BY ALISON DELLIT
It didn't take long for the corporate media to fall even further behind backing Washington's war on Iraq. On March 19, the day after Prime Minister John Howard announced his government had officially committed Australian troops to the US-led war on Iraq, the main Fairfax-owned dailies — the Melbourne Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review — joined the Murdoch-owned papers in printing editorials supportive of Howard's position.
On March 20, as the bombs were dropping and thousands of Australians were taking to the streets in protest, the corporate media racheted up the heat by embarking on a discussion about whether protesters would "harass" troops returning from the Gulf. This discussion — raised when the conflict had barely begun, let alone finished — was designed to shift the focus of public debate away from the issue of the US-led aggression against Iraq and towards the "need" for national unity in support of "our" troops.
Nationalism — the idea that all Australians have interests more in common in with each other than with any foreigners — is a tried and true tactic to encourage support for imperialist wars. By suggesting that "all" Australians should "support" the troops by leaving them where they are and ensuring they have the best equipment to slaughter Iraqis, the corporate media hopes to cow ordinary Australians into supporting the war by default.
In contrast to the danger posed to the troops from mythically abusive protesters, the danger to them from the depleted uranium used by the US in its artillery shells has received startlingly little publicity. If Howard really cared about the safety of Australian soldiers, he won't have sent them to participate in a war whose only purpose is expand the US corporate elite's control over Persian Gulf oil.
The cynical "support the troops" card was also being played by Howard and his cronies in parliament. "You have a right to protest", Howard bleated, "but direct these protests to the government, to me, not to those who are overseas on our behalf." Howard need not have worried. Not one of the 30,000 protesters I watched march past me on Sydney on March 20 appeared critical of individual soldiers — but plenty carried anti-Howard placards.
We can expect this nationalistic "support the troops" pressure to increase, as Australia's rulers closes ranks around the war effort, and the media space devoted to debating the morality of the war becomes increasingly squeezed out by debates about military tactics, with maps on which the Iraqi people disappear in favour of dots representing bombing targets.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 26, 2003.
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