Sydney Anti War Demonstration, 2003

This is called "Faces in the Mob" because that is how the Prime Minister of Australia, one John "Dubya" Howard as his friends in the White House call him, described the demonstrators later on that evening on national television: "The Mob".

Howard implied that the attendees consisted mainly of the usual rent-a-crowd suspects and that their opinion meant nothing to him as he knows best what is good for his country. These kinds of sentiments were repeated in America, particularly on media outlets like the Fox News Network and CNN, both pathetic excuses for broadcast networks if I ever saw one. Incidentally we receive the international edition of CNN here in Australia. It is considerably toned-down in patriotic fervour compared to the U.S. edition. They know that the rest of the World wouldn't have a bar of the garbage they serve up to domestic audiences.

The naysayers of mass public demonstrations, our so-called "democratic" leaders - the politicians and their corporate bosses, the think tank gurus and the pampered, pompous press "pundits" - will say anything, ignore their constituencies, lie, distort, plagiarise, rig elections, gratuitously insult, conceal the truth, exaggerate and even kill others en masse (especially in other countries, where the mess is easier to hide), minimise casualty counts, in order to get their way, their profits and their comfort zones.

There were in excess of three hundred thousand ordinary people at this rally. No one really knows how many for sure, but no matter where you looked there was a sea of people: fifty city blocks worth of them. Those who led off the march completed their three kilometre walk an hour before many even started out for the first corner.

The crowd was very well-behaved, attentive and completely non-violent as they stood there in sweltering heat and humidity under threatening grey clouds. As you can see it comprised young, old, well-to-do, not so well-off, all races, colors and creeds. They shared a common view... not a love of Saddam, nor a totally anti-war stance (although some do hold this belief), but a keenness for more time to be given to the Iraqi people - men, women and especially children. They also shared a deep distrust of those who have been elected to govern us and have betrayed that trust.

Rent-a-crowd they were not. Unrepresentative they were not. Violent they were not. Committed they definitely are and their views should not be passed off as the naive quackery that our "leaders" claim it to be.

When the terrorist reprisals come (and they will come), while our "leaders" are in their bunkers, protected by their various Secret Services and other bodyguards from the bombs, the diseases and the poison gasses, the ordinary people in the subways, streets, nightclubs and even in their private homes will be attacked, or will live in constant fear of an attack, by a resurgent terrorist movement which will certainly hijack Middle Eastern public opinion to further its own ends. We have already seen in the recent Chicago nightclub tragedy how fatal the cry of "Poison gas!" can be on a crowd of people, their nerves worn thin by constant upgrades and downgrades of official "terrorist threat" levels. Things will get worse, much worse, not better. Could this be what they all - our "leaders" and the terrorist leaders - want? Well, they'll get their wish.

Western Economies, already shown to be fragile and only marginally profitable (look how the airlines went bust virtually the day after the WTC attack, the travel industry, the energy industry) will lose their profitable margins, throwing millions out of work and causing economic chaos worldwide. In fact, this is already starting to happen.

Other millions in Iraq will be without water, food and proper sanitation. To put this in perspective: think what happens when a storm in your local area severs the electricity utility. Think of the inconvenience you suffer. Think how your computers, your refrigerators, your TVs, your lighting ceases to function for a few hours. Now multiply that inconvenience by days, weeks, months of no service. Add in water, sewerage and food services, for days, weeks, months. Take away medical care for days, weeks, months. Telephones. Civilian police replaced by rule of the gun, the law of the jungle for days, weeks, months. Polluted water. Disease, possibly even famine. For days, weeks, months. Employment replaced by having to beg in the streets, running behind occupying army trucks spilling a few sacks of rice and peanut butter sandwiches out the back of their panniers. This is the fate of ordinary Iraqis. Iraq seems to be a country we need to destroy in order to save it.

Think of the United Nations, rendered irrelevant not only by Saddam, but also by the spun-out, talked-up but in fact very thin-on-the- ground "Coalition of the Willing". Think of the EU: divided, squabbling, with a few regenerate ex-communist countries - nations whose emerging, vulnerable economies are being used to stack the numbers in the EU and NATO councils - scratching each others' eyes out for a handful of foreign exchange and trade crumbs from the strutting "victors". Think of the bull-in-a-china-shop, so-called "diplomacy" that is being directed at Europe nowadays from the media and politicians of the White House, the childish name-calling, the recent denigration of whole nations (while all the time putting anti-Americanism off limits to the rest of the World) with clumsy faux pas for simply disagreeing with U.S. policy.

Think of the hundred-thousand surrendering Iraqi soldiers and civilians who were bombed, shot, mortared and rocketed to death by the 24th infantry division's tanks and Apache helicopters, apparently so that they could at least boast back home that they had fired their weapons. This battle was called, insultingly, the "Great Kuwaiti Turkey Shoot" by those who carried it out, on the last morning of the last Gulf War. The commanding general, Barry McCaffrey, was promoted to four stars for this massacre, and was eventually made head of the U.S. "War On Drugs", another failure of brawn over brains. From our "leaders", what guarantees are given, can be given that this will not happen again? From the Australian Prime Minister and his government the standard answer, even today, is that questions such as these are "hypothetical", that they are "Men of Peace"... that the 2,000 troops, the squadron of F-18s and associated support units, the two companies of SAS commandos, the anthrax- vaccinated sailors, the colonels and generals that have been at Coalition Headquarters in Florida for six months of war planning - all of these that Australia has recently sent to the Gulf or otherwise committed, on top of the quarter of a million service personnel, aircraft carriers, fighters, bombers, cruise missiles, field hospitals and "smart" ammunition (some of it certainly nuclear) that the U.S. has committed, plus the thirty thousand U.K. soldiers whith their own tanks and guns and bombs... that these are all "hypothetical", and that, presumably, they will do only "hypothetical" damage to the people of Iraq.

