What SAW’s opponents argue
Although SAW doesn’t have to face off against any organised activist opposition (“Students for Mass Slaughter” or something like that) our campaign against war research at UOW does have its opponents, from the staff in the Defence Materials Technology Centre to the apathetic student who thinks the research will somehow benefit them. All of these people have opinions and arguments they use to justify the existence of the DMTC and war and militarism more generally, and so it’s worthwhile to address the ones that come up most regularly.
The DMTC develops defence materials, not weapons of war
This line is trotted out by the centre’s staff quite frequently. In a certain sense, it’s true: the purpose of the program is to research improved heavy metals and armour plating. Unfortunately, a brief peruse of the UOW DMTC’s website reveals that these heavy metals and armour plates are then going to become components of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Bushmaster Armoured Personnel Carrier, and a variety of other weapons. So sure, the DMTC isn’t producing whole, complete design blueprints for every aspect of a weapons system – they’re just designing materials without which these weapons couldn’t function as effectively. To then argue that this research is therefore completed unrelated to weapons is rather bizarre. The weapons need armour, and the DMTC is helping to design the armour – simple as that.
The weapons the DMTC is helping to develop will be used to protect us
If the DMTC is being used to develop weapons of war after all, then at least, we’re told, these weapons will be used in our defence, to protect Australia from innumerable enemies abroad who are positively straining at the leash to invade and take over our great, wide lands. However, even the Australian military’s own Defence 2000 paper acknowledges that this isn’t true: “a full scale invasion of Australia,” it reads, “…is the least likely military contingency Australia might face. No country has either the intent or the ability to undertake such a massive task.” In a similar vein, Malcolm Davis, an academic sympathetic to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, wrote: “the theme running through most documents relating to Australian defence and foreign policy since 1972 is that Australia does not face the threat of a major invasion.”
Indeed, far from protecting us, the military is more often used to attack any Australians that threaten government or business interests. In 1949, when coalminers across the country went on strike for a 30 shilling wage increase, long service leave and a 35-hour working week, thousands of soldiers were sent in to shoot miners, break apart picket lines and work in the mines themselves. Similarly, when airline pilots went on strike for higher wages in 1989, the government used the Royal Australian Airforce to work for the airline companies and break the strike. This is not to mention the original use of the army in annihilating the indigenous population of Australia to make way for British colonisation.
The weapons the DMTC is helping to develop will be used to protect us in wars overseas, not in Australia
Even if there is no likelihood whatsoever of Australia being invaded, supporters of the DMTC still maintain that the weapons it helps to develop will be used to protect us in wars overseas against terrorists and other people who would otherwise come and attack us were it not for the presence of Australian troops in their country. This is a strange proposition, as it is likely that the presence of Australian and other foreign troops in their countries is, in fact, precisely what makes people living under occupation want to attack us. When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, Osama Bin Laden listed as his reasons for doing this the presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Saudi Arabia, and the US’ continued support for the Israeli government’s 45-year occupation of Palestine; similar reasons were used in 2001. Similarly, when British buses were bombed in 2005, the attackers explained that they did this because of the UK government’s continued participation in the occupation of Iraq. Were Arab terrorists to conduct a similar attack in an Australian city, it’s highly likely that it would be motivated by anger at the Australian government’s support for the occupation of Afghanistan.
The work the DMTC is performing is “neutral”
When it has finally been established that none of the ways in which the weapons being developed in the DMTC will be used are beneficial, the defenders of the research assert that it is “neutral” – they might not agree with how the weapons are used, but it’s not their role to determine this. They simply carry out the work they’ve been told to do and leave it up to the democratically elected government to decide how our troops and military weapons are used. Apart from the dubious assumption that governments are responsive to the popular will (60% of people polled by the Sydney Morning Herald in October 2010 wanted Australian troops out of Afghanistan, but they remain there nonetheless) this argument is quite flawed: it is not just that the ways military weapons are used right now are bad, the only way they can be used is bad - killing people. There are no two ways to use an F-35: its purpose is death. And helping to design parts for it is not “neutral” – it is contributing to war. There is a direct chain proceeding from the drawing boards and labs where weapons are designed, to the factories where they are made, to the F-35 dropping bombs, to the incinerated people and destroyed lives on the ground. No matter how much the staff in the DMTC might argue otherwise, their research is an integral part of this chain, and must be stopped as part of a broaedr campaign to end all wars.
