Unpacking The Propaganda: Why Australia Is Sending Troops to The Middle East

On Sunday Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that 400 air personnel and 200 military personnel from Australia’s armed forces would be going to the Middle East to assist in the fight against ISIL in Iraq. The Labor opposition party supports the decision.

In his speech and the press conference that followed, Abbott tried to describe both the war he would like to have—the ideal war—and the war we are actually getting involved in. You could hear his language buckling under the strain of these competing realties.

For months Abbott has been adamant that ISIL be stopped. He’s called them evil many times, and has said the threat they pose is unprecedented and unique. He has argued that thwarting ISIL is not only morally righteous—because of the beheadings and human rights atrocities they’ve committed—but that it is, “prudent and proportionate action to protect our country.”

In contrast to his fiery words his government’s actions have been a process of following the lead of the US, like Australia always does, and in this case that has meant a slow and measured escalation.

Indeed Abbott seems like a political leader from the era just gone by. His ideology is closer to the leaders of the first Iraq War such as Tony Blair, George Bush, or his mentor John Howard, than it is to Obama’s.

Another example of him expressing a syncretic belief is when he said, “I stress this has nothing to do with religion.” On the evidence, it’s quite clear this war has something to do with religion. After all he doesn’t refer to ISIL as a secular organisation with death as its charter, he calls them a death cult.

Abbott loves to use the language of religion to condemn ISIL, because he is a religious man and religious terminology is gripping stuff. Just yesterday during an interview concerning ISIL he quoted the bible to the ABC, arguing for a worldwide separation between church and state.

He talks in big terms, lined with poetry, but he also seeks to assure people that the fight against ISIL is an unemotional and rational military decision. And this is the trouble with the government’s rhetoric surrounding the build-up to this war: It’s insistent, passionate, and confused.

This confusion extends to the justification for our involvement. Abbott said on Sunday, “none of this has anything to do with communities here in Australia.” He said that to assure Australian Muslims that he thinks they are in no way related to ISIL. Almost all of them aren’t, and probably resent even the suggestion of a connection, but there are (very small) communities of Australians who identify as Muslim and who sympathise with ISIL.

Abbott knows this because those communities, and people from them who’ve travelled to be foreign fighters for ISIL, are his most prominent justification for Australia’s participation in the conflict. “The point that everyone needs to grasp is that there are at least 60 Australians that we know of fighting with terrorist groups such as ISIL in Syria and Iraq.” Abbot has said, “There are at least 100 Australians that we know of supporting the work of those Australian fighters with ISIL in Syria and Iraq. So, this is a conflict that is reaching out to us.”

Naturally someone who holds this opinion—that the conflict is reaching Australia and we’re reacting to it—would also believe that by committing troops to the conflict over there we might see blowback here; that ISIL sympathisers will interpret Australia’s actions as those of an enemy nation, and carry out terrorist acts accordingly.

But when asked if we might expect reprisal for our involvement Abbott said, “the point I've been making again and again is that these terrorists and would-be terrorists are not targeting us for what we have done, or for what we might do—they are targeting us for who we are. They are targeting us for our freedom, for our tolerance, for our compassion, for our decency, all of which is utterly alien to their ideology.”

This is a beautiful sounding lie, one that’s been around for years. It states that it doesn’t matter what Australia does, it’ll be be a terrorist target regardless, so it might as well attack.

It’s true ISIL and movements like it hate us for ideological reasons but as the recent beheadings prove, revenge is a potent motivation for their acts of terror. Before the US entered the conflict James Foley was a prisoner, once they entered he was a murder victim.

Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t commit our military to the effort to stop ISIL, just that it’s silly to think there won’t be any consequences to such a commitment. All wars have unforeseeable ends.

This war itself is the unintended aftermath of the previous war. ISIL’s relatively strong foothold in Iraq has been aided by the US and its allies decision to support an Iraqi government that has disenfranchised the Sunni population of that country.

But the crux of it is, why is there a need for this confusion? For any lies or obfuscation? Why doesn’t the government simply make a moral case for the war?

It could be open and explain that, while there will be some blowback and we don’t know how long we will have to commit our forces, we can’t let such concerns stop us from doing the right thing.

So why doesn’t the government do so? Because a narrative that we’re protecting ourselves—even if it becomes confused because it doesn’t quite mesh with reality—is much more effective, especially now. Moral outrage might be what Abbott feels, and it makes for a pleasing sound bite, but it’s a difficult justification in a world where so many moral outrages are allowed to continue without our intervention.

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