Hello again. Former star Webdiarist Tim Dunlop will write a column for Webdiary this year. ‘Blogjam’ will surf the net and suggest political web logs and articles you might find interesting. Tim has been in Washington for a couple of years, where he launched his successful weblog Road to Surfdom. Tim’s Webdiary pieces include the brilliant Pauline Hanson’s gift to democracy, Rebuilding the left, Two Nations tragedy and his most famous Webdiary piece Pull the udder one.

On the subject of blogs, I’m looking for Webdiarists who’d like to report regularly on the federal seat they live in in the lead up to the election and during the election campaign. If you want to have a go, send me an opener – describe who you are and the seat where you live. Please disclose your affiliations, and if you want to hide behind a nom de plume, please explain why.

Blogjam

by Tim Dunlop

Welcome to the first instalment of a Blogjam which we hope will be a weekly round-up featuring what the blogs are talking about. With an election likely in Australia this year, and one due in the United States, and little matters like Iraq on the agenda, this is going to be a big year for politics and therefore a big year for the political blogosphere as well.

For this first Blogjam, I thought I’d give you some links and general information about a range of blogs – my heavily biased cruise through some of the ones I like best – though future instalments will try and link not so much to blogs per se but to specific pieces bloggers have written.

If you’re new to the blogosphere, can I suggest you read the piece I wrote for the Evatt Foundation about what blogs are and why I think they have a part to play in democratic politics. I don’t want to oversell you on the concept, but I like the fact that the web of interactive discussion and writing they create by linking to each other and to other material available online has created a public space that brings together the expert and the non-expert in a medium where they can interact in a way not normally available.

Let’s start with John Quiggin’s blog. John is a Professor of economics at the University of Queensland and he is one of a number of economists who blog. You’ll find some others over at Catallaxy, run by Jason Soon. The hallmark of John’s writing is his ability to explain even complicated matters in a non-condescending but accessible way.

Another academic’s blog worth checking in on is Back Pages put together by historian Christopher Sheil. Chris has a background in Labor politics so brings an insider’s view to his political discussion, but like John Quiggin, writes about a range of topics (including sport and music) to balance out the more serious topics. Then there is Rob Schaap at Blogorrhoea, who doesn’t update all that often but who brings a unique perspective to current events. Absolutely not be missed – one the blogosphere’s best writers.

For a constant stream of current events, including key stories that might otherwise fall through the cracks, there is Alan over at Southerly Buster. Always worth clicking through to. As are Sandgropers Gareth Parkerand Robert Corr. Gareth is a journalism student in Perth whom I often argue with, but who always plays fair. Rob is another West Australian blogger who covers politics with insight and enthusiasm.

There are a couple of excellent sites which deal with the events of the day in a more quirky way. First up, there is Gummo Trotsky, one of the blogosphere’s real discoveries. Then there is David at Barista and the inimitable Sedgwick, who is, despite what you might have heard, Australia’s governor general.

And no general introduction to the topic would be complete without mentioning sites like She Sells Sanctuary, Blogger on a Cast Iron Balcony, Hot Buttered Death, William Burrough’s Baboon, A Yobbo’s View, and the official site of the Australian Libertarians.

Not all these are strictly speaking political blogs, but then again, politics isn’t just what happens in Canberra or Washington D.C..

I’ve stuck pretty much to the Australian blogosphere here, but the international scene is huge, growing and impressive – a veritable Valhalla of hot topics and good writing. Impossible to narrow it down too much but all of the following will repay your investigation: Atrios, Calpundit, Lean Left, Body and Soul, and Crooked Timber. All have a political focus, but that’s not all they do.

Okay, I’ve only really scratched the surface here. You can find a lot more sites permanently linked at my blog, The Road to Surfdom, and it is worth taking some time to explore what’s available. You might also like to check Cursor, which is a daily compendium of key stories throughout the blogosphere and beyond and that is more or less the model for Blogjam.

Forget all the guff you hear in the mainstream press about people being disengaged from the process, turned off by politics, fed up with issues, sick of big ideas, not willing to talk. Blogs have shown that if you strip away the spindoctors, the PR people, and the media consultants, talk to the punters like they are thinking adults with their own opinions to express, and then provide them with a steady stream of fact-based argument (spiked with fringe-festival humour) they’ll show up by the train-load.

More next week (and apologies to those I left out!)

First published in yesterday’s Sun Herald.

 

G’day. As we head towards NSW local council elections, has anyone else pondered the total disconnect between the behaviour of the Carr government and Mark Latham’s promise to help rebuild our communities by handing power back to the people?

Maybe it’s because I’ve been holed up at home for three months writing a book that this obvious problem for Labor in NSW has stuck out like a sore thumb as I’ve skimmed the papers.

Great speech in February, Mark, the one where you reported to the powerful what the people had been telling you during your travels as leader. “Governments need to create the space and opportunities by which civil society and community politics can thrive. To some extent, this means giving power away,” Right on!

“There’s a strong feeling in society that too much power has slipped from the people’s grasp and has been concentrated in the hands of big corporations and big bureaucracies. I want to see greater devolution of government power to the community.”

“In many cases, government needs to act as a junior partner to community effort, backing local initiatives and civil society. I also want to see greater public participation in the decisions of government.”

“For too long, the political system has been talking at people, instead of with them. It looks more like an elected aristocracy than a genuine democracy. Only by deepening our democracy can we encourage more people to get involved in civic life, rebuilding communities and social capital. I want this to be the hallmark of a Labor Government.”

Meanwhile, the NSW Labor government rips power away from the grassroots against the wishes of communities. Carr didn’t say a word about council amalgamations before the March 2003 election, although if you read the Australian Financial Review property section, you’d have known that’s what he planned as a reward to his Labor’s big developer donors. The plan was explicit – do forced amalgamations in the first year of a new term and hope the people’s anger would dissipate by the next election!

