Open letter to the Australian Labor Party : Troops out now!

John Howard’s Liberal-National Coalition government sent Australian troops to join the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Until recently, Labor’s policy was to bring the troops home by Christmas. But after the election, and to the dismay of many, the ALP leadership seems to be retreating from this policy arguing, among other things, that it isn’t practical.

Abandoning the troops home call would signal a retreat from the biggest moral and political issue of our time.

We, the undersigned call on the ALP not to junk its "troops out" policy.

Mark Latham’s call for the troops to be brought home came soon after the Spanish people had voted overwhelmingly against their pro-war president. If the ALP leadership had decided to campaign against the war in the last election, it too would have been rewarded - as was the Greens’ Andrew Wilkie who ran a strong anti-war campaign in Bennelong, NSW.

Public opinion was on side, and it gave inspiration to the peace movement. Finally, it seemed, the ALP had brought its policy into line with the views of the majority - that Australia has no business in an unjust and illegal war in Iraq.

Calls for more humanitarian assistance mean nothing when little can be done while a full-scale war of occupation continues.

Some 100,000 Iraqis are now presumed dead in this war - one hundred times the number of coalition troop losses. More than half were women and children killed in air strikes, according to a report in the respected medical journal The Lancet. And the current Coalition assault on Iraqi cities and towns to "eradicate" the resistance in the lead-up to the Iraqi elections scheduled for January is likely to massively increase that figure.

Farnaz Fassihi, an American journalist born in Iran who writes from Baghdad for The Wall Street Journal, describes the war as a "disaster". "The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and can’t be put back into a bottle", she said in October.

This is why the occupying troops must leave. They are not liberating Iraqis - they are killing them, indiscriminately. The departure of the relatively small number of Australian troops will send a powerful political signal - that the war in Iraq cannot end through military occupation.

As the former weapons’ inspector Scott Ritter put it "... 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, it adds credibility to those who oppose us".

Iraqis have the right to decide how to run their own country, and the majority wants the occupying forces to leave.

We call on the ALP not to back away from its pre-election pledge, and to campaign actively to bring the Australian troops home from Iraq.

Signed: Ian Cohen, Greens MLC, NSW; Rachel Siewart, Greens Senator elect WA; Greens Senator Kerry Nettle; Randwick Botany Greens; Lee Rhiannon, Greens MLC, NSW; Socialist Alliance; Socialist Alternative