I’ve thought through my outburst against certain right wing commentators on Monday, and the result is below, a piece written for the Last Word column.
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The finger pointed, accusing me of joining the terrorists to demonise their victim. I was one of a long list of writers Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt last week plucked a sentence from to prove that the `left’ had sided with terrorists to undermine the war against them.
My quote came from Last Word: “As we back the US in bombing the bejesus out of Afghanistan…we wage our own war against Afghan refugees.” What on earth did this have to do with condoning terrorism?
On the same day, in similar reductive vein, Miranda Devine named her traitors. Her rhetorical trick was the same as Bolt’s – while he used the words of Saddam Hussein to drag critics of US foreign policy into the terrorist’s camp, she used those of the Taliban leader.
It looked like crude McCarthyism to me. But then I saw the light, courtesy of a Late Night Live interview with left-wing columnist Christopher Hitchens in the US, who has strongly criticised some leftist American opinion on the bombings.
He said there is a loony left and a loony right, with one thing in common. Both blame the US for what happened and say no more. The loony left says the United States has got its just deserts for it’s State sponsored terrorism and support for dictatorships in its economic interests. The loony right, led by fundamentalist Christian Jerry Falwell, blames America because of its materialism and secularisation.
The non-loon debate is about the nature, breadth and core principles of an effective United States response. Citizens around the world are vitally concerned in the correct answers – everyone fears the nightmare scenario of World War III, religious war, a war without end in a world consumed by fear.
For that debate to be informed one must understand the enemy and understand and learn from history. Bolt and Devine avoid it completely by slam-dunking anyone who raises such matters with accusations of bad faith. They chose not to dispute the history, or interpret it differently. They simply deny it a place.
For instance, the question of whether the United States should kill thousands of innocent civilians in a reprisal attack goes to the question of the values the United States is seeking to defend, and whether such a response would escalate rather than end bin Laden’s grand plan to trigger a holy war.
This debate has raged within the Bush war Cabinet. Some hawks wanted to wipe out Afghanistan and Iraq. At the extreme end, car stickers holler: “NUKE AFGHANISTAN: Noone will miss it anyway.”
So far these forces have been overruled by the Bush Administration, in favour of a complex and delicate attempt to build a Coalition of most world powers, including Muslim nations, to fight the threat. So far the Coalition has isolated the Taliban, promised to feed Afghan refugees fleeing Afghanistan, avoided civil war in Pakistan and united old enemies on the side of America. There are suggestions of a nation-building program for post-Taliban Afghanistan along the lines of the Marshall plan which rehabilitated Germany after World War 11.
For what the New York bombing proved is that overwhelming military might is not a defence in today’s world. The war against terrorism must be won in other ways. As Paul Keating said so graphically last week, “It’s not building a cocoon like (the) missile defence around the United States with (a) Mad Max world outside, but rather one where our security, the security of all of us, is more particularly catered for by the fact that we don’t tread over other people, and that we do run the whole world in a way which does chip away at a bit of our own strength, our own privilege, but which makes it happier and more secure.”
I believe readers are hungry for these debates. In Australia’s post-leadership politics, we get nothing from the major party heads but bipartisan banalities or adversarial emptiness. It is left to the commentariat and the Australian people to address big-picture global issues which have dogged us for years but seemed to big to comprehend, let alone tackle.
The Devine/Bolt play seeks to close down that conversation. It annihilates history and the lessons we can learn from it. It’s accusatory emotionalism buries rationality. It decries suggestions of double standards without explaining why.
Surely readers deserve more than a blame-game slanging match bereft of genuine engagement and mired in name-calling. That style has had its day, and not only in politics. There are more important matters to discuss.
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October 3 issue:
1. A Guardian comment piece today on the war, forwarded by the Herald’s foreign editor
2. David Palmer on the refugee aspect of the war
3. Jeffrey Allan on whether the league grand final crowd cheered Howard
4. Helen Darville and Peter Kelly on the trouble with the system.
5. Jim Green brings the terrorist threat into political debate in the Southern Sydney seat of Hughes, in one example of how the election campaign will be transformed by it.
