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MEMORIES OF VIETNAM

In Melbourne on Friday more than 100,000 people took to the streets in the biggest anti-war rally this city has seen since the anti war demos in the Moratorium days of the Vietnam War.

And over the weekend millions of protesters marched in cities all overt the world. Sydney. New York. London. Across Europe. Saddam Hussein must have been rapt.

Prime Minister Howard in Indonesia for talks with President Megawati Sukarnoputri said the size of the demonstrations does not change his mind.

And the latest Blix report to the United Nations, he says, merely confirms what the world already knows.

Britain’s Labor leader Tony Blair says that if the number of protesters in London totalled half a million or a million then that’s about the number of people Saddam Hussein has killed.

People around the world keep hanging on a second resolution from the United Nations against Iraq and seemingly overlooked is the original Resolution 1441which gave Iraq a “ final opportunity” to provide “immediate, unconditional and active” cooperation to the inspectors and to disarm or face “ serious consequences”. Saddam Hussein hasn’t disarmed.

Surely that gives the green light to the Americans and The Brits and us to declare war on Iraq without the Security Council’s blessing.

And I wonder where the demonstrators were when we got involved in the war on terrorism after September 11 and sent troops into Afghanistan? Where were the protesters chanting “ No War” when NATO forces went in to save mainly Muslims in Kosovo?

If western countries had unified and taken a moral stand in Cambodia more than a million lives could have been saved in Pol Pot’s murderous Kampuchea. And a similar number in Rwanda.

One thing the Howard line does tell me is that all that criticism about him being poll-driven is wrong. All that talk about him cynically using public opinion polls on issues like the boat people is wrong.

The size of the demonstrations at the weekend shows his stance is NOT popular. But it could be right.

America and Britain are our closest allies. They were in World War Two. They still are.

Obviously you hope this will end without bloodshed. It seems increasingly unlikely. And if there are civilian casualties, as there must be, Saddam Hussein has himself to blame. But he won’t. He has already killed more of his own people than are likely to die in a new war.

Monday, February 17, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002