Tuesday, January 21, 2003

This is an interesting argument against Australia getting directly involved in a US led war against Saddam. I accept that Australia should be very worried about Islamists in Southeast Asia and have an interest in working with Indonesia and Malaysia to root out these groups. I see a couple of problems with his position.

The writer seems to be working from the assumption that involvement in the liberation of Iraq would not be defensible among the ‘moderate’ Muslims. Many argued the same thing about the campaign against the Taliban and this did not prove to be true. The Muslims of Afghanistan are thankful for the involvement that led to their newfound opportunity to rebuild. The case could be made before hand and would certainly be clear afterwards that a similar reaction would be forthcoming among the Muslims of Iraq. The elements that would reject this are the selfsame groups and followers that Australia and the moderate Muslims of Indonesia and Malaysia must work to root out. He cites still strained relations with Indonesia because of East Timor. Australia has nothing to be apologetic for. The people of East Timor were facing genocidal conditions at the hands of corrupt elements within the Indonesian army, nobody else was coming to their rescue and more ‘negotiation’ would have resulted in more slaughtered East Timorese.

Secondly I think Mr. Mackie is being too local at the expense of the larger picture.

It is obvious that the former represents a vastly greater threat to Australia's basic security than the latter, so much so that it is almost incredible that Australians are being brainwashed into subordinating it to a lot of flim-flam about a war in Iraq, in which our interests are utterly marginal.

He ignores the fact that the money, training, equipment and personnel utilized by the Islamists worldwide are not always local. It is a web and Mr. Mackie thinks that by cutting off the piece of web closest to Australia will keep them safe. I don’t think that is true, the Islamist Imams who incite murder, the terrorists who carry out the murder, the training, equipment and money they use to pay for the equipment is part of global network and Saddam remains in a central position in the network.

Unlike Mr. Mackie I would argue that Australia could and should be able to take part in Saddam’s downfall and, simultaneously, strengthen ties with the moderate Muslims who hate terrorism and promote peace and understanding. It would not be easy and would involve a great deal of effort but the end goal freedom for Iraqis and the removal of the threat of Saddam and his terrorist ties and cooperation with the moderate Muslims who want to separate themselves from bin Laden and the hatred spewed by the Islamists is something that is worth taking the time and effort to do right.

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