What do they and their "willing" allies take the millions who demonstrated last weekend for? Complete fools?

The patently obvious answer is, "Yes. They do." They confidently expect that, as the tanks roll and the bombs start to fall, we will all forget our outrage and will enthusiastically march to the drumbeat of patriotism in support of our brave boys overseas. This is known as a fait accompli, and in the circumstances is being used so cynically as to defy polite description. The boys may well be brave, but they are being brave only as dupes of their own "leaders". These "leaders" have, for the most part, not only not gone to war themselves, but have positively avoided it when given the chance to do so afforded by their parents' wealth, position or influence. If you discount the cowardice and the hypocracy involved in this, otherwise it's a pretty damn good idea. Who wouldn't want to avoid going to war?

Think of how our rights to not only utter but to listen to free speech have been trampled by stateless media organizations whose agendas are based purely on profit and influence (Rupert Murdoch, to my shame born an Australian citizen, wrote recently that the coming war will be "good for business"). How many shock jocks, besuited, bouffant-haired TV presenters masquerading as political pundits, so called "patriotic" talking heads have ever been anywhere near a war and seen the bodies, the carnage and the misery it creates and which they so enthusiastically promote? I know I haven't. Have they? Yet they talk to us, at us, with crocodile tears choking their voices, of "hard decisions" that need to be made. Plastic Patriots - all of them. Pat Robertson, founder of the ultra-right religous "Christian Coalition", when asked - straight-faced and serious - two weeks ago by Murdoch's Fox News's resident patriot Shaun Hannity whether he thought the biblical "End of Days" was upon us, said, "Yes. I do." Robertson went on to say that the prophecies of the book of Apocalypse were imminently to be fulfilled, although he wasn't sure of the exact day, as God kept that specific information to himself. Be afraid of this. Be very afraid.

All this is being done in the name of hubris, pride and distorted religous fundamentalism on both sides. To save face. To "send a message". To exact revenge, any revenge, for a terrorist attack that killed as many people of many nations in New York as will be killed in the first ten minutes of the coming war in one nation, Iraq, but which not even their own intelligence services will claim had anything to do with Iraq. To instigate a multinational lynching. Cue music. Roll end credits. The gun has saved the day - ag

I have seen the other one first, here I have the answer to my questions. Thank you Tony

It's a great photo accompanied by an excellent commentary on the sad state of affairs created by certain brick-headed leaders. To dismiss millions of sincere protestors all over the world as being irrelevant, while not even bothering to address their arguments is the height of arrogance. Well, there are few things as satisfying as watching the arrogant brought low. Let us hope that war will somehow be avoided and that those who would perpetrate it will be sent packing.

Superb photograph by someone who appears to be a master of "street" photography. Everywhere I look in this shot I see another story told. I lack the grey matter required to express this as clearly and politely as I'd wish to...but I must say that I believe as strongly in my opinion that this is NOT the place to voice your political or social views as you believe that this is a legitimate platform for such views to be aired on. Lets keep photo.net open to viewing and commenting on photographs...BUT lets not get to the point where we attempt to flog each other in public.

 

Tonys introduction to this photo is a valid photographic comment. A photo, as any other work of art, (or to avoid being too solemn a human expression) can be read at different levels, the more the richer. Therefore it is not unphotographic to put this image in context. He did it in a way that it is the most appropriated given the circumstances. We get to the photos, or to any image, through different paths, most of them legitimate. He is inviting us to judge this photo appealing to our moral reserves, which is an approach more legitimate than discussing diaphragms, filters or film sensibility. It would be close to ridiculous to see only composition or DOF, overlooking the subject matter, a lot of jokes can be made of such a way of looking. But these is not times for jokes. Photography is about comunication, meaning comunicating something, If content can not discussed then the discussion will be empty. The only way to stop that kind of discussion is to forbid uploading this kind of photos, wich would be simply censorship, and we dont need that. Besides the more information we have about everything about the photo the deeper our understanding of it, I mean technical, contextual, subject, whatever. Tony's introduction is very informative, allowing us for a better and richer understanding of the meaning of this image.

 

I apologize for my rudimentary English, I wish I could express myself better.

 

 

The photograph is an illustration to the "story" below.

Much has been said about who did and who didn't go to these demonstrations around the world. There have been many implications that the people who attended were unpatriotic, feral rabble rousers, chardonnay socialists, rent-a-crowd types - or all of the above. I thought this picture and the accompanying one went some way to prove that this was just not true.

The atmosphere was amazingly calm. You could hardly move. Everywhere you went there was pedestrian gridlock. Yet I heard no-one curse or even use an impatient word towards anyone else. These were peaceful people.

