The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 will prompt – is prompting – an avalanche of reminiscences and recollections, many of which are self-serving.
Few, if any, of these recollections are more self-serving than those of John Howard who has managed to shift attention away from his role in the disastrous events that succeeded 9/11 by keeping the focus on that day itself.
As Howard never tires of reminding us he was in Washington on the day that a commercial airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists ploughed into the Pentagon. His war and peace judgements thereafter were conditioned by that experience.
My purpose in this ‘short take’ is not to dwell on arguments for or against Australia’s ill-judged support for a series of ‘war and peace’ mistakes that ensued, but to draw attention to the role of a forgotten player in the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
That player is Simon Crean who was Leader of the Opposition during the pre-war period. Crean’s principled opposition to the rush to war was, arguably, his finest moment in politics.
Perhaps I should mention here that I was with Howard in Washington on 9/11 as political editor for The Australian Financial Review; I was in Canberra for much of the lead-up to the declaration of war on Iraq by the so-called Coalition of the Willing; I wrote an editorial for the AFR counselling against the rush to war; and I was in the region to report the beginning of the ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign against Saddam Hussein.
War was not a new experience for me. I had reported conflict in the Middle East for more than a decade from 1984-1993, and on occasions subsequently.
I had observed the destructiveness of war close up. I had seen its terrible consequences.
I was sceptical about arguments for going to war against a foe who as far as I could see posed no ‘clear and present danger’ to the West. This was the phrase deployed by Howard and those in the media who took it upon themselves to market the war.
Saddam Hussein was a menace, almost certainly a psychopath, a serial abuser of human rights, a torturer, someone who had used chemical weapons against his own people but an existential threat to Western interests? I didn’t think so.
Nor was I convinced that he possessed a cache of weapons of mass destruction that could be unleashed on his foes. UN weapons inspectors had not found anything before their mission was opportunistically cut short.
Saddam Hussein’s alleged involvement with al-Qaeda in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was unproven. Evidence at best was tenuous, and, as it proved, concocted.
All the justifications for the invasion of 2003 did not survive scrutiny for very long, and certainly did not endure much beyond the first shots fired. There was no WMD. The case against Saddam Hussein, some of which rested on the testimony of an Iraqi source known as ‘curveball’, proved to be a tissue of lies.
This brings us back to Simon Crean.
On January 14, I went to see Crean in his Treasury Place office in Melbourne to try to get him to define Labor’s position on Iraq. Labor policy on Iraq was cause at that stage of some confusion.
Crean himself was under pressure on a number of fronts. His leadership was being questioned, sections of the media were forecasting his demise, ambitious colleagues were manoeuvring against him.
Knowing all of this, Howard was doing what he did instinctively throughout his career: seeking to wedge the Labor Party on an issue on which there was far from unanimity.
There were those among Crean’s front-bench colleagues whose default position was to support whatever course of action America embarked upon in Iraq.
In those circumstances, and in Crean’s office below street level with the sight through slit windows of people’s legs walking by, I sought clarification on Labor’s Iraq policy.
Crean was having difficulty putting into a words a complex formula that had been imposed on him by shadow cabinet colleagues.
This is what I called at the time the heads we win, tails you lose formula where Crean was being obliged to avoid committing Labor to a defined position.
After a few attempts to elicit a clear-cut response, Crean outlined Labor policy in a way that clearly distinguished his party’s position in contrast to Howard’s ‘all-in with George W Bush’ approach.
These were words thrown back in Crean’s face in parliamentary debate and in newspaper commentary subsequently.
This is what Crean said:
We believe the UN process should be adhered to…We won’t support military action outside the authority of the UN.’’
The exception to this position might occur in the case of overwhelming UN Security Council support for military action, but where support for such action was subject to veto…In other words, we might need to assess such a situation in light of the circumstances of the veto.
What Crean had to say to the AFR that day meant for the first time since Vietnam, Australia’s mainstream political parties diverged on an important foreign policy issue.
This was no small thing.
It’s history now, but in his parliamentary statements, in media interviews, and in remarks farewelling the troops en route to the Middle East Simon Crean stuck to his guns in the face of political pressures and a media echo chamber.
Media commentary at the time was hysterical in its criticism of Labor’s opposition to Australia’s involved in the war. Robert Manne, in an essay in the Monthly in July, 2005 exposes the depths of this hysteria.
This past week, I called Crean at his home in Middle Park in Melbourne to refresh our memories of that encounter 18 years ago.
He drew my attention to two items that he had contributed 15 years after the fateful decision to go to war in Iraq.
In the first, an op-ed published in Fairfax papers published in 2018 on the 15th anniversary of the US decision to invade Iraq and Australia’s ‘foolhardy decision to participate in that illegal invasion’ Crean called for an inquiry.
As he pointed out Australia had not availed itself of the ‘searching equivalent’ of the UK’s Chilcot Inquiry into the origins of the Gulf war. That inquiry further shredded Tony Blair’s reputation.
Howard is fortunate no such inquiry has been conducted.
The second item Crean drew my attention to was a speech he gave on 4 December, 2018 at the Howard Library Old Parliament House with John Howard in the audience.
The title of Crean’s speech in the series Howard Government Retrospective III Trials and Tribulations 2001-2004 was titled the Political Mood and Public Opinion: the Challenge of Opposition.
Traversing Labor’s formula for opposing the war, including reference to the flawed intelligence on which the government of the day justified its decision, Crean said this.
We went to war on a lie. The consequences of that lie: 300,000 dead, most of them civilians, continuing instability and the rise of ISIS – and we were made a greater target for terrorist activity.
The Howard government made the largest single commitment of troops since Vietnam. The process also was flawed.
The decision to intervene militarily was never taken to Parliament and only at the very end to Cabinet.
There is no greater commitment a Prime Minister can make than that of committing our troops to war. It demands scrutiny and it demands honesty. On both counts he failed.
After his Howard Library speech Crean dined with Howard. The atmosphere at dinner, he said, was “frosty’’.
I bet!
In all the words to be published in the days ahead Simon Crean deserves more than a footnote.