So after the election, Carr told voters they could not elect their local representatives as scheduled in September 2003, but would keep the old lot for another six months while councils considered amalgamations. No compulsion, we were promised. Another lie. There’s just been a forced amalgamation on the NSW north coast, and in Sydney the government ran a sham consultation over the summer holiday before forcibly amalgamating Sydney City Council and South Sydney Council in the dead of night to head off a legal challenge to its validity. The reason? To get a Labor controlled council, and thus State government control over development.

For all its faults, local government happens where we live, and we meet the decision makers on the streets and can look them in the eye. We can intervene when we’re unhappy by rocking up to the council meeting and having our say, and organising local campaigns and meetings.

Not only that, but local government is streets ahead of State and Federal governments in accountability terms. A councilor must declare any conflict of interest – and the nature of the conflict – before a decision is made. In State government, Carr and his ministers announce decisions without disclosing that the beneficiary is a big Labor party donor, and even sells access to companies wanting a favourable decision for thousands of dollars, again without disclosure.

The Carr government has a long history of stripping powers from local government and overriding them to suit itself. Only the Cape Byron Trust has survived as community land run by the community with profits ploughed back into the community. All the rest has been taken by the Sate Government to snatch revenue and rip it out of communities. It also starves local government by not letting it increase rates, and mandates that councilors get only $13,000 a year for what is often a 60 hour a week, desperately stressful job, guaranteeing that many people who want to contribute to their community can’t do so.

Each local government has to have a four year management plan setting out its objectives and its expected budget, which is reviewed quarterly to track how programs and budgets are going. The State government could have done with something like that, as we’ve seen in the year since Carr won office for a third term, when the results of top down government dominated by spinning perception instead of dealing with reality has become shockingly clear.

The trains are in disrepair after years of underinvestment. Our public hospitals are in crisis. Our water is running out, and Sydney is choking on population growth in the absence of any decentralisation planning.

My point is – how is Latham going to counter a Howard attack along these lines in NSW come the federal election? His pledges are intoxicating, but the reality of NSW Labor is toxic.

Maybe Latham hopes that NSW voters fully vent their spleen at Labor at the council elections, and elect non-Labor councils to protect themselves against a rapacious, power drunk, irresponsible State government.

Otherwise, Latham will have to hope Carr cleans up his act in the next few months, or tell NSW voters how he’ll take on the NSW Right if he wins office and give power back to the people despite Bob Carr.

G’day. Webdiary has a new conservative columnist in 2004, long time Webdiarist Noel Hadjimichael. Noel is a suburban solicitor and a member of the Liberal Party in Sydney’s West, that territory Mark Latham is hell bent on winning back for Labor.

Shifting frontline

by Noel Hadjimichael

News that Liberal Party researchers and campaign pundits have identified the Federal Government as open to defeat is good news for coalition voters and bad news for Latham groupies.

Any potential backlash against the John Howard style, the Free Trade Agreement or WMDs by conservative voters will now evaporate when the thought of young Mark running the country or his Shadow Cabinet controlling the economic and policy levers seems possible.

In 1996, the demolition job done on Paul Keating�s government (otherwise known as the �true believers gone arrogant�) was fuelled by widespread disenchantment from Labor voters and outright anger from middle ground conservatives.

The next seven years saw the Coalition muscle up in East Timor, deliver the GST-induced economic recovery plan, court then condemn the Hanson crusade and generally oversee a new conservative game plan for the Australian nation. No more �sorry marches�, no more Asian adventures at the expense of other markets and no further pandering to special interest groups associated with a grievance industry.

This year we have seen the emergence of a powerful, articulate and hungry Opposition Leader hell bent on making history. We now have real competition on ideas, policies and programs.

The intelligentsia in the triangle of power (inner city metrosexual Sydney, inner city caf� latte Melbourne and Whitlam-era Canberra) cannot but hate the current Federal Government for its part in destroying all the good bits from the Hawke-Keating power trip.

You know, the rush to become a Republic, any republic. Pity about the details and that horrible colonial relic the Referendum process.

 The commitment to multiculturalism as long as the definition allowed lots of easy grants for fellow consultants and plenty of ambiguity over the Australian national identity. Pity about that Flag, with the annoying British bit in the corner.

A recognition that indigenous Australians are disadvantaged and over represented in the Courts, on welfare rolls and in social distress environments. Pity about any calls from grass-roots leaders to get employment, family structures and substance abuse corrected. Rights and self-determination will fix that up. We hope.

The uncomfortable aspects of the last Labor government are trivialised or treated as not important.

What a surprise that mainstream ordinary Australians, the very people that inhabit the suburbs and regional cities, remember the early 1990s recession we had to have. What a bore that interest rates should be so low now and that inflation is under check.

It is terrible that social programs have been restrained and defence spending boosted. Butter for the well connected is always better than guns.

The battleground for the 2004 contest, in the suburbs of marginal seat Australia, will revolve around a mix of domestic and international issues.

Border control is fixed: most of us want tight borders and decent intake programs. Few want the scramble for places via the big dollar smuggler networks.

 The war on terror demands a focus on security arrangements tied to alliances with like-minded and friendly powers. No government in training should get relaxed about the current situation.

Troubled health and education sectors need to be addressed. Not so much with more money but better policies to offer affordable choice, cost control and true innovation. Ten world-class universities are better than 38 cash-starved dinosaurs. More self provision is desired if the quality can be guaranteed in health provision.

For aspiring pollies, the shopping malls of Penrith, the quiet streets of Camden, the commuter trains of the NSW Central Coast and the low-fee private school playgrounds of outer suburban Melbourne will be the battleground. Visit these communities and you will see what John and Mark might be saying in the near future.

G’day. Thanks to all those who’ve emailed ‘welcome back’. It’s good to be back, except I feel like I’ve left a dark room and am still blinking in the light. Writing a book is a lonely thing to do, but luckily two Webdiarists who contributed to the book – Jack Robertson and Antony Loewenstein – put some fun into it.

