http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/10/1044725732460.html
The problem with defending America's 'cause'
February 11 2003
If Saddam is a criminal, then so too was Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson
and Queen Victoria, writes Phil Cleary.
Pamela Bone, in her column "Losing patience with the left" last
Saturday, only confirms how tough it has become to defend America's war
plans. Even Robert Manne, who could hardly be accused of being from the
left, accepts, in his column yesterday, that the
"democratic-humanitarian" argument for war in Iraq is flawed. Contrary
to Bone's assertions, the left's opposition to the proposed US war on
Iraq has nothing to do with cultural relativism.
In recent times Bone has unearthed some barbaric acts of terror against
women in "fundamentalist Muslim" countries and has quite reasonably
asked whether cultural relativism had been behind the West's refusal to
act against these governments. And although Saddam Hussein doesn't
qualify as "fanatically Muslim", she can still find an outrage - the
alleged public beheading of two prostitutes in Iraq - to tug at our
heart. Such acts should be condemned. But if true, should they help
persuade the left to support the invasion of Iraq?
If the answer is yes, how do we defend our own legal and political
system's acquiescence in the family violence now being unearthed in
Australia? A society doesn't have to behead prostitutes or engage in
genital mutilation to be a partner in terror against women. Ask the
battered women who flee to dehumanising refuges or experience
humiliation in our criminal justice system whether they know terror.
Sadly, I hear so many stories that I'm past the "it only happens in
Muslim countries" mantra.
If our record on family violence hasn't been bad enough, how do we
explain the murder and dispossession of indigenous Australians and the
stealing of their children - something close to Manne's heart - by the
state?
I'm no cultural relativist. I'm just conscious of how easy it is to be
well meaning yet unwittingly practising a mixture of cultural
imperialism and hypocrisy. And we shouldn't forget that the most
vociferous proponents of military intervention to "free Iraqis from
Saddam's terror" are often the same people who demand that refugees from
Iraq should be treated like criminals and sent to barbed-wire zoos in
the Australian desert.
On the road to democracy, Britain and America were guilty of some of the
worst crimes against humanity. British government complicity in the
Irish famine, the grinding poverty and social dislocation of
industrialism and convict transportation, and barbaric public execution
don't belong in Britain's dark ages. The slaughter of the American
Indian, the enslavement and murder of black Americans, the blood-soaked
Civil War that brought about the union, and the napalming of Vietnamese
villages are part of America's recent history. Yet the kings and queens
and presidents who presided over these epochs are treated as heroes in
the history books. If, as Bone argues, Saddam should be put before the
International Criminal Court, should presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon
Johnson, and Queen Victoria's ancestors, be dealt with posthumously to
show we are not hypocrites?
Do the defenders of war think Nelson Mandela was missing the point when
he told the world that George Bush couldn't think straight and this war
was about oil? Was Mandela being a "cultural relativist" when he asked
why no one condemned Israel for having nuclear weapons?
Bone provides us with an answer when she says "criminal states cannot be
allowed to have weapons of mass destruction". It's right for Israel, the
US and Britain to stockpile nuclear weapons, but we can't let those
Arabs follow suit. Is it any wonder Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad likens us to a Western sheriff and Muslims generally believe we
are racist? Racists could never be accused of cultural relativity.
A war against Iraq won't liberate the people of Iraq or stem the
potential for terror. And imposing a puppet government won't lead to an
improvement of human rights or end the jarring infant mortality that
cripples Iraq. Instead, it will reinforce the view in the Arabic world
that Western governments are blind to the fabric of their life, but
cunning and mercenary where their own economic interests are concerned.
The responsibility for regime change in Iraq - as it was when Americans
embarked on their War of Independence against England, and when Oliver
Cromwell began the struggle that culminated centuries later in English
Chartism and the vote - belongs with the sovereign people, not some
imperial power.
The political arguments aside, I wouldn't follow George Bush into the
park to play ball let alone into the Gulf to play war. I'd rather sit
and listen to Nelson Mandela.
Phil Cleary is an author and former independent federal MP.
www.philcleary.com.au
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