Don’t let Douglas Wood die – Bring the troops home now!

Pip Hinman

Socialist Alliance calls on the Australian government to heed the plea by hostage Douglas Wood for the US, British and Australian forces to leave Iraq.

The majority of Australians did not support the invasion of Iraq and do not support the two-year bloody occupation in which more than 100,000 Iraqis and some 1500 coalition troops are thought to have been killed.

Up until now, only a couple of Australian troops and contractors have been killed in Iraq. But this doesn’t mean Australia is not seen by Iraqis as one of the unwelcome occupying powers. Canberra’s decision to send 450 more troops to southern Iraq, while other countries are pulling theirs out, was a clear signal that Australia is one of the US’s staunchest supporters. It inevitably means that any Australian who associates with the illegal occupation of their country will be seen by many Iraqis – legitimately – as being part of the problem.

In the Philippines and in Italy, the taking of hostages led to a remobilisation of domestic opposition to this unjust and illegal war, forcing both those governments to announce the withdrawal of their troops from Iraq.

The only solution to this hostage crisis, and any future one, is to withdraw the troops as have Spain, Poland, Portugal, Netherlands, Ukraine among other governments.

The Howard government went to war ignoring majority opposition here and overseas: its "justification" for going to war was later confirmed to be based on a series of lies; the "work" it’s doing there is to help shore up the geo-political interests of the US elite; and after two years of occupation a majority of Iraqis want the occupying troops to leave.

The violence in Iraq is a direct or indirect result of Washington’s attempts to subjugate Iraq, steal its oil and strengthen its military presence in the Middle East. Canberra is a willing accomplice in this crime. The only way to end the cycle of violence is to end the occupation and let the peoples of Iraq decide their own future.

[Pip Hinman is a national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance anti-war and international solidarity coordinating committee and an activist in the Sydney Stop The War Coalition.]