Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When they invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and John Howard said they were prepared to accept responsibility for their actions and accept the verdict of history. Ten years later that verdict is clear. Over a hundred thousand civilian men, women and children dead, thousands of soldiers dead, over a 3 trillion spent—for what? The breaking of a country and the unleashing of tribal, ethnic and religious hatreds.

We would be crazy to go back in there. Neither the Sunni nor Shia leadership in Iraq has any respect for our values of democracy, pluralism, rights for women, rights for minorities, separation of church and state. They still want to carry on a 1300-year-old fight over who was the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad! Neither of them promotes any form of respect, let alone affection, for Western nations.

Instead of offering gratuitous advice to President Obama about what he should do now, those US Republicans and those opposite who arrogantly invaded another country, without United Nations authorisation, to destroy weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, should get down on their hands and knees and ask forgiveness for having got it so comprehensively wrong and having created such a political and humanitarian catastrophe.