan, India and Israel to keep their nuclear stockpiles. Or in the absence of such agreements, the steps he is taking to disarm them.

If Saddam Hussein cannot be contained, as Prime Minister Howard wrote in the WSJ recently, what has prevented him from passing WMD to terrorist groups during the last 20 years?

Mr Howard has asked why protesters haven't been carrying as many anti-Hussein placards as they have anti-Bush signs. Perhaps it is because only one of them is proposing a devastating military assault on an impoverished country - involving Australian soldiers - which will almost certainly leave thousands of innocents civilians dead?

This is just a small sample of the concoctions Western governments and their backers in the Fourth Estate have cooked up recently. We can expect even more agitprop in the days ahead - in fact at the National Press Club tomorrow.

To conclude, I have said nothing about possibly cataclysmic effects of an attack on Iraq. Just take one, of about five significant hotspots - the Iraq-Turkey border. Not only have the Iraqi Kurds, many of whom live under the northern no-fly zone, indicated that they will not give up their autonomy to a post-Saddam leadership group (currently in exile), they have indicated that their principle threat to them is an invading Turkish army, which may still enter the country in conjunction with US and UK forces. In other words, they regard Turkey, not Saddam as their enemy.

The Turkish Government has indicated that a quid pro quo for allowing US troops to invade Iraq from Turkish soil would be a significant say in a post-Saddam Government in Baghdad. We all know what this will mean for the Kurds, who may take the opportunity afforded by the conflict to declare independence - with all the implications that will have for Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Syria. Meanwhile, the Iraqi exiles who hope to soon be in power in Baghdad, have said they will not accept a US military governor as an interim ruler of the country. The Shi'ite majority in the country may not accept them and are unlikely to have heard of them, after they have finished settling old scores with the Sunnis who have ruled the place for decades.

One doesn't get the impression that anyone in Washington, London or Canberra has thought this through.

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