Deja vu all over again
Iraq becomes Iran in the endless game of political deception
If I had ever been here before
I would probably know just what to do
Don't you?
—Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Deja Vu
The invasion of Iraq was justified by the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, we just needed to find them. The current bombing of Iran, first by Israel and now by the United States, is justified by the idea that Iran might get nuclear weapons even though we know they are nowhere near that level of development.
The idea that the most heavily armed nations in the region—and the world—are using non-existent weaponry as a casus belli is all very postmodern, but maybe it is to be expected in a world in which class and ideological wars are now channelled through culture wars. Maybe our political class—our bombing class—is just more comfortable in this immaterial space. If the weapons we use to justify an invasion don’t really exist, maybe the people we are slaughtering don’t either.
It brings to mind the quote from the period of the Iraq War that journalist Ron Suskind attributed to Bush Administration official:
The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
In this world “pre-emptive self-defence” is a thing, too, and it has been since the 911 attacks in New York and (my old hometown) of Washington DC. No, we didn’t invade Iraq (or Iran) and blow the crap out of them: we pre-emptively defended ourselves.1
None of this is a distraction, by the way, as people like to claim. It is its own thing. Netanyahu is not distracting us from the genocide in Gaza by bombing Iran. Trump is not distracting us from the fallout with Elon Musk or the growing unpopularity of his war on immigrants by bombing Iran. They are just bombing Iran.
The idea of “distraction” is a relic of old media timetables and editorial attention spans, as well as the limiting space of column inches and the news-broadcast segment. The Donald Trumps of the world don’t live in that media space: their world is all doomscrolling all the time, everything everywhere all at once, with their Shelob-selves in the centre of a web of permanent spectacle.
None of this is a distraction. It just is.
I can’t believe we are going through all this again. I mean, I can believe it. How could we not believe it? All the weaknesses and hollowing out of democratic accountability that allowed the invasion of Iraq to happen are still in place in the United State, but more so. Trump makes Bush II look competent and reasonable. The New York Times of the early 2000s seems a bastion of accountability compared to the wishy-washy normaliser of homegrown fascism they are now.
A study by the Center for International and Security Studies noted that American media coverage during the Iraq buildup “accepted without serious question the political formulation 'weapons of mass destruction' as a single category of threat.” The study documented that “established operating principles of the American media make it easier for the incumbent President to dominate news coverage by setting the terms of public discussion.”
How much truer is this in the era of Trump?
Even The Guardian seems to be drawn into the game, as Rundle notes, writing, “What the Guardian does is arguably worse than Newscorpse, whose propaganda is so laughably tilted as to be in plain sight. Subtly, by silence, the Guardian enforces the idea that Iran is the problem that must be dealt with, not Israel. That is manufactured consent 101…”
It is worth noting, as Patrick Marlborough does, that things had started to change, at least in reporting the genocide in Gaza, and maybe the internal conflicts between Guardian UK and Guardian Australia need to be taken into account (something Rundle mentions too):
The ABC and The Guardian, the two ‘liberal bastions’ of Australia’s decidedly far right mainstream media, have finally begun to call a spade a spade. In The Guardian Australia’s case, people who work there have told me off the record that there is a massive split between Guardian Aus and its UK overseers, as well as management at Guardian Aus and the reporting staff, that accounts for the nature of their tepid coverage of Gaza for the greater length of the genocide. Their pivot began in earnest late last year, the ABC’s only a couple of months ago. The ABC’s approach remains very wimpy, and their pivot was forced by circumstances: Israel is starving a concentration camp of civilians to death on live TV, it is very hard to spin that horror any other way.
But maybe the bombing of Iran undoes this welcome recalibration.
On the evidence so far, instead of being a watchdog on power, the mainstream media is once again proving itself to be an enabler of it. Khamenei is Hitler. The US has merely been “pulled back in” to conflict. We are the greatest.
The misdirection is stunning, perhaps more sophisticated than what happened in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. As Nick Feik writes:
Rather than “Israel launches unprovoked attack on Iran”, for example, the tenor of the coverage followed Netanyahu’s framing precisely: “Israel, fearing for its immediate safety, defends itself”. Instead of condemning Israel’s initial attack, the Australian political class called for restraint from both sides. On Friday, foreign affairs minister Penny Wong demanded that “Iran must return to the table”, as if it is Iran’s responsibility as the nation attacked to make peace. Israel’s attack prevented the arms negotiations that were actually scheduled. For the record, Iran has offered new talks if the bombing stops. Its offer has so been declined.
It’s irrefutable that Israel initiated this violence, illegally and without reasonable justification. Is that not worth saying?
One of the most depressing things about this current season of Unjustified War in the Middle East is that, for the Australian leg of the tour, the part of John Howard is now being played by Anthony Albanese. Labor is all-in on AUKUS which means we are all-in on every mad thing Trump wants to do. The increasing threat this offers, not only to Australian wellbeing but to the future of the Albanese Government, is criminally underdiscussed. It was only a few weeks ago that Richard Marles was saying out loud that we would support a US war with China if they invaded Taiwan, ffs.
