2018-04-16
Greens Defence spokesperson, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson has called upon the Government to rule out any future military involvement in Syrian air strikes.
Senator Whish-Wilson said, “Australia’s interests are not served by reflexively joining in any illegal military action in Syria.
“We have reached a point in Australia where decisions to drop bombs in a country that most Australians couldn’t locate on a world map, has inexplicably become normalised.
“Australia carrying out illegal military actions in the Middle East against another country is not something that should ever be considered normal or inevitable.
“Australia has rightly condemned the reprehensible actions of Assad against his own people but military strikes from Western nations risk dangerous escalation in an incredibly complex war, seeemingly without any achieving any clear outcomes on the ground.
“Last time Trump sent missiles into Syria it didn’t stop the continuing abominable gas attacks on civilians and early reports suggest that this weekend’s well-flagged airstrikes may also have done little to prevent further attacks.
“The Australian public is right to question why Malcolm Turnbull is keeping open the option of involving our military in a complex regional war without any clear strategy or any link to Australia’s interests beyond an obsequious subservience to the United States.
“This weekend’s illegal airstrikes are a timely reminder that the Australian Parliament must debate and vote on new military actions and deployments, and why we should question our current US military alliance.
“The UN weapons inspectors are currently going into collect evidence about the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria and this is where Australia’s support should be focussed. We should be using our diplomatic reach and provide support for a broad United Nations response.
“There seems to be no strategy beyond having Trump and May, both in weak domestic political positions, doing something in Syria to try to get a bump in the opinion polls. When are we going to learn lessons from the past failures of the West in the Middle East?” he concluded.
Media Release Defence and Veterans Affairs