Drain the swamps where terror breeds - Why the Left should support Bush in Iraq.

In the 1960s and '70s I played an active role in the Vietnam War protest movement. In that war I was on the side of the National Liberation Front and, with thousands of other Australians, I celebrated when the US was defeated.

For the same reason that I opposed the US in Vietnam I supported its overthrow of the fascist regime in Iraq. The genuine Left has always hated fascism and supported the spread of progress, democracy and modernity.

There is a deep misunderstanding of the radical strategic change spearheaded by Bush. This is the result of consistent attempts by the Bush administration to describe the new policy in misleading, lowest common denominator terms as a war on terror. But capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and individual terrorists was never what this war was about. The reality is that in order to eliminate terrorism, the US has no choice but to attack the underlying forces of reaction and oppression that create it.