6.Geoff Honour and Roland Killick continue the left/right debate
HIS FINEST HOUR, OR HIS BIG MISTAKE?
The Guardian
Matthew Engel in Washington
GEORGE Bush once said that the biggest mistake of his life came when he owned the Texas Rangers baseball club and got rid of a player called Sammy Sosa, who became one of the great home-run hitters of all time.
Like much else we used to know about American politics, that is presumably out of date by now, along with the joke that Dubya thinks Al Qaida is some guy who plays short-stop for the Detroit Tigers. I have this odd feeling that the president’s biggest mistake might turn out, as so often happens, to be what everyone now perceives to be his biggest triumph.
The pace of events being what it is, it’s possible that by the time you read this, half a dozen SAS men or SEALs will have abseiled down a mountainside, headed into the cavern like Bilbo chasing Smaug the Dragon, captured Bin Laden and carried his head away on a platter. And if the best comes to the best, the notion of Dubya being in power until 2009, when his image will be carved into Mount Rushmore and brother Jeb moves into the White House, would be a small price to pay for getting shot of his fiendish enemy.
The first problem, though, as the attorney-general John Ashcroft has been trying to say, is that the capture of Bin Laden might only increase the danger to American civilians, rather than reduce it. And what if it isn’t so simple?
For more than a week now, all the propaganda from the administration has been designed to cool the war fever that raged across America after the attack. The danger that the US might lash out at anyone and everyone has abated. The message now is all about subtlety. This, we are told, will be a new kind of war, a concept that sounds dangerously like the new economy, the internet-led one that was to erase forever the outmoded cycle of boom-and-bust.
Sometimes we will be told what’s going on; sometimes – presumably when it’s bad news – we won’t. The American people, accustomed to wanting giant-sized blue raspberry-flavour slush puppies with swirls of chocolate topping, ranch dressing and cheese melts, and wanting them NOW, suddenly understand the need for patience. So the polls say, the ones that report 90% backing for the president.
Well, maybe. The kind of person smart enough to read all the way through the news section of the Washington Post (I know one of them; there may be a second) might indeed have this sort of patience. I am not sure about the rest of the nation. There is a long-standing tendency for voters to make all kinds of virtuous statements to pollsters – a preference for good works rather than tax cuts, for instance – on which they renege at the crucial moment.
The problem in this case is that they were already worked up into a state of excitement about imminent retribution. The person who worked them up was the president, in the famous speech to Congress that earned enough standing ovations to make a dictator blush.
This phoney-war period is doubtless deeply misleading in many respects; in October 1939 it would have been impossible to grasp the nature of what lay ahead. Defeatism is as dangerous as over-confidence. But I am finding it hard to get out of my head one letter, written just after the speech to the New York Times by Catherine Kudlick, a Californian history professor.
She rightly gave Bush credit for the effectiveness of his rhetoric and for telling the country it would be a messy, drawn-out conflict. “But in promising a new kind of war, he tempts us with an old image of victory that may be impossible to achieve …,” she wrote.
“What could possibly convince us that the last bomb has been planted, the last gas canister spent, the last computer virus launched? Six months without an attack? Six years? Six centuries?”
It is this thought that alarms me more than anything, as the strategists contemplate the snowfall statistics in the Hindu Kush, and the difficulties of using a sledgehammer to crack a wasp’s nest. I am not sure Americans are truly ready for the realities of the battle that has now been joined. I am not sure any of us are.
THE WAR AND REFUGEES
David Palmer in Adelaide
I know that “refugees” are not what the two main parties want to talk about now with the election looming, but working toward a comprehensive – not piecemeal – Australia policy on this issue is more urgent than ever. We are about to witness a tidal wave of refugees – and from a distance the possibility of millions starving to death in Central Asia. Many observers believe we are about to witness one of the worst famines in human history.
