Four years ago next week we invaded Iraq, and John Howard plans a big speech to mark the anniversary, writes Professor Hugh White."
100% WORD-4-WORD @ the AGE!
We saw some interesting precedents in the last 5 years. Some here have raised the ghost of Menzies -- or Pig Iron Bob as has was once called for his enthusiasm to equip Japan with the necessary raw materials to eventually make war on the USA and the rest of us. They got to Darwin I hear. Now Howard is sucking up to the followers of the great emperor (for who the sun rises & sets each day) who have not had the decency to admit their callous crimes against (comfort) women or the many tens of thousands of Chinese who were used in human ‘scientific’ experiments. But then Howard cannot even say ‘sorry’ to the indigenous peoples of this ancient land for callous wrong done in the name of ‘progress and empire’. I suggest we could largely outsource our defence needs to Japan – I mean they own significant chunks of the country, so why not defend their [own] assets! Perhaps if we hired the Japanese to defend us from the ‘imaginary enemy’ (be it Indonesia, Solomon Islands, New Guinea, New Zealand or Fiji) we could do a ‘done deal’ to sell our armed forces to defend them and their pacifist constitution.
[I forgot to add something about the RSL turning in their graves!]
So for the key precedents of the last ‘GWB-ha round’ that John Howard might want to talk on:
How we can arrest and try political leaders for their actions or inactions – as was done to Saddam H.
- How we can fund an evil regime and make war on it at the same time – as long as the Foreign Minister and Prime Minster ‘know nothing’.
How we can ignore our duty to protect our citizens when incarcerated in overseas jails as long as they were Moslems and made a few anti-Semitic statements.
How we can spend $billions on ‘planned’ US war planes that will, based on the last batch of F111s, never shoot a single bullet in anger and are many think substandard to the existing Russian machines that the rest of Asia are purchasing.
And I do not count myself as a ‘left wing Looney’ – I count myself as a voter with an eye to the future and intergenerational equity, fidelity to the truth and a responsibility to act from a sense of conscience and responsibility.
So, is delivering a speech to mark this anniversary a good idea? Who cares, if his continues to try and peddle his sad song of millennial miss-adventures. What matters is whether the general Australian community have awakened and grown tired of this type of basic ‘101-level’ propaganda or not.
Has Howard lost the political position and nous so apparent in his last two election victories? Yes, obviously, but I don’t accept the thesis that he had much in the first place. That he has been ‘successful’ in the job, as judged by temporal parameters, does not mean that that it has been good. Quite the opposite in my opinion: it has been a largely degenerate period.
I think there is a definite mood change in the society. I notice it in other areas also. The ‘tone @ the top’ is changing across many fields. The cult of the leader is dead and a new educated ‘online’ generation is @ work. Howard, Ruddock and Downer are not only ‘on the nose’ but symbolise a style of shonky ‘ethics’ that have become a parody of responsible and sustainable governance and now seem cartoon like for many of those who have awakened from the miasma matrix of ‘Neo-con-ism’.
The Australian economy is what it is because of basic fundamental changes achieved by Keating et al in earlier decades! The China boom has driven the recent extended prosperity wave, which even a proverbial “drover’s dog” could have ridden to success like the back of a farmer’s ute.
Buffoons like Downer, Tolkien whispering “Worm Tongues” like Ruddock, and the strange ‘Gollum like’ Howard are now, looking out the back window of the public bus, standing on the dirt road with the dust of history fast rising to obscure their sallow faces.
There is accountability, and in this world the sacrifice of the ‘king’ is part of the system of expunging the collective guilt. We are guilty collectively for the fiasco in Iraq as a bare minimum, not to mention the other classic sins (i.e. falling short of the mark). This speech of Howard’s is little more than politik at trying to shift and share the blame from himself to the community at large and should be rejected.
To continue the children’s ring metaphor, or is it simile, our dear little Sméagol has been dropped in the ‘poo’ along with the dark wizard from the Tower of London, and the Eye of Mordor (i.e. Sauron) that has emanated from the place formally referred to as the Washington “White House”. The millennial ‘fellowship’ of the willing, has become the end game of those that will use any ring to rule. Game over: it is not the end of the world, nor is there any rapture in progress, or to be expected in the near future by rational measures.
Bring on the next act and set of new actors please. This play has not only become boring, but dangerous to our international image – if there is any left.
Basically, I sense that Howard, like at the end of the days for old Bob Hawke, now just triggers the Ozzie cultural cringe that we are all plagued with here down under. It is time these three stooges slinked off to obscurity where they belong: we owe it to our future generations to end this farce in late 2007.
Bring on Ruddsville – at least it won’t be Dullsville, especially if we get our money’s worth from various commissions into the political shenanigans down-under in Canberra at the turn of the millennium.
Posted by: Russell_c at March 15, 2007 1:06 PM
(See: http://blogs.theage.com.au/yoursay/archives/2007/03/the_nous_of_how.html#comments )
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