AUSTRALIA'S MORAL COWARDICE The Australian government wants to attack Iraq preemptively because the Iraqis won’t allow the UN to inspect their weapons facilities. Meanwhile, the government opposes the UN protocol on torture because it doesn’t want the UN to inspect its prison facilities. Neither position has much to do with Australian self-interests. It is doubtful that there is torture being carried out in Australian prisons, and it is impossible to see what threat Saddam, the countries biggest buyer of its wheat, poses to Australian society. These are just examples of a foreign policy increasingly dictated by foreign directives. The cancellation of Iraqi wheat sales and the US ambassadors chilling warning that Australia is now, like America, a likely terrorist target and the famously relaxed Australian people need to stop being so relaxed are examples of the high price that is now being paid for such policies. All the time, the Howard government has characterized its position as standing with the world against terror. When opposition leader Simon Crean questioned foreign minister Alexander Downer’s bellicose rhetoric on Iraq, the government accused him of “taking the Iraqi side”. You are either with America, or you are against Australia is the message. The Howard government’s dichotomous view of the world is based on one of the most enduring myths of the last fifty years: the idea that America enjoys a position of leadership over some vacuous “free world” – to which Australia proudly belongs. If America is the leader of the free world, then it is increasingly unclear who its followers are. In recent months, the Americans have unilaterally acted against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, Biological Weapons and Toxic Weapons Convention and tried to sabotage the establishment of the International Court. Their actions have drawn condemnation and scorn from the “free world”. The fallacy of American leadership is best demonstrated in the United Nations. Whenever it has benefited American interest, regardless how questionable, America has aggressively opposed the very same “free world” it claims to be leading. America is, after all, the only country having the dubious distinction of refusing to vote to ratify the Rights of the Child in December 1987. In the same month, America stood with Israel in voting against 153 other UN-members in opposing any effort to define terrorism and to convene a conference to study its causes and seek solutions. Even the right of nations to develop is something that America took exception to. In 1986, she voted against 146 other countries in opposing such a right. A few years later, US ambassador Morris Abram termed such an idea, “little more than an empty vessel into which vague hopes and inchoate expectations can be poured” and no less than a “dangerous incitement”. The fact that this declaration was a subset of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was deemed irrelevant. On December 13, 1985, America again voted alone against 134 countries in opposing the declaration of the indivisibility and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights. Whilst the “free world” was opposing apartheid in South Africa, America was voting alone against UN efforts to sanction the South African government. Between 1978 and 1987 there were over 10 such instances. In November, 1981, America voted alone against what most of the world considers to be the definition of democracy; America opposed 126 other states in rejecting the right of every society to choose its own economic and social system in accord with the will of its people. In 1979, the United States and Israel voted together to oppose the UN convening a conference on the rights of women. After losing the vote, they would opt for a second-best solution and later vote against the inclusion of Palestinian women at the conference. In 1982 and 1983, the US was alone in voting against a declaration that education, work, health care, proper nourishment and national development are human rights. Thirteen years later in 1996, the US would affirm the same opposition at the UN sponsored World Food Summit. The reason given for the opposition was that recognition of a right to food would enable poor nations to sue the United States for special trade deals. By allying itself so blindly with America on everything from an attack on Iraq through to the abandonment of Australian citizens held without trial in Guantanamo Bay, Australia is ignoring this history. It is also ignoring the current reality of a world that is increasingly opposed to US unilateralism and belligerence. America's history demonstrates the fallacy of the notion that American economic and military might necessitate moral ascendancy. As the American actor Will Rogers noted, "If we ever pass out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone, "America died of the delusion she had moral leadership". It is morally perfidious that a country would refuse to make any distinction between American interests and its own because they want a ‘special relationship’ with the Americans. A nation’s pride is intrinsically linked to its independence and its sincerity to its own interests and values. Each time Australia acquiesces to American self-interest in deference to its own, it kills something of itself. Australia is becoming, as Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, the coward who dies a thousand deaths before his death. As the government frog-marches the Australian nation towards becoming a vassal state to the American empire, those that question the transformation will continue to be vilified as somehow unpatriotic or disloyal to the national interest. For a lesson in true patriotism, Australians should look to Andrew Fletcher of Salloun, the 18th century Scottish patriot. He said, "Show me a true patriot, and I will show you a lover not merely of his own country, but of all mankind. Show me a spurious patriot, a bombastic fire-eater, and I will show you a rascal. Show me a man who loves other countries equally with his own, and I will show you a man entirely deficient in a sense of proportion. But show me a man who respects the rights of all nations, while ready to defend the rights of his own against them all, and I will show you a man who is both a nationalist and an internationalist". ---- Amir Butler is executive director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC) Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee PO Box 180 Pascoe Vale South VIC 3044 email: info@muslimaffairs.com.au web: www.muslimaffairs.com.au