CHEWING ON THE WRONG BONE - April 2003

I wouldn't follow George Bush or the bull-necked Richard Armitage into the park to play ball, let alone into the Gulf to play war. I'd rather sit and listen to Nelson Mandela.

Pamela Bone (Losing patience with the left- Melbourne Age - Saturday) only confirms how tough it has become to defend America's war. Even Robert Manne, who could hardly be accused of being from the left, accepts (Age - Monday) that the 'democratic-humanitarian' argument for war in Iraq 'is flawed'. Contrary to Pamela's assertions, the left's opposition to the US proposed war on Baghdad has nothing to do with cultural relativism.

I'm no cultural relativist. I'm just conscious of how easy it is to be well meaning while unwittingly practising a mixture of cultural imperialism and hypocrisy. How, for instance can we reconcile that fact that the most vociferous proponents of military intervention to 'free Iraqis from Hussein's terror' are often the same people who demand that refugees from Iraq should be treated like criminals and sent to barbed wire zoos in the Australian desert.

Nothing can obscure the fact that the impending war against Iraq is another chapter in America's pursuit of its global interests. Even the detached man in the street knows that oil and geo-politics, not weapons of mass destruction, are driving Bush to war. Do the defenders of war think Nelson Mandela was missing the point when he told the world that Bush couldn't think straight and this war was about oil? Was Mandela being a 'cultural relativist' when he asked why no one condemned Israel for having nuclear weapons?

Pamela Bone reflects the western view when she says 'criminal states cannot be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction'. It's fine for Israel, the USA and Britain to stockpile nuclear weapons, but we can't let those Arabs follow suit. Is it any wonder Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir likens us to a western sheriff and Muslims generally believe we are racist? Racists could never be accused of cultural relativity.

Blaming the left for Saddam Hussein and chiding people for not marching to America's tune simply plays into the hands of the imperialists. A war against Iraq won't liberate the people of Iraq or stem the potential for terror. And imposing a puppet government in Iraq won't lead to an improvement in human rights or end the jarring infant mortality that cripples Iraq.

Instead, it will only reinforce the common view in the Arabic world that western governments are blind to the fabric of their life, but cunning and mercenary where their own economic interests are concerned. The responsibility for regime change in Iraq, as it was when Americans embarked on their war of independence against England and when Oliver Cromwell began the struggle that culminated centuries later in English Chartism and the vote, belongs with the sovereign people not some imperial power.

In recent times Pamela Bone has unearthed some barbaric acts of terror against women in 'fundamentalist Muslim' countries and has quite reasonably asked whether cultural relativism had been behind the west's refusal to act against these governments. And although Saddam Hussein doesn't qualify as 'fanatically Muslim', she can still find an outrage - the alleged public beheading of two prostitutes in Iraq - to tug at our political heart. Such acts should be condemned. But if true, should they help convince the left to support the invasion of Iraq?

If the answer is yes, how do we defend our own legal and political system's acquiescence in the family violence now being unearthed in Australia? A society doesn't have to behead prostitutes or engage in genital mutilation to be a partner in terror against women. Ask the battered women who flee to dehumanising refuges or experience humiliation in our criminal justice system whether they know terror. Then ask them whether they believe the police and the society is on their side?

Sadly, I hear so many stories I'm past the 'it only happens in Muslim countries' mantra. If our record on family violence hasn't been bad enough, how do we explain away the murder and dispossession of indigenous Australians, and the stealing of their children - something close to Robert Manne's heart - by the state?

On the road to democracy, Britain and America were guilty of some of the worst crimes against humanity. British government complicity in the Irish famine, the grinding poverty and social dislocation of industrialism and convict transportation, and the barbaric public execution don't belong in Britain's Dark Ages. The slaughter of the American Indian, the enslavement and murder of black Americans, the blood soaked Civil War that brought about the Union, and the napalming of Vietnamese villages are part of America's recent history.

Yet the kings and queens and presidents who presided over these epochs are treated as heroes in the western history books. If, as the defenders of war argue, Saddam Hussein should be put before International Criminal Court, should presidents Richard Nixon and L B Johnson and Queen Victoria's ancestors be dealt with posthumously to show we're not hypocrites when it comes to human rights?

The political arguments aside, I wouldn't follow George Bush or the bull-necked Richard Armitage into the park to play ball let alone into the Gulf to play war. I'd rather sit and listen to Nelson Mandela.

Phil Cleary