A guest blog by redcuchulain

People have been asking me why I would want to start a petition into the war in Iraq? Quite simply, I have been waiting around for our political leaders to do it and have been surprised that it doesn’t seem to be a priority. I think someone has to do it.

I work in the healthcare industry and like many industries we have rigid rules about how we must investigate and learn when things go wrong. Compared to the airline industry we are in our infancy. However, at least these days every death is treated as a tragedy and we take what we learned and apply it to help prevent further tragedy. It doesn’t bring anyone back – but at least in some way we respect and honor those who we have injured by making sure their suffering wasn’t for nothing.

A Royal Commission is the only thing in this country with enough authority to get to the bottom of the matter when mistakes happen in the political sphere. There are too many vested interests in not getting to the bottom of what happened with the decision to invade Iraq. This is not intended as a witch hunt. We should assume that people in public life, regardless of whatever side of politics they are on, act with the public good in mind most of the time. Next time when we are faced with this situation we will have different decision makers. It does not help us to think of the people who made the wrong decisions in Iraq as ‘evil’ or ‘lazy’. If there has been deliberate deception then that of course is a matter which should be referred to the courts. I fear that there are underlying systemic issues both in Australia and in our relationship with our allies. Only a Royal Commission can get to the root of the problems so we can do better next time.

I ask you to please sign my petition which I will deliver to both the PM and the leader of the opposition.

https://www.change.org/p/malcolm-turnbull-establish-a-royal-commission-into-the-iraq-war