The following Editorial was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, March 26, 2003. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request.
****************************** Editorial - Lies rejected The farrago of lies told by Howard, Blair, Bush and their supporters to justify war against Iraq has not swayed millions of people in Australia and around the world. People are demonstrating their rejection of these lies. Government leaders lied about weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq had links with al-Qaida, about the legality of their invasion, about the rightness of the cause, about regime change, that Australia is threatened by Iraq and that it is in Australia's national interest to go to war. Faced with these failures the government and supporters of war are now attempting to hide behind the cry - "support our boys". Howard, Blair and even Crean are beating this drum as a desperate and backdoor means of pushing the Australian people into supporting an illegal, unjustified and criminal war. If those who now demand support for war were concerned about the well-being of the troops, they would never have sent them to Iraq in the first place. If the war is wrong and illegal what troops are being ordered to do in Iraq is also wrong and illegal. The Australian troops are not defending Australia. They are involved in a war of blatant aggression against a sovereign country for illegal objectives. The invasion of Iraq is already an international crime. The so-called "allied" troops - three countries out of 192 - are bringing death and destruction to one of the oldest centres of civilisation, highly cultured and highly educated. The bombers, cruise missiles and attack helicopters are killing from a great height. The TV images that follow the missiles to their targets do not show the mangled bodies. This is what war is all about and this is what it is for - killing people, occupying another nation's land and seizing its resources. Soldiers are trained to kill other human beings and that is what the invading forces are doing - killing civilians and Iraqi soldiers defending the sovereignty of their own country even though Iraq has been virtually disarmed compared with the technology arraigned against them. Consideration is now being given to charging Howard and others responsible with war crimes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also hinted at similar moves. When threatening the Iraqi leadership and military that they would be charged as war criminals unless they surrendered, George Bush declared that it would be no defence to say: "I was just following orders". This must also apply to others. All these considerations mean nothing to those who run Australia's Government and the military and strategic analysts who regard war as a parlour game of tanks, planes, guided missiles. They do not speak about the people whose lives, children, and hopes are blighted. These experts are joined by prostitute journalists of the ABC, CNN and other TV channels and the mass media who record their "on-the-spot" comments - an essential element in the service of the war machine. The consequences for the Iraqi people will be rapidly forgotten once their war game is over. Many supporters of war have also invoked God on the side of war. "Godspeed" screamed Sydney's Daily Telegraph front page while Bush repeatedly intones, "God bless America" as though there is no other country in the world other than the USA. "God bless America, Australia and Britain", wrote one correspondent to the Daily Telegraph. Another wrote, "May God be your protector". They call on a God to bless those whose job is killing. Their God is actually Mars, the Greek God of war. The troops are also declared "freedom fighters" by the same media and politicians who savagely restrict the democratic rights of the people with so-called anti-terrorist legislation and, in some countries, violently suppress anti-war protests. They will not liberate Iraq but impose an American occupation and a government that is totally subservient to US dictates as has already been done in Afghanistan. The oil resources of Iraq will be stolen by the US and British corporations. Millions of Iraqi families will be decimated, lives lost, homes destroyed, turned into refugees - thanks to the "allied" war machine in violation of international law. That is why the demand to "Stop the War" is ringing out around the world. **************************************************************************** -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]