 

When I wasn’t writing or worrying about writing I followed the Democratic primary in the US on the web, and was very disappointed when Howard Dean bowed out. His ‘Take back America’ campaign hit the spot with me, and at least his outspokenness on the Iraq war and the takeover of the US government by crony capitalism energised liberal voters and caught on with the other candidates. He’s now planning a transformation of his huge internet support base into a grassrooots activist movement. He said on February 26:

On March 18, I will announce our plans to build a new organization, using our nationwide grassroots network, to continue our work to transform the Democratic Party and to change America.

We are determined to keep this organization as vibrant as it was throughout our campaign.

There are a lot of ways to make change. We are leaving one track, but we are going on another track that will take back America for ordinary people again.

Democracy, Freedom, and Action will be the watchwords of this new effort.

Our new effort will change America by working for the following principles:

* We will promote grassroots democracy and bring new people into politics.

* We will support candidates and office-holders who tell the truth; stand up for what they believe; and oppose the radical agenda of the far right.

* We will fight against the special interests.

* And we will fight for progressive policies like: Health care for all. Investment in children. Equal rights under the law. Fiscal responsibility; and A national security policy that makes America stronger by working with allies and advancing progressive American values.

We want everyone involved in Dean for America to stay involved, stay together, stay with the Democratic Party, and support the Democratic nominee. As I have said before, I strongly urge my supporters not to be tempted by independent or third-party candidates.”Let me tell you how I think the Democratic Party can win in 2004.

This year, our campaign made the case that, in order to defeat George W. Bush, the Democratic Party must stand up strong for its principles, not paper over its differences with the most radical Administration in our lifetime.

In order to win, the Democratic Party must aggressively expose the ways in which George W. Bush’s policies benefit the privileged and the most extreme ideologues.

I will do everything I can to ensure that the 2004 Democratic nominee runs as a true progressive, as a champion of working Americans and their hopes for a better future. Because – I will say it again — that is the way to win in 2004.”

There’s a detailed backroom look at what went wrong in Dean’s campaign at Divide and bicker: the Dean Campaign’s hip, high-tech image hid a nasty civil war, which shows how difficult it is for people to work together in politics.

I love Dean’s aim to attract new people to go into politics, people who see the job as entailing a duty of care to voters, and to their nation. Maybe voters in a few seats in Australia could have a go at this. The trouble is, trustworthy, thoughtful, courageous, ethical and tough people are what you need, yet how many of them would even consider jumping into the snakepit? The only way they might is if enough people were willing and able to work together to back a campaign and give on going personal support to the candidate, down to making dinner and doing the washing! As ‘Divide and bicker’ shows, personal tensions can ruin the best intentioned campaign, so you’d need a couple of great people people to forge a united team.

The website I go to for US election news is daily Kos, which recently linked to an essay by German sociologist Max Weber, delivered in 1918, called Politics as a Vocation. He sets out his criteria for a good politician, and gee they’re tough! Some extracts follow.

What makes a good politician in your view? It’s a timely question in NSW, where we elect our local governments on March 27. 5000 candidates are standing for 142 councils, and the trend is AWAY from big parties to local independents and the Greens. I’d also love some Webdiarist reports on what’s going on in your local election – issues, contests, moods.

You’d think there’d be a huge backlash against the Labor Party, given Carr’s exposure as a terrible Premier since last year’s election. The train system is a mess, as is the hospital and education system, due to years of underinvestment and a focus on managing perception rather than dealing with reality. Carr mentioned nothing about council amalgamations before the election, but the developers knew all about it and donated heaps to Carr’s campaign. After the election he promised no forced amalgamations, them forced them anyway, particularly the Sydney City Council, where Labor wants to take over. I don’t reckon electors will let Carr’s blokes get their hands on the council because they know full well State Labor would do deals aplenty to fill its coffers with developer money and produce results for developer mates.

I reckon Mark Latham would be hoping Labor gets creamed at the local council elections and that voters feel they’ve lodged their protest at Carr’s government and move on. If they don’t, Latham’s caring, sharing rhetoric of cleaning up our democracy and devolving power back to communities will sooner or later run into the reality of the NSW Labor government, and could cost Latham at the federal election. Latham is in the NSW right but not part of the ruling right faction, but will he be game to take them on to prove his credentials to govern Australia?

***

Extract from ‘Politics as a Vocation’ by Max Weber

A State is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. ‘Politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. He who is active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake,’ that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.

Now then, what inner enjoyments can this career offer and what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?

Well, first of all the career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one’s hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. But now the question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to do justice to this power (however narrowly circumscribed it may be in the individual case)? How can he hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him? With this we enter the field of ethical questions, for that is where the problem belongs: What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

This means passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate devotion to a ’cause,’ to the god or demon who is its overlord. It is not passion in the sense of that inner bearing which my late friend, Georg Simmel, used to designate as ‘sterile excitation,’ and which was peculiar especially to a certain type of Russian intellectual (by no means all of them!). It is an excitation that plays so great a part with our intellectuals in this carnival we decorate with the proud name of ‘revolution’. It is a ‘romanticism of the intellectually interesting,’ running into emptiness devoid of all feeling of objective responsibility.

To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a ’cause’ also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. ‘Lack of distance’ per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one of those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of our intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul?

Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the ‘sterilely excited’ and mere political dilettante, is possible only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The ‘strength’ of a political ‘personality’ means, in the first place, the possession of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.

Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one’s self.

Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. In academic and scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity – however disagreeably it may express itself – is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise. With the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, ‘power instinct,’ as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of ‘the cause.’ For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and – often but not always identical with it – irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon ‘effect.’ He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the ‘impression’ he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power’s sake without a substantive purpose.

Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se. The mere ‘power politician’ may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of ‘power politics’ are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.

The final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning. This is fundamental to all history, a point not to be proved in detail here. But because of this fact, the serving of a cause must not be absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly what the cause, in the service of which the politician strives for power and uses power, looks like is a matter of faith. The politician may serve national, humanitarian, social, ethical, cultural, worldly, or religious ends. The politician may be sustained by a strong belief in ‘progress’ – no matter in which sense – or he may coolly reject this kind of belief. He may claim to stand in the service of an ‘idea’ or, rejecting this in principle, he may want to serve external ends of everyday life. However, some kind of faith must always exist. Otherwise, it is absolutely true that the curse of the creature’s worthlessness overshadows even the externally strongest political successes.