It also is an issue that the Bush administration in the United States does not seem to be considering seriously. It is remarkable that the US has moved toward a more multilateral position in dealing with terrorist networks and the Taliban harboring them. It is also encouraging that Bush gave indications that his administration might recognise a Palestinian state if Israel’s safety could be guaranteed. Furthermore, Bush called for pushing ahead with peace initiatives outlined in the Mitchell Report.
The Bush administration still has not dealt adequately with the human dimension of this catastrophe beyond US shores, however. Today’s New York Times had this article – highlighting that the US State Department does not even have a head in place for its Refugee Bureau. The URL is: http://www.nytimes.co=m/2001/10/03/intern=ational/03NOMI.html
The Australian government – and all party leaders – should seriously work towards an international solution to the growing refugee problem, which will become worse day by day as the eventual military action takes place. The Nauru solution has been a total failure – and will only further alienate Australia from its closest neighbors in Southeast Asia.
We’ve really had enough political opportunism by Howard and Beazley – and their parties. Howard in particular has seriously misinformed the Australian public on this crisis. Can’t they please focus more on Australia’s place within the international community and make us proud about Australia’s role in the world? Might one answer be for those with a bit of vision on this issue – Keating, Fraser, and Whitlam – to start a national forum on dealing with this issue seriously?
PS: On a different – but related note – Riaz Hassan, who teaches in Sociology at Flinders University, just gave a talk here and stated that Bin Laden’s end game may be to attack Saudi Arabia and try to gain control there – return of the holy land, etc. This can only be accomplished once the US begins its attack on the Taliban and many in the Muslim world can be mobilised against the US. It makes a great deal of sense – especially given the Saudi’s present caution and Rumsfeld’s coming visit there. I doubt that this scenario has even crossed Howard’s mind.
MARGO: Keating spoke at length about Australia’s long-term national interest in complying with the refugee convention on Lateline last night. See www.abc.net.au/lateline/
JOHN HOWARD, HERO
Jeffrey Allen in Sydney
I was interested to hear your comments on Late Night Live last night in respect of the reception John Howard received at the National Rugby League Grand Final on Sunday night.
Your esteemed colleague, Roy Masters, has also commented that it was the first time in living memory that a prime minister has not been booed and concludes that it is an indication of Howard’s current popularity .
I attended the match and didn’t read it that way at all. For the first time I recall, the presentation of the winners trophy was handled `Wembley’ style with the teams walking up through the crowd – Howard and VIPs were pretty much hidden from view of the majority of the crowd (they usually stand on a podium in the middle of the ground), there were no official speeches (which usually annoys the crowd) and I don’t recall Howard being introduced (hence the lack of opportunity to boo ). I didn’t sense any great affection for him.
My view is that Masters and the like are reading it wrong – the only problem is that it seems to have taken on the proportions of an urban myth.
As a sideline, I watched the match from a corporate box and a few of the guests (myself included) did spot Howard trying to slip away and booed him . Not that anyone cared, as most of the crowd had either left (losers) or were watching their team do a lap of honour (winners).
Then again, perhaps we were just a bunch of chardonnay (cabernet merlot, actually ) swilling elitists totally out of touch with middle Australia. Let’s hope not.
CHANGE THE SYSTEM
Helen Darville in Logan City, Queensland
Well, why do we have an opposition?
To, ahem, oppose the government.
Well why aren’t they?
Because they’re the same as the government!
I overheard this little conversation in the gym the other day. Beazley and Labor’s refusal to articulate a different position on a whole range of issues (refugees is only the most obvious example) is not only undermining Labor’s support in the electorate. It’s undermining the whole political process in this country.
I thought the point of our Westminster-style democracy was to provide the voters with a range of different views on public policy/current issues. Historically, we were usually stuck with just two but – as Rick Passpoints out – at least they were very different from each other!