For months, in Australia, we've heard our P.M. tell us with a completely straight-face that any possible involvement in Iraq was completely hypothetical. He has used that position to avoid answering any questions at all about possible casualties (ours or theirs), his government's amazing synchronicity with U.S. pronouncements on the situation (on even a day-by-day basis) and the purpose of troop movements in the past few weeks.

Anyone could see that the situation is not "hypothetical". That the decision has already been made. But keeping it "hypothetical" - until it is of course rendered non-hypothetical the night before the actual invasion kicks off - gives the government a technical, legalistic excuse to claim that it has not been lying about the Australian involvement: it was hypothetical until it became official.

This is taking hair-splitting to new heights.

The U.S. government, on the other hand, has been less circumspect. They have that to their credit. The tame media outlets openly talk about "the War". They have ex-majors, generals etc. on their talk shows to demonstrate, with animated graphics, just what the latest plan is. They openly chastise actors, ex-Presidents, peace marchers, "liberals" (a terrible thing to be labelled as, apparently) as "unpatriotic" because "we are at War". The "coming War" has now become "we are at War". At least this is more honest than the Australian government's position, which is still officially that the F-18s, 2000 troops and the rest of our small contingent are simply going to the Gulf for "exercise" or "blockade duty", as part of Australias contribution the the U.N. peacekeeping forces. This is actually what the soldiers were literally told as they were farewelled by the P.M. No-one believes it, but the technical loophole is there.

Many of these people would have seen Powell give his presentation to the U.N., would have seen him laud as "excellent" the British MI6 document setting out in fine detail the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. We had visions of doughty British "human intelligence" operatives, disguised as simple shepherds, behind enemy lines with Saddam's radio tracker vans and brutal secret police closing in, tapping out terrorist dispositions with frost-bitten fingers on an old Morse code set from a stone hut in the snow covered Kurdish mountains... But this wasn't true: the report was lifted from the internet. It wasn't the product of British intelligence, but of a student's research, into papers found 12 years ago in Kuwait. It was plagiarised by press officers complete with punctuation mistakes, but presented as factual and up to date.

Talking about faked documents... In Australia we had a similar incident at the end of 2001, just prior to a federal election. A group of "illegal" immigrants, boat people seeking asylum, started throwing their children overboard off the Indian Ocean coast of Australia when they were challenged by the Navy ship that intercepted them. This was reported as a shocking thing. We didn't want those kinds of people coming to Australia. There were photos (with faces blurred out, ostensibly for "privacy" reasons - I smelt a rat even then, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it - why was the government worried about illegals' "privacy"?) and written Australian intelligence directorate reports. Documentary evidence! The election was fought and won on the general principle of rejection of asylum seekers (mostly Arabs, Afghans and Iraqis nowadays) and was won narrowly by the government.

Trouble was (as it later came out in a Senate committe enquiry): the photographs were not of children in the water, but of people who had jumped in the water to save their lives when the boat sank, three days after the interception. The blurred out faces were all adult. The "documentary evidence" was in fact a write-up of a government minister's chat with a talk-back radio jock. When he waved this document in the air (the day after the chat) citing it as independent intelligence directorate "proof"... he was effectively quoting himself.

It is widely accepted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, another that had incontrovertible documentary evidence in its favour, never happened. The killing of Kuwaiti babies by Iraqi troops in 1990? True? Nope, faked by a spin-doctor company.

These people want to know what else has been faked? How else have they been duped? What else will be quietly buried in the archives (or even excised from them) when its usefulness is exhausted?

Why are we being lied to by our own "side"? Is the case for war so bad that it needs to be faked, trumped up, spin-doctored into existence and relevance?

I can tell you something about this picture. It is not a fake. I was there. I saw it all. No faces have been blurred out. It is presented as a reply to those who feel that political comment has nothing to do with art. This fallacy is one that has a lot of currency nowadays: art and politics should not mix. I think this is wrong.

But for those who want a photographic discussion.....

I think the trick of taking a picture of a crowd is to try and find a scene that freezes several key people in significant attitudes. I also like to get in close to my subjects, rather than use a telephoto lens to do my work for me.

The choice of film was easy. It's what I had in my cupboard at the time. The T400CN film is such an easy one to use and process. I usually get it developed down at the local Happy Snap store for A$5. I can be scanning an hour or so from dropping the film off. No mess. No fuss.

If I look at the two pictures and the titles of "FACES IN THE MOB" along with your comment

on this one, I understand what you were showing here ... but looking at Mob #1 without the comment and judging it as what I see it as, an Anti-War Demonstration, I would say I like Mob #1 much better. The faces and the signs say it all.

 

As for your 'rave' belonging on photo.net or not. It's a picture of an Anti-War Demonstration and where and why you took the photo is appropriate.

If it offends readers as some of it did me, then I think the first paragraph pretty much told you

if you wanted to read on or not. While I don't agree with all you said, I do agree War is not

the answer right now and that's the feeling I

see in the faces of your Mob #1 ...

Interesting how an extremely important issue (along with relevant accompanying photo) elicited so few responses. For maximum "responsiveness," stick to the digital vs film techno-babble. I agree 100% with your views, and wish some people could at least open their eyes and see the lies and deceptive maneuvering that are being thrown at us in the name of "World Peace." Nice work.