…

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth – that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say ‘In spite of all!’ has the calling for politics.

Webdiarist Kerryn Higgs gave us the lowdown on Dick Clarke’s explosive evidence of Bush’s failure to prioritise the al Qaeda threat in Bush before September 11: the awful truth, and now Condi Rice could be in big trouble. Today Kerryn reports Clarke’s explosive evidence on what the bushies did did after the S11 catastrophe.

 

On Tuesday 30/3/04, after pressure from all ten members of the bipartisan Commission of Inquiry into the September 11th attacks, George W Bush announced that National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, will testify to the Commission � in public on oath. This will take place next Thursday.

The Republican Chairman, Tom Kean, said he wanted her testimony under the penalty of perjury since her story differs from that of Richard Clarke � former counterterror chief and author of Against all Enemies: Inside America�s War on Terror, who testified a week ago.

Even more damning than his evidence about the Bush administration�s lukewarm approach to the al Qaeda threat before the attacks, is Clarke�s narrative of how Iraq then came to dominate the Bush agenda.

Clarke is not the first to reveal the Bush administration�s obsession with regime change in Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O�Neill�s allegations appeared in Ron Suskind�s The Price of Loyalty, published in January 2004. O�Neill also alleged that the newly installed Bush team was already talking about war on Iraq in January 2001.

On 60 Minutes O�Neill said:

�From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime … Day one, these things were laid and sealed.�

ABC News turned up corroboration from an unnamed offical who had been at the same National Security Council meetings:

“The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces.”

O�Neill kept copies of memos from the first days of the administration, including �Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq� and �Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts�, which looked at how Iraq should be governed under US occupation and which countries and companies would seek a share of Iraq�s oil reserves.

O�Neill had been sacked by Bush after his dissent on the second round of tax cuts, and was portrayed as a bitter man. The Whitehouse dismissed his allegations as �laughable�.

Clarke, too, has been under sustained attack, but he has the advantage of coming after O�Neill and the many others, listed here, who had already raised similar concerns. It’s becoming less and less likely that everyone is making it up.

Options for the removal of Saddam were canvassed long before September 11th, and serious military planning came soon afterwards. All of this predated the manipulated panic about weapons of mass destruction.

As the magnitude of the attacks became clear on the morning of September 11th, the Whitehouse was evacuated. Clarke was one of relatively few officials who remained in the Situation Room to deal with the crisis. When he called the FBI�s counterterrorism chief, he was told, “We got the passenger manifests from the airlines. We recognize names, Dick. They’re al Qaeda.” Clarke said:

I was stunned, not that the attack was al Qaeda but that there were al Qaeda operatives on board aircraft using names that the FBI knew were al Qaeda. ‘How the fuck did they get on board then,’ I demanded. ‘ … CIA forgot to tell us about them.'”

But the identification of the hijackers� al Qaeda connections and predominantly Saudi nationality did not deter key people from pursuing their preconceptions about Iraq. On September 4, 2002, well before the invasion, CBS News reported that Rumsfeld wanted to pull Saddam Hussein into the frame as soon as the afternoon of September 11th. The Washington Post revealed in January 2003 that the President had signed an order on September 17th directing the Pentagon to start planning military options for an invasion of Iraq. In the hysterical prewar atmosphere, with Rice and Cheney rabbiting on about mushroom clouds unchallenged by the supposedly serious press, these clues to a pre-existing plan did not provoke much further comment in the U.S.

In his book, Clarke describes his dismay as the post-attack meetings unfolded:

“I expected … a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them … Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try and take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.

” … By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about … ‘getting Iraq’. Secretary Powell pushed back, urging focus on al Qaeda. Relieved to have some support, I thanked Colin Powell and his deputy, Rich Armitage. ‘I thought I was missing something here,’ I vented. ‘Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbour.’

It was not only Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who turned out to be focussed on Iraq. On Wednesday evening, Clarke was pulled aside by the President:

“‘Look,’ he told us, ‘I know you have a lot to do and all�but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way….’

“I was once again taken aback, incredulous … ‘But Mr. President, al Qaeda did this.’

‘I know, I know, but� see if Saddam is involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…’

‘Absolutely we will look … again … But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.’

‘Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the President said testily and left us.”

Clarke did what he was told, reviewed the agencies� intelligence, and again found no link. When he sent the memo a few days later, it was returned for further work (‘Wrong answer’ was the message, said Clarke.) He doubts the President ever actually saw it � or the subsequent version.

According to Rice, Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that �Iraq is to the side�.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz went back to Washington and held a meeting of the Defence Policy Board, then chaired by Richard Perle. Their discussions centered on how Washington could use 9/11 to strike at Iraq. Colin Powell�s State Department was not invited to participate.

Tony Blair met with Bush a few days later. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to Washington, the US president was under intense pressure from his own military to attack Saddam Hussein, but Blair successfully argued for al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to be confronted first. The key word here seems to be �first”.

While that campaign went forward, Clarke said that:

“[t]he White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it … They did know better. We told them. The C.I.A. told them. The F.B.I. told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging Sept. 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable.”

The manipulation succeeded brilliantly. By January 2003, 51% of Americans thought that at least one of the hijackers was Iraqi, and only 17% knew the truth � that none of them were. Over 65% believed that Saddam and al Qaeda were in cahoots.

During his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Clarke came under significant pressure from Republican members (one of whom is rumoured to have been called by Bush�s top legal advisor earlier that morning) to explain what they characterised as discrepancies between his book and his previous closed testimony.

Clarke denied inconsistency, saying the Commission had never asked him about the invasion of Iraq:

” … the reason I am strident in my criticism of the president of the United States is because by invading Iraq … the president … has greatly undermined the war on terrorism.”

I watched these words broadcast live. There was an almost horrified and very extended silence.

And here lies the tragedy of it. Clarke is no dove and not opposed to invasion or war on principle. But he is convinced that Iraq was a catastrophic mistake, for which we will all pay dearly.

