International Socialists

By Australian socialists Louise O’Shea and Corey Oakley

"How terror took hold in our suburbs." "We're Next." "The face of evil."

These are the kind of headlines emanating from the supposedly respectable broadsheet papers, as the hysteria following the Bali bombings turned viciously on Australia's Muslim population.

Howard had little luck using the Bali bombing as ammunition to wage war on Iraq, but as a tool to whip up racism in Australia, it has been the best thing to happen to the Liberals since the Tampa and September 11.

Mosques have been firebombed, and attacks on Muslim women wearing veils on the street have increased. A new raft of repressive "anti-terrorist" legislation is back on the agenda.

And raids on Muslim families – complete with machine gun wielding scum from the Federal Police – cemented the atmosphere of hysterical racism.

All the racism built into Australian society has come to the fore.

With regards to the Bali bombings themselves, where was all the concern about the Balinese lives lost in the tragedy? While Australians were flown out to hospitals in Australia, the Balinese were left to rot in under-resourced Third World conditions.

On the same night as the Australians were killed, a bombing took place in Manado, the capital of mostly Christian North Sulawesi, which clearly targeted Indonesians. The media saw fit to completely ignore this tragedy.

Similarly, the day of mourning for the victims of Bali was one day before the anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV X, an Indonesian fishing boat carrying asylum seekers. 353 people drowned as the Australian Navy watched on and did nothing. Yet Howard still claims that terrorists are the biggest threat to people's safety!

John Howard's display of grief over dead Australians in Bali was breathtaking in its hypocrisy. His supposed concern stands in stark contrast to his main occupation – attacking the living standards of these very same Australians.

Since he's been in office, Howard has made life unbearable for hundreds of thousands of workers by cutting back welfare, health and education spending, as well as by attacking the unions which defend wages and working conditions. Howard expects the 7.1 percent of Australians currently unemployed to live below the poverty line on $180 a week, while the Australian Council of Social Services estimates that 13 percent of the total population live in poverty.

Despite this shameless disregard for the wellbeing of Australians, Howard expects that by pretending to care about their suffering following a particular tragedy, Australians will "rally together" (behind him) and unite as Australians. But as Howard's hypocrisy demonstrates, all Australians don't share a special bond just because they happen to be ruled by the same lot of smarmy politicians.

The policies of the Liberal government – made up entirely of "fellow Australians" – make the lives of ordinary Australians much more difficult, not refugees in detention centres. But so long as Howard can use events like the Bali bombing to convince people that they have more to fear from Muslim "terrorists" and refugees, he can get away with undermining living standards and attacking unions.

Is there a "national interest"?
Of course it didn't go all Howard's way. Opposition to the war held firm at over 50 percent of the population in the wake of the attack. The Greens have come out against the war, and the ALP has tentatively tried to distance itself from the Liberals' hardline pro-war stance. But their opposition to war is couched firmly in the terms of Australia's "national interest."

Following the Bali bombings, Greens Senator Bob Brown stated that "this event underscores the need for Australia to have a policy of regional defence and engagement rather than global stratagems at the behest of Washington. Australia should not join the invasion of Iraq. We should concentrate our resources in the neighbourhood."

What? So the SAS should be brought home from the Middle East to invade Indonesia or to raid Muslim homes?

And Simon Crean posed his hesitations about fully supporting a war on Iraq, not in terms of opposition to US imperialism or the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis, but rather by arguing that war on Iraq is not an effective way of fighting terrorism.

The fact that there is mainstream opposition to the war is of vital importance. But the nationalistic framework for this opposition, in essence, justifies the attacks on Muslims in Australia. What is talk of "regional security" other than an excuse to pass repressive new "anti-terrorist" laws?

What is it other than a justification of armed raids on people's houses, a justification for increased military spending to protect "our" borders from supposedly crazed Indonesian Islamists?

The Greens in particular say they are opposed to the crackdown on civil liberties, and the racism associated with "fighting terrorism" in our own backyard. But their acceptance that the question of what we need to do about terrorism is on a par with fighting the threat of war pushes them in the direction of lining up with the racists.

To consistently fight against war and racism we need to be clear that, far from sharing any kind of "national interest" with our rulers, they are the main enemy.

The real threat to our security is posed by attacks on our unions and student organisations and by ASIO thugs, backed to the hilt by Howard and Crean. The US spy base at Pine Gap, designed to coordinate the intercontinental nuclear missiles of the US military, is an infinitely greater threat to human life than any terrorist. The Australian ruling class lobbied the US for decades for the right to have such a weapon of mass destruction on Australian soil.

All the talk about the "national interest" is also used to cover up the bloody role of Australian militarism in the region. East Timor is a clear case in point.

For 25 years Australian governments backed Indonesia's bloody occupation of East Timor to preserve "stability" in the region. John Howard did not send troops to Timor in 1999 because he was in the least bit concerned about the lives of the East Timorese but because the Indonesian military had failed to suppress the independence movement and could no longer guarantee "stability."

Australian troops were sent in to preserve Australia's "strategic interests" and to pave the way for Australian businesses to dominate the new East Timorese economy. So now Telstra runs the telecommunications sector and Australia gets ten percent of East Timorese oil for nothing. Australia's domination of the Asia Pacific region is no different than that of the US on a much larger scale – and both should be opposed.

Socialists oppose wars because they involve the murder of innocent people, the destruction of the environment and communities, and they end up costing workers in the countries that wage them billions of dollars in military expenditure. And all in the name of profit.

But the central question is the expansion of the influence of the world's superpowers and their constituent multinationals. National pride – identification of the interests of the mass of people with the interests of a government or nation state – is a key ideological tool which people like George W. Bush and John Howard use to try and convince us to go along with war. For this reason the anti-war movement must consistently oppose nationalism if we are to convince masses of people to oppose war.

Over the next nine years, the Australian government plans to increase military spending by $23.5 billion. This money will undoubtedly come out of the health, welfare and education budgets, making life much more difficult for workers.

Workers in Australia have so much more to gain by standing with their counterparts in Iraq, the US and the rest of the world against their governments, who are more interested in killing people than feeding them. Only by rejecting nationalism and opposing the war internationally can the priorities of this murderous world system be challenged.

So for all John Howard's tears, the forgotten victims of the Bali bombing will be Iraqis who will die in the upcoming war, and the Australian workers who will end up paying for it.