Features
Mixed War Reaction in the Pacific
Not Shock, Not Awe - Mostly Consternation
As the Bush administration took the U.S. to war without the sanction of a UN resolution, reactions around the Pacific were mixed yet, for the most part, opposed to the U.S. unilateral attack. Not unilateral, technically since Britain and Australia threw their hats into Bush’s ring. But New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Helen Clark, said the U.S. action was “a matter of profound regret,” and said that the decision to attack Iraq set a “new and dangerous precedent.” In the New Zealand Parliament, an act to express support for the war was defeated 84 to 35.
The war involved Pacific Islanders in many ways, but most directly affected are those from American-affiliated jurisdictions like the Marshall Islands, Palau, FSM, Guam, CNMI and American Samoa, whose citizens serve directly in the U.S. armed forces. There are also Islanders in Australia’s military and many Fijians serve in the British military. One estimate puts the number of Fijians serving in the Iraq conflict at between 500 and 700.
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The polarized Pacific reaction to the war can best be illustrated in the two Samoas, where the territorial government of American Samoa remains a super-patriot Bush booster, while a half-hour plane ride away, independent Samoa has been the scene of peace marches in the capital, Apia, where Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele told 2,000 demonstrators that Samoa remained committed to multilateral action only within the framework of the UN.
Anti-war demonstrations have also been held in Suva, Fiji’s capital and, of course, in the metropolitan cities of Honolulu, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. In Sydney, 30,000 Australians came out to express their disapproval of the Howard government’s war stance. But as the war was winding down to an apparently successful conclusion, Prime Minister John Howard’s approval rating flipped from 48 percent before the war to 58 percent at the end of the campaign.
In other regional reactions, Pacific Island Forum Secretary-General Noel Levi told Radio Australia that most of the Pacific saw the Iraq conflict as something between “the Big Boys” far away from the region.” Levi worried about the future of oil prices, but would not be drawn into commenting on Australia’s decision to join the U.S. against Iraq. Fiji’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and External Trade, Kaliopate Tavola, said his country would have preferred a UN-based, multilateral approach to the Iraq problem.
In Washington, D.C., there was an air of siege on the first weekend of the war on Iraq as protestors converged on the U.S. capital to register their outrage at the start of the war. Police helicopters circled the area of the White House and the Mall, directing police and park service operations to contain the demonstrators. Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House, was cleared completely of protestors. That same weekend, huge demonstrations had taken place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
The Pacific delegation in the U.S. Congress, which includes two senators and two representatives from Hawaii as well as two additional congressional delegates, one from Guam and one from American Samoa, had been staunchly against unilateral U.S. intervention. Yet, once the war had actually started, criticism was muted in deference to support for American servicemen and women, who were beginning to take casualties even in the war’s first few days.
American Samoa’s Congressman F.H. Faleomavaega Eni, who we interviewed in Washington during the first week of the war, was deeply disturbed about the damage the war is doing to U.S. relations around the world. Faleomavaega, who is a Vietnam era veteran, says of the U.S. intervention in Iraq, “It’s arrogance in it’s highest form. We’re beginning to see another Vietnam, where we killed two million Vietnamese and still lost the war. There’s no question of not supporting our troops, which is how the Bush administration characterizes all dissent, the question is: Why are our soldiers there in the first place?”