Thanks for the photo. . . and the commentary. As a resident of suburban Washington, DC, I can tell that the mood is . . . . strange. People talk only of the snow storm, and only occassionally about Iraq, and the 'orange' alert that took away our camera club meeting place at the Washington Gas headquarters.

 

If you thought that war and retaliation was inevitable, exactly how would you all prepare to deal with this?

For me, the person who does not earn his living shooting news, it was a very interesting occasion to photograph protests (in Los Angeles in my case) and then compare with other people's views from around the world.

My inpression is that most professionals were not looking for human emotions, or trying to make generalizations on the nature of war and protest - but tried to get "news", i.e. Big Crowds, Elvis impersonator Greeting Crowds (in LA), Well-Known-Public-Figure addressing the crowd or smiling to the camera.

Of all the big ones - LA Times, NY TImes, BBC, GUardian, Independent etc.etc. only the Time weekly made a bit nicer collection out of AP photos.

Magnum www.magnumphotos.comincluded several photographers' output in their selection: which can be seen hereThe one notable difference is Marc Riboud in 2003 shooting demonstrators carrying a huge poster of the famous "hippi girl with flower confronting soldiers" Marc Riboud photo from the Vietnam war era:

the image becomes philosophical, history repeats itself.

Other Magnum reporters were - less inventive, or, in case of some New York photographer (Alex Majoli?) - catering to the more expected expectations of violence.

My own output, I hope, was more humanistic. Actually, I also used in one (the last) of the photos teh same approach as T.D.: the panoramic view of many faces is one of the possible ways to convey the reality of what happened while providing a strong visual pattern. ( the link here )

 

"I think the trick of taking a picture of a crowd is to try and find a scene that freezes several key people in significant attitudes."

I'd say it's right with one addition. One should strive to identify some strong geometry (lines etc.) formed in the and by the mass upon which the photographer can base his composition. On the background of geometrically solid whole, the separate key figures/faces/jestures will bring in the "decisiveness" of the chosen moment: (Click here for a classic example)

Relying on a multitude of faces to hold viewer's attention is only one possible technique (i.e. a pattern of multiple repeating objects (heads, faces), which are similar, and on the other hand provide enough variation for the gaze to stop and study).

Such technique is solid, and invariably working, but only one of the many possible.

One of the themes of this picture was the various angles of peoples' arms holding up their cameras.

The happiest "Mob" I've ever seen...They look more like bystanders watching a downtown parade. Seems Howard likes to exaggerate just a bit.

Applause, Tony, for your images and your words. Your work is real documentary, both aesthetically engaging and purposeful.

Such a variety of faces and such a unity of expressions or better then of a spirit. Excellent b/w with a rich scale of grey color and deapth and a "sculpturing" lighting.

George Bush must be kidding! "Humane" war? 7,000 Iraqi civilians dead; tens of thousands wounded; no reliable electricity or water; rampant unemployment; random checkpoint fatalities escalating as scared soldiers shoot first and ask questions later (if, indeed, any questions are asked); car and truck bombs killing hundreds and wounding many hundreds more.

And yet, in his speech the other night, all he could talk about was what "we" (America) "must", "will", "is prepared to" do (and what other, hitherto cheese-eating, chocolate-making, "axis of weasel" countries countries of Old Europe should do to help them, now that they've been invited to the party)... No mention made of whether the Iraqi people had been asked for their opinion on their country being made into (and remaining for the forseeable future) as "the central front of the war against terror", so that precious American lives at home might be spared (although if that won't be interpreted by the other megalomaniac, Osama bin Laden in his miserable cave, as a challenge to carry out a homeland attack, I don't know what would be).

The lack of a peace plan mentioned in my February post (above) has now come to fruition in the form of a bloody quagmire. My other prediction - that many of the demonstrators would become caught up in a frenzy of jingoism, once the shooting started - also came true. But they are now beginning to realise again not just how immoral the war was, but how damn stupid were its perpetrators.

If their plans for a free Iraq - a freedom enforced at the point of a gun - laid out a neo-con heaven, then the reality of a broken Iraq - as it is today - must surely be neo-con hell.

Yet there are no apologies, not even any mea culpas forthcoming for the mess that has been created. Everything, it seems, is still going according to plan. When Rumsfeld went to Saddam in 1983 to give him WMD technology to fight Iran, that was the right thing to do. When Bush 41 took back Kuwait, slaughtering a couple of hundred-thousand conscript soldiers and civilians, because Saddam was suddenly an enemy who gassed people, that was also the right thing to do. When his son, bush 43, flouted world opinion (at least the opinion of people like those in this photograph) and went in to finally confiscate the WMDs that Rumsfeld had supplied Saddam with 20 years before - that was once again the right thing to do. Now that it seems there are no WMDs after all, and all the fuss was about nothing, now he is grovelling (or sending Powell to grovel on his behalf) for the countries he insulted and lambasted to come and help, with treasure and presumably more blood... this is also the right thing to do. It's really quite simple: never admit you're ever wrong and you can't make any mistakes.

