It will probably come as a surprise to most readers, but the support for the war in Iraq is decidedly lukewarm here in Australia.

In the US, 70% of the Congress supported Bush once war had been declared.

In the UK, Blair managed to get a 3:2 vote in favour before war was declared.

In Australia... John Howard managed to get a motion in favour of the war passed in the lower house. A vote strictly along party lines, carried by a mere handful of votes. In the upper house, the same motion was lost, again on party lines, again by a handful of votes.

Before war was declared, over 50% of the populace were against the war, since it had no unequivocal UN backing. Even now, support for the war would be less than 60%, probably more like 55%. Though the pictures of POWs executed by the Iraqis might just have boosted these figures significantly. Had the UN Security Council done its job and affirmed its determination to mean what it said, support was 70%, which is where I think it will end up eventually. But it didn't, and that has led to much soul-searching here.

What I'm saying is that, although everyone has commented on Blair's courage and leadership, it's John Howard who's really required a lot of political courage in this situation.

As for the Opposition... Simon Crean, in a major blunder, refused to affirm that he wanted the Coalition to win when asked directly, literally seconds after the news came in of the first shots being fired. The next day he back-flipped and started mouthing plattitudes about supporting our troops, yada yada. This went down like the proverbial Lead Balloon, the backflip with the Loony Left, the original with everyone else.

It's only the fact that the Opposition is in such disarray that Howard has gotten away with doing the right thing, rather than the popular thing. Simon Crean replaced Kim Beazley as leader of the ALP (Australian Labour Party) after the last drubbing they got at the polls. Now Kim Beazley is just possibly the best Defence Minister this country has ever had. But he was out of his depth as Leader of the Opposition, he just can't lie convincingly, nor compromise deeply held moral convictions. To see just how bad he is at supporting a position he disagrees with, have a look here

Only a very small number of the Anti-war protests have turned violent. Not as many as in the US, but that's possibly because the protests have very often been from the mainstream, not the shrill and inarticulate.

A large majority of Australians, both pro- and anti- war have a deep distrust of US commercial interests, based on past behaviour. Now I'm very much in favour of the war, and what the US is doing. The US rhetoric about "Freedom", "Democracy" etc are not just empty words, it's what Americans as a whole believe in, even though much of the world finds this difficult to swallow. But as regards trade policy, the USA is indistinguishable from France. Yes, I said France. From the Sugar Import Quotas, to the dumping of heavily subsidised wheat in strategic places to knock-out competitors, to the recent Steel Import Bill (where Australian steel producers, having just bought machinery manufactured in America in order to become the most efficient steel producers in the world, were then locked-out of the US market), to the various draconian Intellectual Property laws that the US is forcing on the rest of the world, the US is actually worse than the EU in many respects.

Most of us expect the USA to not merely lock-out Australian firms from any reconstruction work after the war, but to terminate existing food contracts.

But we're going in anyway, sending Australians in harm's way as part of the Coaltion of the Willing. Why? Because trade issues etc are insignificant compared to the threat of WMDs in the hands of terrorists. Even the US sees this, it's expending God knows how many billions of dollars, seeing oil prices Yo-Yo with great economic dislocation, when all it had to do was lift the sanctions to get vast quantities of cheap oil flooding the market, with consequent benefits to the world economy. We're doing this out of a cold, hard calculation of self-interest. OK, it's because we're allies too, but that in itself wouldn't have been enough for us to contribute more than, say, Spain or even Morocco. Words. Bases. But not troops going in harm's way.

It's also because we too are stupid enough, naive enough to believe those words about Democracy and the end of Tyranny. We have some 300,000 Iraqi exiles living here, well over 1 in 100 Australians are of Iraqi descent. We're pissed off at Saddam and his minions.



But this Op-Ed piece is really to make one point, and to make a plea. When all this is over, the next time some bought-and-paid-for-Senator-for-Disney or Senator-for-Agribusiness screws us again, or when the CIA is directed to put less emphasis on anti-terrorism and more on advancing the US's commercial interests at the expense of its traditional allies, just remember who your friends are. Write to your Congresscritter and Vote accordingly.

Because as this war has shown, US policy over the last three decades has managed to piss off both Canada and New Zealand sufficiently that not merely their slightly-left-of-centre governments, but the populace as a whole, was not willing to back you up as they should have. And Australia was a "line ball" decision, had the opposition been in power, then we too would have been on the sidelines, to my shame.

Dammit though, all this sounds so petty when there are brave US Marines dying to ensure our safety. But it had to be said.

Now lets go and win this thing, together.