The Guardian 11 February, 2009

Editorial

Withdraw the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan

With an economic crisis deepening, unemployment climbing, people losing their homes, families being broken up, farmers and small businesses going to the wall, why did the Governor-General Quentin Bryce spend Australia Day in Afghanistan praising Australian troops there? Clearly, she was sent by the Rudd government, nationalistic speech that had been written for her in hand.

In the course of her brief speech in which she mentioned the word "courage" five times, Quentin Bryce referred to "members of the international coalition against terrorism". Let us put this in the context of the UN Charter which provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means and no nation can use military force except in self defence or when authorised by the Security Council.

After the attacks in New York in 2001 the Council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorised the use of military force in Afghanistan. Resolutions 1368 and 1373 condemned the September 11 attacks and ordered the freezing of assets; the criminalising of terrorist activity; the prevention of the commission of and support for terrorist attacks among other measures.

The invasion of Afghanistan was not legitimate self-defence under article 51 of the Charter because the attacks on September 11 were criminal attacks, not "armed attacks" by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the US (nor Australia for that matter).

Indeed, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the US after September 11: Bush waited three weeks before ordering the October 2001 bombing campaign. Bush's justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harbouring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists (ironically, Osama bin Laden is the last man standing; Bush, John Howard and Tony Blair are now political history).

Now Rudd is going to follow the US lead and redeploy some Australian troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. There are around 60,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. The US spends US$100 million a day on the war there. Australia spends $64 million a day on its military. Australia should be withdrawing its forces from the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not sending the representative of an outmoded monarch to legitimise our presence there.

A world of difference

China had gone for over 40 years without a significant downturn: for 30 years it was averaging 9.8 percent annual growth; real hourly workers' wages have been rising at least 9.8 percent a year over the past decade.

China's economy isn't free of problems because of the fact that it still exists within a world capitalist system on which it depends for investment, resources and trade. Thus the growth of China's industrial production has slowed. (China's growth rate is expected to "slow" to 6.5% in 2009, compared to -?0.7 in the US and -?1.78 in the EU.) Nonetheless, China's domestic economy is strong. Its imports are intended primarily to serve domestic needs and at the same those imports, from Japan, Indonesia, Australia etc have benefited those economies.

One sign of the direction China is taking can be found in the different responses to the global crisis by the US and Chinese governments. For example, while the US has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into propping up banks, China has pledged almost US$600 billion for affordable housing and necessary infrastructure. A world of difference.

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