The current line from the Australian government on the Israel-US bombardment of Iran is the too-clever-by-half strategy of calling for calm and to guard against escalation while at the same time fully supporting Israel’s and the US’s actions and all the bullshit justifications spouted to support them.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that “The world has long agreed Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, so… we support action to prevent that.” And she added, “We do not want escalation and a full-scale war and we continue to call for dialogue and diplomacy.”
Defence Minister Marles has been running the same lines. “We obviously recognise Israel's right to defend itself and we very much acknowledge the risk that the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile program represents to both the region and the stability of the world…. We are concerned about the prospect of escalation here and this entering into some wider kind of conflict.”
To borrow from Patrick Marlborough, Labor’s language is “as workshopped as it is cowardly.” It also echoes the strategy used by the Howard Government on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, and that is why we would be foolish to take these current weasel words too seriously. Our government will wring their hands about not wanting to be involved right up until the point that they, more in sorrow than in anger, find they have no choice.
It’s a pantomime.
Take your mind back to 23 January 2003. John Howard was officially farewelling HMAS Kanimbla on its “pre-deployment” (Operation Bastille) to the Middle East, still pretending publicly that we mightn’t be involved in an invasion. Labor leader, Simon Crean, also attended the farewell and delivered one of the great speeches in Australian history, as brave as it was articulate:
I don’t want to mince my words because I don’t believe that you should be going. I don’t think that there should be a deployment of troops to Iraq ahead of the United Nations determining it. But that’s a political decision, that’s an argument that the Prime Minister and I will have, no doubt, over coming weeks and months.
But having said that I don’t support the deployment of our troops in these circumstance, I do support our troops and always will, and that distinction is fundamentally important. The men and women of our fighting forces in a democracy are expected unquestioningly to accept the orders of the government of the day. You don’t have a choice and my argument is with the government, not with you.
Can anyone imagine Anthony Albanese giving this speech? Even with his stonking majority and the absence of any serious opposition for the foreseeable future, could you imagine him putting one ounce of his precious political capital at stake in the name of casting any doubt on the justifications of either the US or Israel?
Recall, too, at this auspicious moment, the government report into our involvement in the Iraq War that was declassified in 2017. As David Wroe reported in the SMH, the report was “Written between 2008 and 2011 by Dr Albert Palazzo from Defence’s Directorate of Army Research and Analysis [and] it is by far the most comprehensive assessment of our involvement in the war.”
It’s chief finding?
The report concludes that Howard joined US president George W. Bush in invading Iraq solely to strengthen Australia’s alliance with the US. Howard’s – and later Kevin Rudd’s – claims of enforcing UN resolutions, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism, even rebuilding Iraq after the invasion, are dismissed as “mandatory rhetoric”.
Tell me we are not here again.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like we are be dragged into situations that we should be independent enough to resist. I feel like the Albanese Government is genius at managing a narrative but that they can’t be trusted to do anything but capitulate to our great-and-powerful “friends”. Their whole modus operandi is deeply destabilising of genuine political engagement and democratic deliberation. We are just meant to trust them and somehow be satisfied with the idea that Dutton would’ve been worse.
Does that work for you?
Outside marginal sites like this, there is no public space in which the politicians and the media treat we-the-people as grownups and level with us in a way that democracy demands. This can’t last, and that massive majority Labor greased into on May 2 is no guarantee against a massive backlash in 3 years times and I’ll tell you why.
Remember in the immediate aftermath of the 2025 election, the media filled up with endless stories about how in rejecting Peter Dutton we had rejected Donald Trump and all his works and pomps? We were told that Anthony Albanese and Labor—and therefore us—were the beneficiaries of a worldwide turn against Trumpism and that Labor had played it beautifully.
Well, played is right. We have been played. Because if anyone thinks our government is anything but all the way with Donald J, then I have a bridge you might be interested in.
For a detailed discussion of the nonsense of “pre-emptive self-defence” see this article from the Australian Year Book of International Law:
First, the United States’ notion of pre-emptive self-defence has no basis in current international law. It must therefore be viewed as a challenge to the existing use-of-force framework. Second, the United States’ argument that new threats in today’s global system require new rules on the use of force does not stand up under closer scrutiny. The existing system of Security Council authorisation of force is an adequate means of dealing with threats posed by both non-state actors and rogue states. Third, rather than being a necessary development, pre-emptive self-defence would have dangerous consequences for the stability of the international system. It would undermine restraints on the use of force and could lead to increased military conflict. It is therefore fortunate that at this stage the international community remains opposed to any right of pre-emptive self-defence.
Iran becomes Iraq … the great cities of Persia, the culture, human lives yet again sacrificed to what?
Thank you Tim. Those of us speaking up for life must be doubly passionate.
The Australian media/political establishment nexus has so successfully dehumanised Iranians that the illegal bombing of a sovereign state is twisted as an act of kindness to the ‘poor and oppressed masses’. Never once have they dealt with the international crime of an unprovoked war of aggression.
Penny Wong shows herself to be utterly unprincipled and morally bankrupt as a foreign minister. She has more outrage at Iran for non-existent nuclear weapons than she ever showed for Zomi Frankom, a fellow Australian murdered by the apartheid state.