He has made his case in the book and in many interviews over the past ten days, which he articulates as three principal issues.

First: the damage to goodwill in the Muslim world towards the West. After the attacks, there was a sympathy that could have been built upon. The support of ordinary people outside the US has dissipated (polls in Muslim countries allied to the U.S. indicate widespread support for bin Laden these days, and suspicion that the US is trying to dominate the world and control Middle East oil). Al Qaeda recruitment has expanded:

�Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, ‘America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it � an oil rich Arab country’. He’d been saying this. This was part of his propaganda. So what do we do after 9/11? We invade … and occupy an oil rich Arab country which was doing nothing to threaten us.�

Clarke also quotes Egyptian President Mubarak’s words: “Before you invade Iraq, there�s one bin Laden. After you invade Iraq, there�ll be 100.” This is a view shared across the Arab, and wider Muslim, world.

Second: the immense cost in dollars (billions and growing) that could have been spent to improve U.S. security.

Third: the incomplete job in Afghanistan:

�You know, we had an opportunity, we had a window of opportunity after 9/11 to really root out terrorism. Instead, we took this excursion, going into Iraq, which had the exact opposite effect. It strengthened terrorism.�

Bush sent only 11,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, fewer than the police who patrol Manhattan, according to Clarke. And after six months, he pulled out the fighting force best equipped for service in that part of the world � and sent it to Iraq. This unit includes men who speak Arabic, Pastun and Dari. They had begun to develop a network of local sources and alliances, and believed that they were closing in on bin Laden. Without warning, they were sent off to track down Saddam. Specially-equipped spy planes went too.

As the insurgency in Iraq yields unbearable savagery, as Paul Wolfowitz is mentioned as one of the candidates to repace Paul Bremer as U.S. boss of the �new Iraq� and as Ahmed Chalabi is rumoured as set to become Iraqi PM at the forthcoming handover � all, surely, a recipe for escalating disaster � who would not share Dick Clarke�s chilling conclusion that George W Bush�s administration got the whole thing wrong?

A government lost in the past, in a Cold War world of missile defence and terrorists spawning from �rogue states�, missed the real world � and missed what chance there was to isolate the al Qaeda threat. Our government, to its everlasting shame, followed them.

OK, the book’s done – Not happy, John, defending Australia’s democracy – and Webdiary is open for business for 2004. And what cheering news to come back to: the government will ask a former intelligence officer to have a secret inquiry into our intelligence agency’s assessments of Iraq’s WMDs and report in secret to Cabinet’s security committee. Are they kidding?

Trust bank empty, boys.

Last night I read an American book called The five biggest lies Bush told us about Iraq (Allen and Unwin) which details the mendacity of Bush and the mendacity he induced in Tony Blair. Add Australia to the mix and the English model of democracy I’ve always believed is the best in the world faces an enormous test of credibility.

It was clear before the war for those who read more widely than the mainstream media that Iraq’s alleged WMD threat was a sham, an excuse for reasons for war Bush did not believe he could sell to the American people. The latest evidence of the real reasons for war came via US defence department whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who used to work next to the US government’s propaganda intelligence service the Office of Special Plans, set up to get around the professional intelligence agencies who wouldn’t cooperate with Bush’s scam. She says there were three reasons – to ensure American multinationals got a slice of the Iraq action, to move US bases from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, and to reverse Saddam’s decision that his oil sales be made in Euros, not $US dollars.

What that meant is that all three governments expected their professional intelligence agencies, legal officers and diplomats to be complicit in the fraud on our democracies and the citizens they were sworn to serve. And the three governments nearly got away with it.

That they haven’t – yet – is a tribute to a still strong Anglo-democratic system, although one which is at breaking point. In all three nations some civil servants resigned privately rather than be infected, others leaked, and still others spoke out on the record. And in all three nations, some politicians and former defence and diplomatic chiefs told the truth and warned of the consequences of following a rogue US President in defiance of world public and expert opinion.

The Parliaments of all three countries have fought mightily to get the truth behind the war, although in comparison with Britain and the United States Australia has proved to have far less robust parliamentary accountability mechanisms, which are in urgent need of strengthening.

Looking back, knowing what we now know, we can see clearly the madness of Bush and the unforgivable decisions of Blair and Howard to go along with him. We now know that containment of Saddam’s WMD plans had worked; as US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in February 2001, “He has not developed any significant capability with respect to WMDs”. We know that Saddam had no link to September 11 or to Al Qaeda, while Saudi Arabia had financial and personnel links at the highest levels. We know that British intelligence warned that invading Iraq without UN sanction would INCREASE the risk of terrorism and INCREASE the chance of any WMDs Saddam had falling into terrorist hands.

We know that Bush’s administration totally ignored – threw away – detailed plans for reconstruction of Iraq in the baseless belief that American troops would be welcomed as liberators, not conquerors, and that they gave their troops no training in how to handle Iraqi cultural sensitivities. Its blind ignorance extended to the belief that there would be no looting or destruction of infrastructure in the power vacuum after victory, despite specific warnings to the contrary from the State Department. And we know that Bush ignored warnings from the cIA and many other experts that democracy would not be possible in the short term in a nation with no experience of democratic freedom and a culture alien to Western style norms.

We know that Bush also ignored expert warnings that a very large occupation force would be required and that billions would need to be spent on reconstruction by the American people, and instead lied to his people that the cost would be minimal.

We know that the Anglo-alliance illegally bugged the UN secretary general Kofi Annan before the war, and that the British, rather than prove the war was legal, dropped leaking charges against a civil servant because she could successfully rely on the defence of “neccessity” – that she was trying to stop an illegal war.

What a sad shadow of a great democratic tradition we’re left with. I can’t help but wonder if this nightmare would have been avoided if Blair and Howard had understood the wisdom of Simon Crean’s statement to Bush when he addressed our Parliament last year:

“On occasion, friends disagree, as we on this side did with you on the war in Iraq. But, such is the strength of our shared values, interests and principles, those differences can enrich rather than diminish, strengthen rather than weaken, our partnership. Our commitment to the Alliance remains unshakeable, as does our commitment to the War on Terror, but friends must be honest with each other. Honesty is, after all, the foundation stone of that great Australian value – ‘mateship’.”