All the talk about who said what and to whom about Saddam's WMDs in Britain presently, (belatedly) in the American press, and in a current Australian Senate enquiry (as well as several other countries), is so much hot air. No matter whether the "i's" were dotted or the "t's" crossed, no matter who covered the asses with paperwork, no matter what the spooks, the press, the bare-fisted Bill O'Reilly (not a real journalist), George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the neo-con cabal or anyone else said there are a few patent, overwhelming truths emerging: the WMDs didn't exist; the terrorists weren't there; the Iraqi people didn't welcome the troops with rose petals and honey; and the world is a very much more dangerous place than it was before the war. So much for moral and military certainty.

In attempting to explain why things have gone so wrong (without actually admitting they have) Bush claims to have encountered unexpected challenges, virtually acts of God that no-one could forsee. Well, apart from the fact that the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the think-tanks and policy experts in Washington are paid to forsee the unexpected (and in the case of Iraq claimed to have forseen it as a "cakewalk"), it's also pretty clear that Bush was warned, and warned over and over again what would happen...by experts, but most importantly, he was warned by these people, expressing their democratic rights in streets in cities all over the world.

In protecting American soil, Bush has laid waste the country of Iraq, has butchered foreign relations perhaps for decades, forced many Western governments to go against their own people, and has sent his own treasury bankrupt, with economic and humanitarian chaos on an unimaginable scale to follow, possibly globally.

And for what? A few votes, some profits for his friends in big business and for the sheer, pure hubris of one-upping daddy and his big brother Jeb. What a colossal waste. What a stupendous tragedy. We're all paying for it now, and will be for some time.

In ignoring their own people and worsening the plight of the Iraqi people, as well as the lives of the innocents of the future who will be killed or crippled by terrorist attacks, the Coalition governments (Australia included) have diminished, not enhanced, freedom in the world.

No matter how incomprehensible, the catastrophe of 9/11 was no excuse for visiting even greater catastrophe on the innocents of Iraq. There should have been a better way to get rid of Saddam than slaughtering his people.

Tony, I couldn't agree more.

 

The lack of unbiased reporting by American media has had large numbers of US citizens checking the BBC for relatively independent coverage (although the attitude of the US and GB forces means embedded journalists can't necessarily broadcast what and from where they want). So where's free America now? It seems that anyone pro-war tries to silence dissent.

 

Mike Johnston on the Killing of Mazen Dana

Great photo: good expressions and gestures and rich textures. Worthy of the rest of your good work.

 

I enjoyed reading your lucid comments very much. Let's hope the Bush crime family and their cronies pay for this mess with an election defeat or worse.

WHY?

I have lived under slavery. You morons that go on whining like that have just had it too good for too long. It's always "others" that have to fight for our freedom. Go to bed every night and ask God to bless America for protecting us from these evil doers. Are you really too stupid and uneducated to understand that all they want is to bury us? Read the KORAN. I am particularly suprised by Gold-stein.

Jan, you're quite hostile to criticism of America. I don't know what you meant by "I have lived under slavery", but obviously you feel you owe a debt of gratitude to America for rescuing you from that slavery. Lucky for you.

 

There are many other people around the world (drawn from the 95% of its population who are not Americans) who believe that America is the enslaver, not the rescuer. I don't personally regard myself as enslaved by America (or its government), but I can see the point of those who might. I can even recognize that their belief, in many cases, may well be grounded in fact.

 

There are many other people, who while not believing they have been enslaved, believe they have been lied to by the American government. These come from both inside and outside U.S. national boundaries.

 

Yet again, there are many - for instance in Iraq (about which the people in this picture are protesting) - who have no feelings, as they are dead: dead from being shot up at checkpoints by nervous GIs, dead from malnutrition due to ten years of sanctions, dead from cluster bombs, or murdered by common criminals as a result of the breakdown of law and order in Iraq (Rumsfeld's "messy" freedom) since the invasion. These people do not thank God for American intervention in their country. Many of them feel less free - free to go about their business in a peaceable fashion - than they were, even under Saddam.

 

Their feelings are just as valid as yours, and no less right or wrong. They do not care to have "freedom" forced down their throats at the point of a gun, if the result is the death or dismemberment of them or their families (or both). Have they no right to hold these opinions, as strongly as you seem to hold yours? Are they no less "correct" in holding these opinions (especially when their country was nearly destroyed by a war based on lies and exaggerations invented by the so-called "neocons")? Their freedom - in a form they choose, not in a form that others choose - is just as valid as the freedom you value so much.

 

Add to this the "crusader" mentality of many of the invaders, their generals and their Christian fundamentalist supporters (supporters both financially and morally), spouting generalizations about the Bible versus the Koran (a name you cannot even bring yourself to spell), and who can blame them for being hostile and suspicious towards the American "Christian" government and its true motives, whatever they are?

 

Why should people with Jewish names (the "Goldstein" you mentioned) automatically support the American intervention in Iraq? Is this not just encouraging yet another religous knee-jerk reaction to further escalate sectarian hatred in the Middle East? Why do we in the West need to sink to religon (which has killed more millions than all other causes) to prove our point? Does that not make us just like the jihadists we (or, at least you) claim to despise?

 

Do you believe everyone in Iraq is necessarily a terrorist because they fight for their country? Mightn't you fight for yours, if yours was invaded?

 

You have your freedom, Jan. Allow others the luxury of having theirs.

