The bureaucratic and parliamentary structures that enabled the Howard government to participate in the attack on Iraq on the basis of a lie in 2003 remain in place and if anything have been strengthened. With the Trump administration eager for war with Iran, there is nothing to stop the Australian government from again fabricating a threat to justify its participation in an illegal invasion of yet another Middle Eastern country.
Australia’s participation in the attack on Iraq remains a major and unaddressed problem within our political system. Despite incontrovertible evidence that the Howard government ignored intelligence agency advice and lied about the threat from Saddam Hussein, those responsible have never been held to account or even questioned in the kind of forum their British counterparts faced in the Chilcott inquiry.
Not merely did the venture increase the terrorist threat to Australia and other participating nations, lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and an array of war crimes by coalition forces — as well as generate the conditions for the rise of Islamic State — it created a deep and lingering distrust in the electorate of both governments and intelligence agencies. This is a distrust that the lack of accountability for the perpetrators only worsened.
Today, the government can still commit Australian forces to foreign missions, however illegal and misbegotten, without the approval of parliament or even parliamentary debate. Moreover, despite a push by Labor’s Left faction, that bipartisan position won’t change anytime soon, with Labor deputy and source for US diplomats Richard Marles an opponent of any change to the executive having “the sole prerogative” to send forces to invade other countries.
And while the parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies has improved marginally since the Howard years — what is now the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has a slightly broader remit than the days when it was confined to checking annual reports — it is still controlled by the government. It has no power to conduct reviews into the operations of intelligence agencies or initiate its own inquiries.
Another source of accountability has been closed off since then. In 2014, the government dramatically strengthened the laws around intelligence officials to prevent whistleblowing and increased the jail terms they face if they expose crime or misconduct. As Andrew Wilkie, the former intelligence officer who was crucial to revealing how flawed the Howard government’s pretext for attacking Iraq was, noted at the time, this was a deliberate effort to deter media scrutiny of intelligence agencies:
It is another distraction from the fact that our heightened security environment is a result of us helping to start a war that has run for 11-and-a-half years, fomented more turmoil in the Middle East and caused more angst within our own community.
What also remains in Australia is a shallowness on the right that saw little conservative opposition to the Iraq war or subsequent military adventurism like Tony Abbott’s return to Iraq in 2014. Some of the most vehement opposition to the looming Iran conflict in the US is coming from the right — both from Trump supporters anxious that he maintain his pre-election commitment to avoid foreign interventions, and from conservative Trump haters who see him blundering into another war with the encouragement of hawks and big defence contractors.
Outlets as diverse as the National Review, American Conservative Magazine and the Cato Institute have lashed Trump’s approach to Iran from a conservative perspective. Here, that kind of intellectual and ideological diversity on the right is unthinkable — let alone the idea it might support multiple media outlets and a willingness to debate policies on their merits rather than on partisanship.
But the case against attacking Iran — and the current, unprovoked sanctions regime imposed by Trump — is if anything significantly stronger from a conservative than from a progressive standpoint: Iran was not a threat until Trump unilaterally broke a JCPOA nuclear agreement, thus removing any incentive for Iran to conclude any deal with the US ever again. Sanctions and US aggression are strengthening the hand of Iranian hardliners. We have had sixteen years’ experience of what western military adventurism can do in the Middle East and how costly any attack is likely to be, and it will significantly increase the security threat to Western countries.
The only beneficiaries of any attack will be US defence companies, the murderous Saudi regime and the hard right of Israeli politics.
As it stands, Australia remains the only participant in the Iraq war that has not learnt any lessons from that debacle. That failure may yet prove costly if another generation of Washington chickenhawks get their way.
Excuse me. I’d like to stay and chat but I think I see another lemming in front of me. Must catch up with the old boy!
Trump had called the JCPOA nuclear agreement ‘the worst deal ever’. This from the man who, according to New York Times reports, has made some colossal dud deals in his own business career, fortunately propped up by his father’s substantial estate. Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was a cut-throat lawyer who taught him that attack was the best form of defence.
Ergo now Trump threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran.
Give Chump a break, the best way for a Seppo Pres. to get reelected is to start a war.
As for us we should stay right out of it. But I suspect that the Seppos have some sort of “BIG stick” to get our Govt to join in with their murderous adventures.
However that does presuppose that our Govt does have some backbone.
A great article Bernard.
It always amazes me that the right in Australia are so quick to make a contribution to wars, as the responsibility of a ‘world citizen’, based on poor Intelligence/interpretation of Intelligence but they argue the opposite about making a ‘world citizen’s’ contribution to fighting Climate Change, when there is irrefutable ‘Intelligence’, because our contribution will make ‘little difference’
What’s that olde mouldy quote, “history may not repeat itself but it does rhyme” – singing from a very tattered song sheet.
And, were Mr Shouty McSmug to beg to tag along with the Septics as did the Rodent, hands up those who think that “Labor” will oppose the madness.
Nah, me neither.
Well Labor did oppose the illegal Howard invasion of Iraq, while he, Downer, Vail and the rest committed treason bribing the enemy with $300 million of taxpayer’s money to buy their voter base’s wheat, bribing and feeding the enemy whom they illegally invaded and against whom they sent Australians to be maimed, tortured and killed.
If that were to happen again with the AFP in the anus of the Coalition, we’d know nothing about it now and Andrew Wilke would be in prison along with ACT’s previous AG and lawyer Bernard Colleary and Witness K and any other journalists who thought it was in the public interest to be informed of the Coalition’s war crimes or use of the spook services to bug the cabinet of another nation for commercial gain.
Yeah, kinda-sorta “Labor did oppose the illegal Howard invasion of Iraq,” but not so much as to be effective, and not just for fear of being wedged.
As Bumbler Beezelblub said when asked why “Labor” was not more forthright in opposing, as per the title – Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the lies, “I always believe what the security services tell me”.
Interesting that you think Labor in opposition could have stopped Howard and his war crimes and the illegal invasion of another nation with war profiteering by grain growers.