Bush abused his people’s panic and fear after September 11 to get a war he and his neo-conservative advisers wanted under cover of the war on terror. There was dissent at the highest levels of government and from former Republican national security advisers, and the American people were loath to agree without the support of the United Nations. A poll at the time showed they trusted Tony Blair more than any other advocate for war. What if Blair and Howard had had the guts to say no, for America’s sake.

My guess is that Bush would not have swung American opinion, and, unlike in Australia – as Howard proved – no American president would launch a war without the majority of American supporting his actions.

Blair and Howard thought they had to say yes or the current American administration would stop being their friend. In doing so, they failed the test of true friendship with the American people.

For when you look at the results of this debacle, it is the American people who have and will suffer. Essential services are at breaking point, and will run down further as Americans try to pay for this war, currently costing $1 billion a week. American soldiers have lost their lives. And America is distrusted around the world.

For the Anglo-democratic system to survive and regenerate, it is imperative that Bush, Blair and Howard lose office and that their successors act urgently to ensure that the professional pride and dedication to truth of its public service is restored and the trust between leaders and citizens repaired.

Hi again. I commissioned my colleague and Webdiarist Antony Loewenstein to research and write a chapter on the Hanan Ashrawi controversy for my book. The campaign against Ashrawi was spearheaded by the Melbourne think tank AIJAC (the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council), led by Colin Rubenstein. According to Liberal Senator George Brandis, Rubenstein had also endorsed his speech to Parliament accusing the Greens of being Nazis. I wanted to raise this in my introduction to Antony’s chapter, so I emailed Rubenstein to ask whether Brandis’s statement was true. In the course of a long correspondence, Rubenstein not only pointedly failed to answer my question, but demanded a retraction of something I’d written in Webdiary. So here are all the emails on the matter.

And then, Webdiary’s Meeja Watch man Jack Robertson suggests Rubenstein have a word to a certain Herald columnist about the anti-semitism of Mel Gibson’s film The passion of Christ.

Webdiary entries on Hanan Ashrawi are The battle for minds; Ashrawi and Brandis: the great debate; Real Sydney people meet Hanan Ashrawi; Ashrawi leaves behind a fresh air debate on the Israel Palestine question; More than two sides to Ashrawi fallout story and Ways of thinking: Stuart Rees on the lessons of the Ashrawi ‘debate’.

Webdiary entries on the Brandis speech are Nazi Greens an enemy of democracy, government decrees; Teeth bared, Howard’s team mauls our latest outbreak of democracy; Howl of the despondent historian andGreen historian to Brandis: my work’s been abused;

Margo to Colin, January 12, 2004

Hi. I’m writing a book about democracy in Australia. A contributor to the book, Antony Loewenstein, has been in touch with you with respect to his chapter on the Ashrawi controversy, and I understand that you have exercised your right not to comment on that or any other matter.

My interest is specific, in relation to another chapter in the book, on the addresses to Parliament by Presidents Bush and Hu last October.

In the wash up of the visits, George Brandis stated that the Greens were the new Nazis. This comparison was repudiated by Jeremy Jones (president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry) but, in a conversation with me, and two days later, on Lateline, he stated that you had endorsed his speech. In our conversation, he said he had called you the day after the speech to run it by you and that you agreed with it without reservation. On Lateline, he said you had called him:

“I was contacted by a very large number of leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been given.”

I ask:

1. Did you call him or did he call you?

2. Did you endorse the contents of his speech?

3. If you did endorse the speech, on what basis did you do so and in what capacity?

4. Was there any aspect of his speech that you disagreed with?

Regards,

Margo Kingston

*

Colin to Margo, January 28

Your communication of Jan. 12 has drawn to my attention your weblog of November 6, 2003 in which you said, “To Rubenstein, it’s fine to call the Greens Nazis”. Prior to attributing such a view to me you should have checked with me whether it was accurate. You did not check this with me. It is not – and never has been – my view that the Greens can be called Nazis.

Accordingly, I would appreciate a retraction.

In my view, equating Greens and Nazis trivialises the horrors of Nazism which one should always avoid, a view I believe Senator Brandis shares. I note in passing that Senator Brandis has stated unequivocally that he “did not assert the Greens are Nazis”.

*

Margo to Colin

Hi. As you will see from the text of Senator Brandis’ speech, he does equate the Greens to Nazies. For example:

“The commonalities between contemporary green politics and old-fashioned fascism and Nazism are chilling.”

And:

“It is time that somebody in this country blew the whistle on the Greens. The Greens are not the well-meaning oddballs we thought they were. The Greens are not the scruffy ratbags we thought they were. The Greens are a sinister force in this country inspired by sinister ideas, wrapped up in a natural mysticism – which is hostile and which sets its face against the very democratic values which this parliament represents and then cynically uses the procedures of this parliament in order to give itself political cover so that the sinister and fanatical views represented by Green politicians can grow and gain strength under the cover of democratic forms.

“As well – and I will not go too much further into this – we see other common features. We see the very clever use of propaganda. We see the absolute indifference to truth. We see the manipulation of bodgie science in order to maintain political conclusions. We see the hatred of industrialisation. We see the growth of occultism built around a single personality. We see a fundamentalist view of nature in which the integrity of the human person comes second to the whole of the natural system.

“My point is that the behaviour we saw from Senator Nettle and Senator Brown last Thursday was not just a publicity stunt. It was not just a random event. It was the very mechanical prosecution in this parliament of a profoundly antidemocratic ideology having deeply rooted antidemocratic antecedents. To hear Senator Brown – and no doubt Senator Nettle in a moment – stand up and seek to claim democratic cover for their actions and for their ideology should shock us. It should alert us to their game and it should send a message loud and clear to the Australian people – not just to the 90 percent of Australians who condemned their behaviour last Thursday but to 100 per cent of Australians – that this is the kind of crypto-fascist politics we do not want in this country.” (speech at Brandis)

When I said to Brandis that jews of my acquaintance had been distressed by his speech, he replied that the day after his speech and the furore which followed, he ran it by you and that you agreed with it:

“Brandis told me over coffee last week that after the furore over his speech he called Colin Rubenstein, who agreed with it. Brandis suggested on Lateline last Friday night that Rubenstein called him:

“I was contacted by a very large number of leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been given.”