 

 

Toby, your comments are yours to make and why should you be "slaughtered" for them? Last I heard no-one used WMDs on Photo.Net when they disagreed with someone else's post.

I don't see what's wrong with hating Bush, myself. Right-wingers in the US have lately criticised liberals for "loathing" or, as you put it, "hating" Bush, as if that's some kind of strange phenomenon in politics. Politics is dirty and I think you're being a little disingenuous, (or perhaps partisan?) in implying that hatred of the opposition is purely a "liberal" trait.

Anyhow, I'm sure George W. can take the opprobrium. He's one hell of a tough guy. Why, they even heckled him in the Australian parliament last month, and he shook hands with the hecklers afterwards (two Australian senators... the public weren't admitted or permitted to idolize their Hero In A Bubble... all we got to see were the F-18s on patrol overhead and the 700 secret service personnel, doing their best to protect him from experiencing anything approaching dissent).

The alternative, if right-wingers are to get their way, is to not criticise Bush at all, because your country is "at war". Let's keep our eye on the ball, guys. But if this was taken to its logical conclusion, then Bush could never be criticised, as long as he kept the country at war... whether or not that war was justified. This is a recipe for perpetual war.

Every politician, every political decision, posture and action is or should be subject to criticism, specifically including criticism of Bush's method of combatting terrorists.

Speaking of terrorists, you seem to confuse Saddam's Iraq with al Qaeda and their terrorist allies. Last month, Bush specifically denied there was a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet the stories keep on popping up don't they? Bush is having a bet each way on this: he denies the connection, while Cheney, Feith, and our old friends Fox News keep ramping it up to a fever pitch. This is very cynical politics, of course, but we shouldn't criticise the President for it: America's at war, isn't it?

Next, for some accurate history. Saddam did not gas 2 million of his own people. The most anyone has ever claimed is that he gassed five thousand Kurdish villagers. A quibble, but an important one, seeing as your figures are out by a factor of 200:1.

Second piece of accurate history: Saddam was propped up in power when his regime looked shaky, and armed by the United States. He is very much America's man. In December 1983, Rumsfeld himself went to Baghdad, shook hands with Saddam (have you seen the video news footage?), and gave him billions of dollars worth of arms, technological know-how and encouragement. Why? Because Saddam was fighting Iran and America didn't like Iran.

Why is it that when he is killing Iranians (and his own people) he's a cool guy, and a loyal ally, but when he's killing Kuwaitis (and his own people) he's suddenly a murdering despot... and called so by the SAME people who were his friends and business partners before? Beats me.

What did Rumsfeld give Saddam? Missiles, CIA "interrogation" training (set up a rape room in your own backyard, Mr. Saddam), small arms, tanks, planes - all the usual tools of death reserved for "special" friends doing America's dirty work for it - and also the blueprints for "fertiliser" factories (kindly provided by Kodak, Monsanto, Honeywell, Boeing and many other current George W. Bush re-election campaign donors).

Who sent Rumsfeld? None other than vice-president George "Daddy" Bush. Ronald Reagan had given him special oversight over Middle Eastern affairs. Daddy Bush was, of course, a previous head of the CIA, where he presided over the recruitment of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as his proxies in the Russian-Afghanistan conflict. Later on, both Daddy and Junior did business with the bin Laden family. Oil business. It wasn't Osama himself in the BCCI boardroom and the Arbusto Nos. I, II, III, IV etc. offices (the CIA went to his cave in Tora Bora to close the deals they did with him), but it was his brother, his uncle, his cousin, and for all we know his aunties as well.

See the connection? You help us, we'll help you and your family... especially if there's a whiff of crude in the air and a head start for young Georgie Dubya.

But back to Iraq...

One of the biggest red herrings regarding the Iraq war is that anything new HAD to be done about Saddam at all. Bush has pushed the argument (if you can call all that flying-the-flag stuff an "argument") that Saddam had to be taken down because he had WMDs and he was going to use them soon against America, or give them to someone else to use against America. The U.N. had been searching for WMDs for ten years, but hadn't found any after the mid-nineties.

This must mean the U.N. was incompetent, right?

Er, no...

As we all now know, despite the efforts of *thousands* of wide-rangeing coalition (most U.S.) WMD inspectors since May 2003, nothing new has been found. Certainly not in the quantities and richly described volumes of the U.S. administration's main promoters and purveyors of war against Iraq.

Need I remind you of Cheney's imminent "mushroom cloud" of last year? Or Rumsfeld's treasure map, describing "exactly where they are... between Baghdad and Tikrit"? Or Bush's "thousands" of tons of chemical munitions? Or Blair's missiles "that could reach Cyprus"? Yet nothing has been found.

Nix. Zip. Zero. Nought. The Big "0".

And this is after six months of searching by dedicated people, with full access to both the country and the Iraqi scientists (which the U.N. inspectors did not have, and did not have time to negotiate). The inspectors found a Big Nothing, Toby.

Oh, they say they found "plans" and "programs", but upon examination these plans and programs went back ten or twelve, even fifteen years and were palpably pipe-dreams, especially the nuclear plans: Saddam had no gas centrifuge-equipped processing plant and no yellowcake (uranium ore) - despite Bush's best attempts to plant them on him (the Niger scam and the aluminum pipes fiasco). If you ain't got a factory and you ain't got uranium, but you've got big nuclear "plans", that spells "pipe-dream" to me (forgive the pun).

