The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group's newsletter.
“July 24, 2016
“Dear Comrades,
“Sad, sad times for mother earth with its wars and
environmental and economic devastation. No wonder so many are unhinged. Evil
begetting evil in spades. Some a direct consequence of the Iraq inferno. Six
years in the writing, Chilcot’s damning 6000-page report on Iraq (so far we’ve
only had a précis), spelled out some of the catastrophic consequences, but only
told part of the story.
“A Nuremburg trial would have been a better option for the
Bush/Blair/Howard war criminals. Blalr snivelled about his dishonourable role
and then had the gall to say the world is ‘better and safer’ as a result, with
the other two amigos from the Coalition of the Willing agreeing. If they were
helicoptered into Iraq, into Libya, into Syria, into Afghanistan, into the Gaza
Strip, and left for an indefinite period, they might think again.
“But why is Gulf War One (1990-91) never mentioned? George
Bush Snr's ‘Operation Desert Storm’ (launched to catch New York’s evening news)
left Iraq on its knees. US men in their killing machines unleashed 90,000
around-the-clock bombing runs, the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas,
precipitating one of the great civilian slaughters of the late 20th century.
“The cluster bombs, the fuel air bombs, the napalm, the
phosphorous and fearful anti-personnel weaponry with names like Adam, Beehive
and Bouncing Betty, went hand-in-hand with a decade of savage sanctions that
destroyed Iraq’s entire infrastructure, its electricity, clean water, sewerage,
communications, hospitals, schools and agriculture. Spare parts, embargoed like
hospital equipment, drugs and pain-killers. Iraq was finished, but apparently
not enough for George Bush Jnr and his clique of neo-cons who used 9/11 to
unleash ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ and full-on invasion and occupation,
trumpeting it was ‘the greatest moral crusade since the Second World War’, a
‘moral crusade’ Australia rushed to join.
“But this wasn’t a war against generals or presidents. This
was a war against ordinary people, people like us walking along roads,
travelling in buses, in hospitals, in coffee shops, going to school, going to
work, going to the market.
“The bombs weren’t unleashed to protect human rights. Gulf
Wars One and Two were wars for oil, for US strategic interests and a reminder
to the rest of the world that the global cop was back on the beat. To con us,
PR hacks and spin doctors went to work with their phoney slogans and monstrous
lies like Hill and Knowlton and the powerful Rendon Group. As Robert Fisk
commented: ‘Don’t tell me that America would have invaded Iraq if its chief
export was beetroot’.
“This week we heard ad nauseum the rather clumsy plagiarism by Trump’s missus in her keynote address
to the Republican faithful. There were precedents. Tony Blair’s propaganda
dossier on Iraq was a cut-and-paste job pinched from a student’s website, large
slabs of which were then pinched by George W for his own inept presentation.
“But Washington believes it has a god-given right to do what
it likes against anyone not sufficiently up its backside, but not Australia.
Heavens no, we’ll give you what you want even before you ask! We were there during Indonesia’s brutal 1965
anti-communist purge after the US gave its nod of approval, during the Vietnam
War and had ASIS agents working with the CIA in the destruction of Allende’s Chile. We supply bases for their war games and
assassinations and manipulation of trade unions and ignore their biological
attacks against countries like Cuba.
“Currently, Washington has blockades against dozens of
countries. Makes me wonder about the recent visit of Vice Pres. Joe Biden. You
can bet London to a brick he didn’t come here to open Melbourne’s new cancer
centre or chat with a few political nonentities. Apart from demanding more
support for a buggeredup Iraq, what else?
“And here we are post-election, or what passed for one, with
important policies on by-pass. Greed is Good Malcolm is back licking his chops
getting ready to further stuff up our stuffed-up economy along with a new round
of dire warnings and threats, with Governor-General Cosgrove on hand if needed.
“Some may recall that a few years ago, the then Major
General Cosgrove, spoke at the Australian Army’s annual Land Warfare conference
in Sydney which was reported in the Financial Review. Cosgrove recommended that
the Australian Army should be prepared to to take part in operations against
civilian dissidents or militant trade unionists in an industrial situation. The
general warned that the attacks against the US had ‘blurred the hitherto quite
distinct boundaries of the functions and responsibilities of the security, law
and order and administrative arms of government…’ Thank you but no thank you,
Mr Cosgrove. One former jumped-up CIA-run Governor-General by the name of Kerr
is more than enough.
“In the UK Jeremy Corbyn has his back to the wall facing a
virulent campaign from the Tories and the Blairites. He supports trade unions,
the re-nationalisation of Britain’s railway system and ignores public opinion
polls, threatening the status quo.
“Union boss Len McClusky has accused Britain’s secret
agencies of using agents provocateurs to undermine Corbyn. ‘We found out a
couple of years ago that the chair of my union, the Transport and General
Workers, was an MI5 informant when a strike was taking place that I was
involved in (1972)’, said McClusky. ‘Anyone who thinks that isn’t happening
doesn’t live in the same world that I live in…that there’s not all kinds of
right-wingers able to disguise themselves and stir up trouble?’
“On the other side of Europe, Turkey’s hard man President
Erdogan is having a field day purging large swathes of the army, the judiciary,
municipalities, journalists, universities, anyone who might oppose him after
the aborted coup d’etat, lists prepared in advance by an ASIO-type outfit who
probably let the ‘coup’ roll on to justify his ‘cleansing’.
“So any chance you get, talk to people about a different
society, one that puts people before profits… Viva!
“Joan Coxsedge”
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