A war that we can fight with a clear conscience

The Australian ^ | March 21 2003

[knighthawk]

WITH the first volleys of missiles to surgically strike at Iraq's military command structure, Australians found themselves in a just war to disarm the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein – so despicable a regime that even men and women of goodwill who oppose this conflict have no words of praise or even apology for its deeds.

No Australian welcomes this war, but by defying the UN for a decade and seeking to hold the world to ransom with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, Hussein created the conflict. Now that it has begun, all Australians must unite in the hope it will be very short, and that Hussein and his regime will be removed with few combat casualties on all sides, and with the least possible loss of life among the innocent people of Iraq. But above all we must hope the just objectives for the war are swiftly achieved and that Iraq is disarmed. There is no certainty of quick success in any war, and Hussein will hope he can exhaust the resolve of the allies by sacrificing his own people. Yet the early signs are that his strategy of national self-destruction underestimates the capability and resolve of the coalition to dissarm Iraq by relying on technological superiority. That the war began not with carpet-bombing Baghdad, but precision missiles targeting key facilities that support the dictatorship, is a hopeful sign. The goal is not to destroy Iraq's productive capacity, or to kill its people, but to put a end to an evil regime. Australians are a peace-loving people who despise bullies and passionately believe in a fair go for all. As our troops enter battle on our behalf against Hussein, can we be confident that these principles are being upheld? The Australian believes the answer is a firm "yes". By committing troops, we have taken a leading position among a large group of nations who are no longer prepared to tolerate a vicious tyrant who threatens world security with weapons of mass destruction, while torturing and murdering his own people. So let us be clear. The opportunity has been offered to Hussein time and again to avoid this conflict by adhering to his disarmament obligations as stipulated more than a decade ago in UN Security Council Resolution 687, and reaffirmed last November in Resolution 1441. If Hussein did not have something to hide, what possible reason was there to play a hide-and-seek game with the weapons inspectors? But despite all of that, even this week US President George W. Bush gave Hussein a further 48 hours to leave Iraq, and thus prevent war. The choice for war has been entirely and unequivocally that of Hussein: it will go down as one of his great crimes against his own people, but thankfully it will be his last.

Legal opinion on whether the attack on Iraq is "legal"_that is, whether Resolution 1441 provides sufficient licence for action – has been heavily divided. But Resolution 1441 says in plain English that it is giving Hussein a "final opportunity" to meet his disarmament obligations. If that phrase means what it says, and Hussein rejected the opportunity it offered him, no further decision of the Security Council was required. In fact, while it was a tactical mistake for the US and Britain to go down the road of seeking a further decision, in a noble but vain attempt to rescue the Security Council from itself, it demonstrated just how patient Mr Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been. Thus, the campaign that began yesterday meets the first of the three criteria for a "just war" that St Augustine established: it is undertaken with legitimate authority. This discountenances Simon Crean's claim, in his speech to the National Press Club yesterday, that we are an "aggressor".

The second criterion, that there be a just cause, is satisfied by the danger Hussein's weapons pose to world security, including Australia's security, in the post-September 11 context, where at some time of his own choosing he can pass those weapons on to terrorists, whom he has a long history of supporting. The third and final just-war criterion is "right intention". While hardcore America-haters have claimed Mr Bush's real intention in attacking Iraq has been to secure a supply of oil, if any country's position is "all about oil" it is that of France, not that of the US. Meanwhile, enemies of John Howard in Australia, and of Mr Blair in Britain, have portrayed their intentions as doing whatever Mr Bush tells them to do (although why, exactly, they would want to do that is never explained). By far the simplest explanation is to accept that the intention of the three leaders is precisely what they say it is: to protect their citizens from the nightmare scenario in which Hussein either attacks us with his biological and chemical weapons, or facilitates such an attack by terrorists. And contrary to what is claimed by parts of the Left, there is no element of racism, either in the Howard Government's intention in joining the attack on Iraq, or in the intentions of the millions of Australians who support it. Mr Howard last night stressed that we should all extend the hand of mateship to Australians of Arab background. This is not a war with Islam but, as he said, a war with "a dictatorship of a particularly horrific kind".

In his speech to the Press Club, Mr Crean claimed the Government had allowed our foreign policy "to be determined by another country". Given that the Opposition Leader allowed Labor's own policy on Iraq to hinge upon the whim of French President Jacques Chirac, his foundations on this issue are shaky. But as Mr Howard pointed out in his televised address last night, our close alliance with the US and Britain, which includes intelligence sharing, is crucial as we prosecute the war on terrorism in our own region: far from making us a target for terrorism – which we are by virtue of being a Western nation – the alliance with Britain and the US allows us to do something about it.

Australians are a patriotic people but we are also sceptical and questioning, always willing to hear the other side of an argument. Since the Boer War at the end of the 19th century, every conflict in which our forces have served has generated dissension and debate at home. Even during the early years of World War II, many Australians believed it was not our fight. They were wrong then, just as opponents of military action to dissarm Iraq are wrong now. But the time for name-calling and theatrics by those who would prefer to see Hussein's regime survive, rather than fight to remove it, is over. Australians are now on active service, and we owe them full support. This is not a war of aggression; it is not a war to force our will on an innocent people. It is a war to disarm a dictator, and while some Australians may dispute its necessity, all of us must now unite in supporting the men and women of the Australian Defence Force on duty in service of the nation.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[goldstategop]

Aussies. If you have one as a friend matey, you'll never forget them.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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