So we go onto the NEXT excuse for war: Saddam is a bad man. In case you hadn't noticed, Toby, there are a lot of bad men around, lurking in shadows. Why pick on Saddam as first bad man off the rank?

They picked Saddam because he was weak, poor and beatable (and he had oil that was about to be priced in Euros). It's the classic bully-boy approach. To use a childhood analogy (as you did): you find the skinniest kid in the playground who'll fight you back (but only for a few seconds) and beat him up as a lesson to the others.

Saddam was no threat. He had no WMDs. He had no atom bombs. Bush has admitted he had no connection with al Qaeda (Bush's father, when he was at the CIA, had more and bloodier connection with al Qaeda than Saddam ever did). But he WAS easy to beat up on. So we (yes "we", Australia went along for the ride, one of only three countries to participate in the pointy end of the war) went and beat him up.

But invading Iraq isn't really just beating up Saddam. Iraq is a country, and it has citizens. And we beat them up too. Big Time.

Estimates range from five to ten-thousand deaths and countless casualties among the Iraqi civilian population as a direct result of the invasion. I read you didn't believe the figures. How convenient. What else did "shock and awe" mean, Toby? A fireworks display?

A lot of Iraqis nowadays claim the cure was worse than the disease. I have to admit there's something kinda kooky about Bush - with a straight face - claiming he's bringing democracy to Iraq (and if they don't want it, he'll order his troops to spray a few more civilians at checkpoints until they do). This is bully-boy tactics, and I reckon it's OK to dislike, even hate (if you're into hate) bully-boys.

The U.N. resolution: the U.N. decides how it enforces its own resolutions, not America. America has not paid its annual dues for the last umpteen years to the U.N., yet it claims to be its champion. Huh? When it came to a formal Security Council vote for or against military action, America chickened out of it because it became apparent that not only would France (and perhaps Russia) have used their vetos, but that even a simple majority would not be forthcoming. So Powell et al used the grand old American tradition: get your lawyer to argue with their lawyer about the fine points and meanwhile... invade anyway.

And oh, Toby, how casually you say, "Yes, innocent civilians die in war...". They don't just die, Toby. They're ripped apart by random machine gunning, blown to pieces by cluster bombs, burnt alive by cruise missiles, buried under tons of rubble, sickened by foul water, they lie unattended in hospitals, they have "heart attacks" while being interrogated... The LUCKY ones die, Toby. The unlucky ones live on, without limbs, eyes, skin... they live on. Saddam has no mortgage on barbarity. You guys do it too. It's just that by the time it gets on TV it's all kinda pretty pictures: the "gun-toting" Jessica Lynch, the Stars and Stripes, the "good guys" and the "bad guys", the crackpot ex-generals, colonels, captains, corporals, privates - anyone! - who'll give us a patriotic heads up about how we're gonna whup their asses for 'em: cartoon representations of hideous death-dealing, dressed up as spin-doctored patriotism and saccharine morality.

Meanwhile the body bags come in at night: un-photographed, unsung, and unmourned by the man whose orders caused their deaths, except if there's a "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging nearby, a photo opportunity for his re-election campaign.

Remember... the surviving wounded Iraqi civilians are o

Oddly enough, Peter A., you wrote your post on the very day that Australia's population ticked over the 20 million mark.

 

OK, so your error was trivial, but some of your others are not.

 

Before we get down to disagreement, let's see where you and I agree.

 

Yes, I agree the Australian government's motivations are, at least in part, venal. We wanted that trade deal (which I agree is looking more than a little problematic at the moment) and Howard has used controversies like the "kids overboard" incident for crass political purposes. We have been lurching from one manufactured crisis to the next: we are always "in danger" and people know Howard has a heart of stone and will do "the right thing" on their behalf.

 

I think, also, that there is a "man of destiny" element to Howard's actions on terrorism: he was in Washington when the plane hit the Pentagon, "Johnny On The Spot" as it were. He was, two days later, the first foreign political leader to address the Congress.

 

Wrap all these mythic and political phenomena up together and Howard could hardly help giving the U.S. a hand, given his right-wing predilections in the first place.

 

But Peter, I do take issue with what seems to be your central premiss: that, somehow or other, killing Iraqis, even deposing Saddam had anything to do with the War On Terror. And you're not the only one. Bush touts this flawed logic too.

 

The plain fact of the matter is that Saddam was one of your common or garden despots. Yes, he did awful things to his own people. Yes, once upon a time he had WMDs. Yes, he might have even had a couple of meetings with low-level al Qaeda emissaries over the years (only to tell them to nick off).

 

But today no WMDs have been found. If he had them my guess is he would have used them. After all that's what we were told they were for: use in battle. And he didn't use them. My conclusion is that he didn't have them.

 

Why didn't he have them?

 

Because the U.N. effectively supervised their disposal after the first Gulf War.

 

The trap to fall into when asked "What would YOU have done?" by pro-war people is to try and think up something NEW to have done. It seems that what WAS being done (inspections followed by disposal) was the correct course. It worked. Bush's war was against an enemy that had long before become a paper tiger.

 

Now either Bush (and Howard) knew the WMDs were gone, or wasn't sure about them, or was sure they were still there (the official line in the run-up to the war).