Could you advise if this is the case?

Regards,

Margo Kingston

*

Colin to Margo, February 2

Dear Ms. Kingston,

Thank you for your response. My previous statement stands. Please advise me when I can expect your retraction of the statement in your weblog.

Yours,

Colin Rubenstein

*

Margo to Colin, February 2

I assume, therefore, that you did approve his speech contents.

Regards,

Margo

PS: I see no need to make a retraction of Webdiary.

*

Colin to Margo, February 17

Dear Ms. Kingston,

I have returned from overseas to find your email dated 2 February 2004, which I regard as mischievous.

My email to you dated 28 January 2004 sets out my position and your comment of Nov. 6 “To Rubenstein, it’s fine to call the Greens Nazis” is untrue and defamatory.

I once again request you either make a retraction of your webdiary or publish in its entirety my email to you of 28 January 2004.

Yours,

Colin Rubenstein

*

Margo to Colin, February 17

Hi Colin. I’m hoping to be back at work next week, and will publish your emails when I do so. Re the book, I still do not have an answer to my question of whether you agreed with the contents of the Brandis speech, as claimed by him. In view of your failure to answer, I propose to record this in my book.

Regards,

Margo

*

Colin to Margo, February 25

Dear Ms. Kingston

Thank you for your email of February 17. It would be false and incorrect to state in your book that I have not responded to your questions. I have provided my views in detail in my email of January 28 and suggest that should you wish to cover this issue in your book, your omission of my response would present an inaccurate and biased account to readers.

Yours

Colin Rubenstein

*

Margo to Colin, February 25

OK, one last attempt. Was George Brandis correct in his statement that after his Greens and Nazis speech Mr Rubenstein contacted him to say he supported it and he was pleased it had been given.

Regards,

Margo

***

The following email was added to this Webdiary entry on April 27.

Colin to Margo, March 04, 2004

One more time. Your failure to want to comprehend my previous email leaves me with my initial impression that you are out to create mischief and misrepresent the truth. I reserve my rights.

Colin Rubenstein

***

MEEJA WATCH

Drop Miranda a line, Colin

by Jack Robertson

If Colin Rubinstein is worried about apologists for anti-Semitism and wacky conspiracy theorists embedded among Fairfax journos, maybe he should drop Miranda Devine a line.

In this little one-year lesson in conservative religious hypocrisy, Miranda begins by ignoring her own Infallible Pope’s explicit pontifications on behalf of God and attacking those who oppose the Iraq war or question US foreign policy as ‘anti-Semitic’, having ‘blinkered amorality’ and ‘slip-sliding priorities’, and ‘undermining the war effort’. (Yes, give that nasty ‘neo-pacifist’ Pope a piece of your mind, Miranda!)

She ends by generously slip-sliding over and around and past Mel Gibson’s blinkered refusal to condemn his father’s ‘outrageous’ Holocaust denialism and disavowing that Gibson’s new film has a whiff of anti-Semitism to it (in the face of explicit protest from Jewish groups worldwide), before finally going on to proclaim her own Faith’s imperative lessons: to ‘end war’, ‘love your enemies’, and ‘pray for those who persecute you.’

Colin Rubinstein and supporters, I put it to you that we lefties at Webdiary aren’t an anti-Semitic threat. There’s plenty of genuine stuff out there – no arguments from me on that score. But the true danger is exported Saudi Arabian Wahhabism – an ugly distortion of Islam that was effectively underwritten for decades by the US oil industry. I’d also be keeping an eye on the more extreme elements of George W. Bush’s own home-grown Fundamentalist voting base if I were you – Christian zealots not entirely unlike one Hutton Gibson, say.

But then I’m a Green ‘Nazi’ myself, so what do I know about God.

***

1. Pope says Iraq war threatens Humanity (24 March 2003)

Pope John Paul, in his first public comment on the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, said on Saturday that the war threatens the whole of humanity, and that weapons could never solve mankind’s problems.

“When war, like the one now in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is even more urgent for us to proclaim, with a firm and decisive voice, that only peace is the way of building a more just and caring society,” he said. The Pope, in a speech to employees of Catholic television station Telepace, added: “Violence and weapons can never resolve the problems of man.”

The Pope led the Vatican in a diplomatic campaign to avert war, putting the Holy See on a collision course with Washington and its backers in the Iraq campaign.

Miranda knows best, though. Who does the Pope think he is – leader of the Catholic world?

2. The Joke is on the Pacifists (Miranda Devine, April 10, 2003:

Still, ridiculous though [Iraq Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf] is, he is a valuable metaphor for the sorts of “truths” we have been hearing about the war from a group of people you could call neo-pacifists. This is a tiny unelected cabal of influential left-wingers who have infiltrated the media, universities, newspapers’ letters pages, and Simon Crean’s brain. They all share a common hatred of John Howard and a sense of cultural superiority, more akin to the French than the Americans.

Before the first coalition soldier entered Iraq, these neo-pacs were most concerned about the influence of another cabal, the neo-conservatives of Washington DC, who had persuaded the Cowboy Moron in the White House to invade Iraq. With the help of sinister background music, ABC Four Corners’ Jonathan Holmes exposed their “hidden agenda”. They are “almost all Jews whose parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe”. Crikey!

In beautiful Iraqi Information Ministry style, Holmes later claimed those who pointed out the anti-Semitism embedded in his story were the “bigots”. As the Jerusalem Post pointed out last week, neo-conservative has become a code word for Jewish, just as neo-pacifist is a code word for delusional. Having uncovered the dastardly plot by Jews to take over the world, starting with Iraq, the neo-pacs moved on to more mundane matters, like undermining the coalition war effortThankfully, with their blinkered amorality and slip-sliding priorities, the neo-pacs are making themselves as irrelevant as al-Sahaf. Come to think of it, al-Sahaf deserves his own show on Radio National.”

