{"id":15946,"date":"2014-09-19T12:30:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T02:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=15946"},"modified":"2014-09-22T08:22:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-21T22:22:23","slug":"war-in-iraq-and-the-need-for-a-parliamentary-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/war-in-iraq-and-the-need-for-a-parliamentary-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"War in Iraq and the need for a parliamentary debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RAAF<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Cracks are already starting to show in the Government\u2019s strange haste to commit Australian troops and aircraft to war in Iraq, and the equally confused messaging about how we are meant to respond to the raising of the domestic terror threat level.<\/p>\n

Because of the institutionalised horror calling itself the \u2018Islamic State\u2019 that has taken root in Iraq and Syria, and because of Australia\u2019s evident complicity in destabilising the region following the invasion in 2003, it\u2019s not enough to stand back and leave it to the locals to fix the violent mess we helped create. We do have an obligation to help restore stability in Iraq; the question is, what constitutes the most effective and appropriate kind of help? On that score, the Australian Greens strongly disagree with the Abbott\/Shorten unity ticket that a new war in Iraq will resolve the hideous aftermath of the last one.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important that the Government immediately drop the fa\u00e7ade that this is a strictly humanitarian endeavour, and call it what military commanders and Administration officials in the US are calling it: a war. Abbott\u2019s \u2018no boots on the ground\u2019 commitment was jettisoned after less than a fortnight; we now have more than 600 pairs of boots arriving at al Minhad airbase in the UAE, headed for grounds unknown. Similarly, President Obama\u2019s commitment that the 1600 inbound US troops would be there as \u2018advisers\u2019 now apparently extends to \u2018close combat advising\u2019 all the way to the front line.<\/p>\n

Thousands of boots notwithstanding, the military leadership in the US is determined that this should remain a campaign fought largely from the air by drones and conventional bombers, with campaigns in Yemen and Somalia being cited, without irony, as successful case studies. The appalling civilian death toll resulting from those high-altitude interventions is rarely reported in the Western press, but communities on the ground understand the consequences well enough. Iraqi Sunnis probably also have a better recollection than most Australians of the murderous persecution they suffered under the Al Maliki Government that Australian troops helped install, and of the hundreds of thousands who died in the sectarian carnage we helped unleash in 2003.<\/p>\n

In here probably lies one of the keys to answering the more forbidding question of what the hell to do about the viral spread of Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold and into Iraq and the mass consciousness of the Western world. For all its righteous bluster, IS is loathed from one end of the Islamic world to the other\u2014from Al Qaeda\u2019s affiliates in Syria to Iran to Indonesia. Without support from Sunni tribal leaders and regional communities in north-western Iraq, the Islamic State\u2019s footing in the region is perilously narrow. Actions to counter IS might include: our direct support for a more inclusive government in Iraq; cutting the flow of financing from the Gulf States; applying pressure on Turkey to close the border to flows of foreign fighters; active support to regional actors to starve Islamic State of weapons and funds; above all, pushing the UN to restart negotiations on ending the civil war in Syria.<\/p>\n

Those will all take time: in the immediate future, Chelsea Manning\u2019s thoughtful contribution<\/a> from behind bars on ways to contain the further spread of IS surely poses a more durable endgame than a massive escalation of US and Australian air raids. Finally, if the Prime Minister is serious that this is primarily a humanitarian intervention, this is an excellent time to lift our refugee intake and contributions to UN agencies to get direct help to the vast numbers of people displaced and traumatised by the conflict in both countries.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister\u2019s awkward rush to war plays into domestic politics and the ravening blood-lust howled from the front pages of the same Murdoch tabloids that demanded we invade Iraq in the first place, but it may be horribly counterproductive. Either, as the satirical website \u2018The Onion\u2019 proposed with a straight face, \u2018Obama Vows To Split ISIS Into Dozens Of Extremist Splinter Groups<\/a>\u2019, or more forbiddingly, foreign air strikes will forge warring extremist groups into greater unity to focus on the common enemy: us. There are signs this is already occurring, with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb issuing a rare joint demand<\/a> to warring factions in the region to \u2018Stop the infighting between you and stand as one rank against America’s campaign and that of its satanic alliance that lies in wait for all of us, to break us stick by stick.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s surely no coincidence that despite more than three years of Australians transiting through Syria to fight in the horrific civil war there, ASIO was moved to raise the terror threat warning in Australia within weeks of the Government\u2019s evident commitment to send us back to Iraq.<\/p>\n

If, for once, Australia could strike a faintly-independent foreign policy stance and admit that foreign-flagged high explosives have had a dismal record in creating peace in the Middle East, we might stand a chance of actually providing meaningful help to people trapped in an unimaginable cycle of violence. Parliament, and the community at large, is the proper place for this debate, because if the Government has a solid case for committing us to another round of open-ended warfare in Iraq, it certainly hasn\u2019t made it yet.<\/p>\n

Scott Ludlam is an\u00a0Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia and defence spokesperson for his party.\u00a0Image courtesy of Department of Defence<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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