No to war and terrorism: Australian troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan now!
The Socialist Alliance expresses its solidarity with all the innocent victims of the latest Bali bombings, regardless of nationality. However, we also reject and condemn the hypocritical and racist “anti-terrorist” hysteria being whipped up by politicians and the corporate media. Once again, Australian lives are being valued grossly unequally with the lives of people from the Third World.
Horrible as it is, the latest Bali bombing pales next to the daily terror in occupied Iraq. But the corporate media filters the truth about war and terror through the lens of racist hypocrisy.
A May 18 report by the Massachusetts-based Project on Defense Alternatives, Vicious Circle: The Dynamics of Occupation and Resistance in Iraq, calculated that 30,000 Iraqis have died as a direct result of combat operations by all sides in the Iraq war, with 75% of them having been killed by US-led “coalition” operations.
According to a detailed report by Iraq Body Count, of the 67,365 civilians (most of them Iraqi citizens) who have been reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the occupation, up to March 19, 2005:
US-led forces were sole killers of 37% of civilian victims.
Criminals killed 36% of all civilians.
Anti-occupation forces were sole killers of 9% of civilian victims.
US military forces accounted for 98.5% of killings by the occupation forces.
Anyone in Australia who is serious about stopping the escalating war and terrorism around the world today needs to face up to the urgent need for the Australian government to withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This would be a powerful political blow against the world’s biggest promoter or war and terrorism — the government of the United States of America.
We also reject the attempt by Australian state and federal governments to use the so-called “war on terror” as a pretext to destroy civil liberties and democratic rights in Australia. The “national security” and “anti-terror” laws passed by state and federal governments in recent years have given ASIO and the police forces the power to harass, persecute, prosecute and imprison people with impunity.
The Socialist Alliance joins with all those calling on the Australian government to:
Reduce the threat of a terrorist attack by immediately withdrawing all military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan;
Repeal all “anti-terror” laws that attack civil liberties;
No banning of political, civil or religious organizations.
Stop the raids on the homes of Muslims, and launch a public education campaign to stop the racist attacks on Middle Eastern and Muslim communities.
[Issued by the Socialist Alliance, October 5, 2005.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 12, 2005.
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