I think (out on limb here) that had Beazley opposed Howard on refugees, been louder about his party’s opposition to privatisation and clearly articulated his policies, the initial reaction of the public would have been negative, yes. Over time, however, he would have gained the respect of the electorate for holding to his principles and articulating a genuinely different vision for the country.
Now people see him backing Howard on refugees/economic policy/environment etc, but they also see the internal ructions within the Labor Party over these issues. They perceive (rightly or wrongly) that his heart isn’t in it, and penalise him for his failure to articulate any sort of vision, let alone an independent one.
Peter Kelly
Christopher Selth wrote about Sylvio Berlusconi in Strange Election Looming. Berlusconi is as subtle as a brick when he describes Islamic countries. An ugly westerner, you might say.
But there is one strength in the Italian political system I would love to see in Australia. It is unstable and prone to frequent changes of government. The major parties are not as strong, disciplined or stable and Berlusconi, in the Italian tradition, will soon be gone again. In Australia, the stability of government is about as reassuring as a stable group school yard bullies.
If only we had the same sort of instability of government in this country. It might make the future more bearable. Bring on the confusion of many third parties. After seeing what has been achieved in the last few weeks in the Australian parliament I would prefer to see a political system where nothing effective can be done. The only good government is an impotent government.
TERROR POLITICS
Jim Green in Chippendale, Sydney
Disclosure: I did my PhD on the reactor debates in the Dept. of Science and Tech Studies at Wollongong Uni, and am a member of Sutherland Shire Council’s Reactor Taskforce.
MARGO: The battle over the Lucas Heights reactor will be fought in the seat of Hughes, held by Liberal Danna Vale.
In the wake of the shocking events in the United States on September 11, it’s timely to reconsider the federal government’s plan to build a 20-megawatt nuclear research reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights. If built, the reactor will replace the 10 megawatt HIFAR reactor operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights.
In 1983, nine sticks of gelignite, 25 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, three detonators and an igniter were found in an electrical sub-station inside ANSTO’s boundary fence. Two detonators failed, and one exploded but did not ignite the main charge. Two people were charged over this incident.
The following year, a threat was made to fly an aircraft packed with explosives into the HIFAR reactor; a person was charged and found guilty on two counts of causing public mischief.
Last year, in the lead up to the Olympics, New Zealand police uncovered a possible terrorist threat to the nuclear plant at Lucas Heights. A street map with entry and exit points to ANSTO was discovered following a raid on a group of refugees, most from Afghanistan and some from Iran, some of whom were suspected of being involved in a people-smuggling racket. The raid also uncovered notes on police security tactics at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. Several people were charged with passport and false-documentation offences following the New Zealand raid, though none with terrorist activities.
In response to these revelations, industry minister Nick Minchin said in an August 26, 2000 media release that, “The ANSTO facility is a research reactor and as such its fundamental design greatly limits the risk to public safety from an accident.” In fact, the opposite is true: research reactors are designed for ease of access in order to facilitate the range of purposes for which they are used – isotope production, research and commercial applications such as silicon irradiation. This ease of access poses obvious security risks.
During the debate over the planned new reactor, ANSTO has dismissed the possibility of a sabotage event leading to a `fast loss of coolant’ accident which would expose the reactor core. This has been challenged by nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Reactors and Engineering. Wood told a Senate inquiry on October 25 last year that a sabotage event “has the potential to have much worse consequences [than ANSTO’s selected ‘reference’ accident] and the EIS admits there is no way of assessing its likelihood.”
“Pool reactors have a free water surface and this very feature, which is desirable for flexible access to the core, also makes it vulnerable. The EIS claims credit for the massive reinforced concrete block of the pool but this is the very thing which would direct the force of an explosion into the reactor core and expel fuel and water,” Wood said.
Wood asked for an assessment to be carried out and the results published “of a true upper-bound event based on major sabotage” with involvement from the SAS or other military experts. ANSTO prefers to stick its head in the sand.
