AS THE Iraqi people’s determined resistance to the occupation of their country escalates, as the death toll of soldiers and civilians rises, and as the “Coalition of the Killing” – the US, British and Australian governments – is exposed for having lied to justify the war, public opposition to the occupation of Iraq is growing in Australia and around the world.
Even soldiers stationed in Iraq – and thousands of their relatives in the United States group Military Families Speak Out – are raising the call: “Bring the troops home now.”
It has become crystal clear that the US and its imperialist allies did not “liberate” Iraq. They did not bring “peace and democracy” to that country. There never were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the world is not now a “safer place”.
On the contrary, this was an illegal war for control of Iraq’s huge oil reserves, and for cementing the United States’ economic, political and military dominance in the Middle East, and the world.
While the big multinational corporations line their pockets with the profits from contracts to “rebuild” Iraq that were stitched up even before the war began, and while Iraq’s oil revenue is used to pay the exorbitant interest on World Bank loans, the Iraqi people now have even less health care, education, jobs, clean water and electricity than during the 12 years of cruel United Nations-imposed sanctions on their country.
The presence of a United Nations force supporting — and providing political cover for — the US occupation will not improve the situation.
Australia still has around 1000 military personnel in Iraq supporting the occupation, and Howard is considering requests from the US for more. Their job is to help force the Iraqi people to submit to the imperialists’ permanent looting of their country and ensure that the majority of Iraqis abandon all hope of determining their own future.
The Australian government has increased military spending to $15.8 billion – about $43 million a day. Of that, $745 million is allocated to paying for Australia’s role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. At the same time, the 2003-4 federal budget allocates $1.8 billion to “security, intelligence and border protection”, and a further $18 million to prevent refugees, among them Iraqis and Afghans fleeing their war-torn homelands, from reaching Australia’s shores.
While spending up on the brutalisation of Iraq and Iraqi refugees, the Australian government, like in the US, is cutting real funding to public education, health care and welfare services in this country. Ordinary working people are now paying for a war that the majority of us opposed.
We demand that the Australian government:
The imperialist powers’ open-ended war on democracy and self-determination in the Third World must be stopped. A strong, united anti-war movement is needed now more than ever.
We must respond to the unambiguous call by the majority of Iraqi people for an end to the occupation and for self-determination. We must extend our solidarity to the emerging struggles for real peace, democracy and equality in Iraq. And we must prepare to defend the next target in the US’s global war of terror.
Socialist Alliance urges all those who opposed the war to speak out, in your workplaces, trade unions, schools and communities, against the occupation of Iraq, and to join the anti-occupation protests between October 25 and November 2.
Lisa Macdonald is a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance.