Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement – Iraq

The Green Party comes to the debate we’ve been having on the impending war in Iraq with a mixture of happiness and sadness.

We are happy that the Labour government hasn’t signed up to a unilateral US-led attack on Iraq, despite the pressure it must have been under from George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard.

But we are sad that Helen Clark said in her speech yesterday that New Zealand would be “obliged” to consider contributing to a war against Iraq, if it was sanctioned by the UN Security Council. She has talked about providing logistic support, or sending medical units.

This disturbs us deeply. Whether an invasion is unilateral or UN-endorsed, it would needlessly lead to the death or injury of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and devastate much of the country.

It is clear that the killing and destruction would be “needless”, in that no one claims that Iraq is about to launch an attack on a neighbouring country.

Helen Clark argues that as a loyal member of the United Nations we are obliged to implement Security Council decisions.

Such an approach has no moral or legal credibility. It was clearly established by the Nuremberg Tribunal that obeying orders or implementing a decision made by a higher body was no excuse for participating in mass murder. And we are talking about mass murder. United States strategists are talking about sending 800 cruise missiles against Iraq in the first 48 hours, and crippling water and electricity supplies. It has been described as the Shock and Awe strategy.

“There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.”

It would be tragic if the Security Council did endorse the murder of many thousands of Iraqis. It would hugely undermine its credibility and threaten its future.

It is precisely because the Greens are such strong supporters the UN that we think our government would be obliged to do everything possible to stop such a disastrous decision being implemented.

The Security Council would only support an invasion of Iraq as a result of arm-twisting by the Bush administration. Jim Sutton has already explained that this is going on. It is clear from speeches and questions in this House over the last couple of days that some parties are feeling the pressure to go along with the American superpower. If some of us feel pressured just think what it must be like for a developing nation reliant on US support for aid, loans and a market for its goods.

We would not be alone if we didn’t join a UN-endorsed assault. Most of the members of General Assembly would be opposed to it, and not contribute anything.

When she was an anti-Vietnam War protester Helen Clark would never agree that because the National government had committed us to that war constitutionally we were obliged to go along with it. She probably admired Muhammad Ali for resisting the draft in the US.

In those days too she would have wanted the antiwar voice of New Zealanders to be heard as loudly as possible in the corridors of Washington. Some of the biggest anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in New Zealand were against visiting US dignitaries, such as President Johnson.

What has changed for Helen Clark? There was only oblique criticism of the Bush administration in her speech yesterday. She even gave credibility to US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation justifying a war, saying that “he did present a case based on intelligence which strong suggested a pattern of deception [by Iraq] and concealment of such programmes.”

It was shameful for our Prime Minister to give any endorsement to a speech that was itself so full of “deception” and “concealment” of the truth. Here was Colin Powell, described as the liberal of the Bush administration, telling bare-faced lies about an al-Qaeda link to Saddam. As the Dominion Post tells us, even America’s intelligence community is outraged. The spooks have told Bush and Powell that there is no link between the al-Qaeda fundamentalists and the secular Saddam regime.

By echoing some of the Bush administration’s arguments, and being rather meek in any criticism, the Labour government is betraying New Zealand’s mission as an advocate of peace.

The world is at a critical juncture and it is incumbent on all of us politicians to do what we can to stop this disastrous drive to war. It is not something we leave up to the big countries, like France and Germany. We should be out on the front edge, working publicly and privately with all those countries opposed to the war. We should never offer as an excuse that we are small and cannot do much.

That is not the attitude that Helen Clark took when she was in the 4th Labour government, marching on anti-nuclear protests and pushing through our anti-nuclear legislation.

Her argument then was that we can make a real difference. Our nuclear-free stand resonated around the world and gave that little bit more hope to millions of people on all continents.

We were the Mouse that Roared. Now we are the mouse that can hardly squeak.

Achieving peace is a cumulative thing. The efforts of every individual and every government can add up to a powerful force that can stay the hand of the warmakers in Washington.

We appeal to the Labour government: become an advocate for peace in Iraq. Don’t stand on the sidelines, or half in Bush’s camp. We appeal to the individual MPs in the Labour Party. So many of you have been on peace marchers. Stand up in this House and oppose the war — oppose any war on Iraq.

We would also like you to join the Green MPs on the big peace marches this weekend. We will be all around the country, in Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. We will part of an outpouring of protest around the world that will see huge marches in places like London, Berlin, Melbourne and Sydney.

One of the slogans on all the protests will be “No Blood for Oil”. Green Party MPs are proud to carry such a slogan. Would Labour MPs? Have they got the honesty and the fortitude to address one of the main reasons for the war, which is desire of the big corporates behind the Bush administration to achieve greater control over Middle East oil — including the oil reserves of Iraq, which are the second largest in the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Labour MPs will. The Labour Party seems still to have a dollar each way with the United States. They gently offer some criticism, then tell the Bush officials that they are really in their camp. Why else would we have chosen this critical time, in the buildup to an invasion of Iraq, to send a frigate (and soon an Orion) to the Persian Gulf. One of the frigates tasks is to escort US and British warships through the straits of Hormuz into the southern Persian Gulf. Another is to track all ships in the area and pass on this information to the US aircraft carrier on board which the invasion is being planned. Surely both these things are useful to American preparations for the war. And Helen Clark says the frigate will not be brought home, even in the event of a war.

Of course, the Greens don’t want Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction. But there is an inspection process in place, which is continuing and so far hasn’t found any weapons. At this point there is no reason to believe that the inspectors can’t successfully and peacefully complete their mission.

We only wish the inspection process and destruction of nuclear weapons would be extended to all the nuclear states: America, Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel.

Perhaps we should start with the country with the biggest stocks, the United States, which is also the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and has been the biggest user of chemical weapons — it dropped 17 million tons of agent orange on Vietnam during its war there.

Which brings us back to Vietnam and the horrors being perpetrated on that country by the same superpower that now threatens Iraq.

There are many people who today sit in this House that were then proud to march against war and injustice.

I ask again: what’s changed?