Page 37 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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involved in Kuwait and involved in this war. So, I think it is hardly cheap to talk about those fundamental principles.
Mr Berry raised a number of issues. I think basically he was expressing the very sick, veiled anti-American and anti-Western sentiments that unfortunately so many of the Left still have. There is a very simple test I would put to the Labor Left and to any people who oppose this military action, taken after 12 separate United Nations resolutions were totally ignored by Saddam Hussein and his regime who obviously were quite intent on going to war. When it comes to deciding what is right and wrong, what is a monster regime and what is not, one should apply a very simple test.
Basically, that test is this: Who kills the most, tortures the most and brutalises the most people? That is the test if we have to apportion right and wrong in this very unpleasant, at times, world we live in. No-one is perfect, and all nations in the West are not entirely blameless, I suppose, when one looks at the chequered course of twentieth century history. But, basically, it is a case of who is the most at fault, and that often can be summarised in a very simple test: Who kills the most people; who tortures the most people; who brutalises the most people? The answer here is quite clear.
The peace movement has said that sanctions should have been given more time to work. Mr Speaker, throughout history, I do not think sanctions have ever worked. That is a real problem. Sanctions were given time to work in this case. There were some 12 separate resolutions of the United Nations. The United Nations was founded in 1945 and one of its initial presidents was that great Labor politician, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt. Indeed, I think the Prime Minister referred in his speeches on this issue to Dr Evatt stating that one of the very important parts of the idea of the United Nations was that it would have a world policing role. Because of the ideological split caused by the cold war and the conflict with the Soviet Union, that has been largely impossible. The only place we saw the United Nations in that role was in Korea, simply because the Russians were not in the UN to vote. Now we have seen it in the Gulf. The Security Council, the supreme body in terms of these matters, actually voted in favour of resolution 678 - a resolution adopted after all other attempts at peaceful resolution had failed.
When you are dealing with a person such as Saddam Hussein, an absolute dictator who is mind-set on his own personal ambition and his own ways of wanting to see this conflict settled, it is very difficult to talk about sitting down, as we might sit down here and try to thrash out a few difficulties in a parliamentary democracy where we have a long tradition of respecting fundamental human rights. We are not dealing with a regime that respects human rights; we are dealing with one of the more monstrous regimes that
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