Last year, the CEO of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), John Loy, issued a licence to ANSTO to prepare a site for a new reactor. Loy justified his decision in a statement which said, inter alia, “I accept that the critical point in the evaluation of the reference accident is the exclusion of a fast loss of coolant. But I believe that the ARPANSA review and the international peer reviews commissioned in the EIS process demonstrate that this is a valid scenario. Of course, it is possible to posit all sorts of simultaneous disasters and suggest superhuman powers to saboteurs or enemies; but that does not help the careful evaluation of a real life proposal.”
Will ARPANSA reconsider its decision in the wake of the `real life’ events in the United States on September 11? Let’s hope so. But ARPANSA’s regulatory branch is inhabited by no less than six former ANSTO staff members, and, incredibly, the chief executive of ANSTO sat on the panel which interviewed applicants for the position of CEO of the `independent’ regulator, ARPANSA! Perhaps not surprisingly, John Loy, as the successful applicant, sees no contradiction in ANSTO’s involvement in selecting its own `independent’ regulator.
RETHINKING LEFT/RIGHT
Greg Weilo started the left/right definitional debate in Retrospective Hansonism, triggering several responses in Left, right…how politics will march forward and a reply from Greg in Strange election looming. Here’s the latest.
Geoff Honour
I’ve read Greg Weilo’s second go at explaining his perspective on an emergent post-ideology political culture. I’m still not convinced.
Taking the worst from both Old Left and Right – small-minded social judgmentalism from the right and re-regulation from the left – seems more like a turbo-charged reversal back down the road already travelled; chauffeured by Jerry Falwell.
And this “liberal humanism” bete noire of his resonates unpleasantly with my own past. The nuns in my primary school years pronounced “humanist” with the same foreboding tone reserved for “atheist” or “Protestant.” I worked out that humanists were people who weren’t totally reliant on Father’s opinion and who put little store in Faith alone. I was totally sold on the concept.
If he’s got a moment to spare from re-arranging the political landscape, Greg might like to share what he considers to be the sensible alternative to that old devil humanist position – “pro-homosexual”? I gather he’s definitely not in favour of “pro” but what then might “anti” look like for me and mine?
Roland Killick in Sydney
Christopher Selth writes in Strange election looming: “And the Western roots Berlusconi is calling on are not democracy, civil rights, but religion.”
There are many people who would claim not to follow the Christian religions, but who could nevertheless be described as Christians. This is because Western culture has developed in an environment shaped almost entirely by Christian values, by Christian politics and by Christian patronage.
Could we not argue that many of the fundamentals we take for granted, such as the equality of individuals, the notion of right and wrong, the separation of state and religion, all arose from or support this context? Perhaps this is what Berlusconi meant.
And similarly, when Mark Worthington, commenting on a piece by Greg Weilo, writes that “some argue that there are a fixed set of values, a moral code, that defines our national identity” the same point could be made. For better or worse, Australia is a Christian country and is defined by that fixed set of values. At least for the time being.
I agree with Greg that I have not seen “multiculturalism” work – in any of the 14 countries in which I have lived, There seem to be four “F”s in multiculturalism: Food, Fashion, Festivals and what we tell those who ask us to modify our Fundamental beliefs.
It is easy to learn to live peacefully and without malice if we restrain ourselves to the first three. However, it is nonsensical to expect to retain a cohesive society if we accept – and acceptance to me means integrating into our political and legal systems – contradictory values. It would be like saying to the people who are used to driving on the left that they may continue to do so in Australia with impunity, as can the people who are used to driving on the right.
Perhaps both Christopher and Mark would agree with the proposition that if we truly value different cultures we should seek to understand their differences at a fundamental level. For example, should we legalise the notion of “Womens’ secret business” or should we accept the non-discriminatory rules of the UN? Should we abolish land ownership and only grant Stewardship rights over a parcel of land?
If we seek to build a multicultural society, it might be useful to create a national body to systematise this investigation and propose changes to our systems of government. And maybe even, dare I say it, changes to our Economic systems, the need for which Mr. Bin Laden has so shockingly brought to our attention?