 

If the former is true then the war was prosecuted entirely on false pretences... false pretences that killed thousands.

 

If either of the latter two possibilities is true then there was a catastrophic failure of intelligence.

 

My suspicion was that Bush did not care whether the weapons were there or not; a combination of all three. I believe the war was fought for all sorts of reasons OTHER than the given ones. Paul Wolfowitz admitted as much recently when he admitted that the WMD issue was the one thing that everyone could sign-off on: the one really big scary issue that would get them over the start line.

 

There were plenty of other issues that could have been behind the scenes: the geopolitical aspirations of the neo-cons for example. Attacking the neo-cons as conspirators is usually mockingly dismissed as paranoia, "another conspiracy theory".

 

Apart from the fact that many "another conspiracy theories" are often found, years later (and sometimes sooner), to have been correct (e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the deposing of Allende in Chile and Mossadegh in Iran by the CIA and MI5, Iran-Contra, our own "kids overboard" lie, our own "invitation" from LBJ to come to Viet Nam when it was actually Menzies who begged for the opportunity to go), you only have to read the neo-con website, www.newamericancentury.org, to see what their wet-dreams for the Middle East are all about. It surely can't be a coincidence that these guys - Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Cheney, Rumsfeld and many others - wrote about reforming the Middle East and occupying it in perpetuity and, now that they are in the most senior positions of the American government, their proposals are actually happening. I think believeing in such a coincidence stretches credulity a bit too far. The neo-cons wrote up their plan, got jobs in the administration, and now their plan is being carried out. If you believe that's serendipity then you're not as hard-boiled as you make out, Pete.

 

No-one believed Hitler was serious in Mein Kampf, either. But he was. Every word of it came true.

 

Australia went to war on the same basis as our entry into Viet Nam: we wanted to curry favour with the great and powerful. This is a restatement of your "Australia must be part of a gang" realpolitik theory.

 

But do we?

 

So far, all we've done is increase our profile in the worst way possible: we're now a REAL terrorist target, if we weren't one before. We're apart from the U.N. (of which Doc Evatt, Australian Attorney General and High Court justice, was a founding father and President of the General Assembly in 1948). We're drifting away from South East Asia, our neighbours. Our population is divided by wedge politics. And worst of all: we had to put up with George W. Bush's fatuous "I love Freedom" speech in our own Parliament.

 

What have we got back from this alliance?

 

Our agricultural trade with Iraq and the rest of the Middle East is over, in favour of American corporations. We're being asked to sacrifice our cherished pharmaceutical scheme, and our film, financial and services industries in exchange for a biased "Free Trade" deal with the U.S. (which the U.S. will always find a way to back out of, but we won't be allowed to). Where's the dividend, Peter? How is this, as you put it, "protecting our way of life"?

 

As almost always, this deal we've done with America, and the future dependent deals we're about to do will leave us out in the cold. It's not realpolitik, it's folly.

 

Yes, I agree with you that our Australian society is a "selfish elitist, pathetically introspective" one. Many of the people in this pic probably changed their minds about the war once the shooting started. My explanation for this is multi-faceted. First, they're sheep, and sheep get scared if all they can find in their newspapers and their press is terror and WMDs. They rallied 'round the flag, too. They showed solidarity with "our boys". And yes, they thought it was their business to help get rid of Saddam, while leaving most of the other murdering despots of the world unchecked and full trade partners. Australia is such a "wowser nation": we disapprove so readily.

 

The solution to the problem of terror is leadership. But what kind of leadership? The kind that butts its head against a wall shooting up villages and the people in them. The kind that destroys a country for cynical reasons in order to save it? Or the kind the genuinely and in good faith looks to the origins of conflict and honestly tries to bring equity and redress to the situation?

 

We need good leaders. Bush and Howard are not those people.

Those words again, "oddly enough"...

 

Oddly enough, Thucydides has been of my lifelong constant literary companions (well, at least since my late teens). I read it last in May-June 2001 while in the Greek islands, naturally. I still have my original high school paperback copy.

 

Pericles' Funeral Oration, followed by the Mytilene and Miletus debates say it all about the dangers of demagoguery and arrogance of empire. It starts off with pride in a country's achievements, moves on to blunders oh-so-democratically arrived at (and re-arrived at, but this time diametrically opposed to the first), and finally onto naked, cynical abuse of power... "You're with us or against us."

 

Need I say that Syracuse was a fitting fate for Athens, ruled by spin doctors, led eventually by honourable men (but committed to war originally by dishonourable men) and too in love with its own propaganda to realise that even they had limits to what they could force others to do?

 

If I misunderstood your previous post, Peter, let me be the first to apologize.

 

On the subject of leadership, it's amazing how much buzz there was in the street today in Beecroft about Latham. Beecroft (where I live) is in Ruddock's electorate, so for complete strangers to come up to me and start political discussions, even arguments (until they realised I was Labor too), was quite extraordinary. The whole checkout queue joined in, half a dozen people. Young and old. Customers and staff. The general tone was overwhelmingly positive. Lots of smiles and enthusiasm. People are talking politics again.

 

Maybe we'll get that leadership someday.

 

 

Make that Nutty-Sweet Muscat and you've got a deal.