***

3. Holocaust exaggerated: Gibson dad (19 Feb 04)

A WEEK before the United States release of Mel Gibson’s controversial movie, the filmmaker’s father has repeated claims the Holocaust was exaggerated.

Hutton Gibson’s comments, made in a telephone interview with New York radio talk show host Steve Feuerstein, come at an awkward time for the actor-director who has been trying to deflect criticism from Jewish groups that his film might inflame anti-Semitic sentiment.

In his interview on WSNR radio’s Speak Your Piece, to be broadcast on Monday, Hutton Gibson argued that many European Jews counted as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries like Australia and the United States.

“It’s all – maybe not all fiction – but most of it is,” he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people. “Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?” he said. “It takes a litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That’s why they lost the war.”

Gibson’s father caused a furore last year when he made similar remarks in a New York Times article. In a television interview with Diane Sawyer this week, Mel Gibson accused the Times of taking advantage of his father, and he warned Sawyer against broaching the subject again.

“He’s my father. Gotta leave it alone Diane. Gotta leave it alone,” Gibson said, while offering his own perspective on the Holocaust.

“Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely,” he said. “It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.”

During his lengthy radio interview, Hutton Gibson, 85, said Jews were out to create “one world religion and one world government” and outlined a conspiracy theory involving Jewish bankers, the US Federal Reserve and the Vatican, among others.

The Passion, which gets its US release on February 25, purports to be a faithful and graphic account of Christ’s last 12 hours on earth. Jewish leaders who have attended advance screenings have voiced concerns that its portrayal of the Jews’ role in Christ’s execution could stir up anti-Semitic feeling.

Again, Miranda knows best, though. Who do all these ‘Jewish leaders’ think they are – leaders of the Jewish world?

4. Christians the most eager to cast stones (Miranda Devine, 26 February, 2004)

Inside the bathroom at the Academy Cinema in Paddington on Tuesday night, there was a most unusual silence as a long line of women waited to get into the cubicles. They had just watched a preview of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and seemed lost in their private thoughts. For long minutes in that bright, crowded room there was no sound but the whirring of a fan. It is one sign of the power of Gibson’s movie that, in such a noisy era, silence is the first response.

Of course, inside the theatre after the last credits rolled, critics chatted away about the biggest movie controversy of recent memory – the charge that Gibson’s portrayal of the last 12 tortured hours of Jesus Christ’s life was anti-Semitic.

It is a charge that began last year with a vicious article in The New York Times about Gibson’s devout Catholicism and his 85-year-old father Hutton, who keeps giving outrageous interviews saying the Holocaust was exaggerated and the September 11 terrorists were Americans. The controversy grew when a stolen draft of the script found its way to an interfaith committee of the United States Bishops Conference. Scholars and Jewish activists denounced Gibson and called for boycotts before seeing the movie, which opened around the world yesterday, Ash Wednesday.

According to the New Yorker magazine, the scholars demanded 18 pages of changes, including that the two men crucified with Christ be described as “insurgents”, and not robbers. Much furore appears to have been whipped up by Christians whose ideological hatred of conservatives such as Gibson in their churches has overwhelmed their faith.

Even the Pope’s reported verdict – “It is as it was” – became a political weapon, and later was denied by a Vatican official.

Critics have called the movie a “blood libel” against Jews, and a “religious splatter” film. The New York Times critic Frank Rich was among the most vicious, writing at one point that even if the final product was not anti-Semitic, “either way, however, damage has been done: Jews have already been libelled by Gibson’s politicised rollout of his film”. Which was rich of Rich, considering his newspaper politicised the rollout.

One New York Daily News critic wrote that it was “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie since the German propaganda films of World War II”. It makes you wonder if she watched the right movie. Maybe, as a Catholic, I am not in a position to judge, but it is difficult to see how the movie is anti-Semitic.

There are Jews portrayed as villains, particularly the merciless high priest Caiaphas, who incites the crowd to chant “Crucify Him”. But other priests call for mercy and just about every good person in the movie is a Jew, including Jesus and His mother Mary.

The people who really could complain about being portrayed as sadistic brutes are the Roman soldiers. They laugh as they flagellate Jesus, and His skin flies and blood splatters their faces. Even when He has endured more suffering than you think possible, they torment Him, pressing a crown of thorns deep into His head.

They whip Him as He struggles to carry His cross through the streets of Jerusalem. And when they nail Him to the cross, and the blood spurts from His broken hands and feet, they still laugh. In a squeamish age, we have the sanitised version of Christianity, in which, if crosses are worn at all, they are plain, with no nails, no body. But Gibson has deliberately rejected what he calls the “fairytale” version. “Think about the crucifixion,” he said in one interview last year. “There’s no way to sugar-coat that.”

His movie is gruelling to watch, with no relief, from the dark opening scenes in the garden of Gethsemane until the brief resurrection scene at the end. The close-ups of Jesus are remorseless. You don’t want to look at His poor ruined body, His destroyed eye, His skin in strips, bloody gore underneath. Even His mother can hardly bear to look.

One of the most touching scenes has Mary at the foot of His cross, reaching for His feet but afraid of hurting Him more. She kisses the tip of His toe, getting blood on her lips. Only Gibson, at 48, with all his residual pretty boy glamour, could have made this movie so successful as church groups around the globe flock to advance screenings, breaking all records for a subtitled film. Projections now are that he will make back his $40 million in the first five days.

It was an admirable gamble for the movie star, backed up by a life that seems equally admirable. A 24-year marriage and seven children with his wife Robyn, a former Australian dental nurse, is no mean feat but for a Hollywood sex symbol, it is remarkable.

Gibson has said making the movie was an act of faith. And in a post-September 11 world, with talk of a “clash of civilisations”, and fears of a religious war between Islam and the West, his movie has a profound resonance. A clue to what he hoped to achieve comes in an upcoming Reader’s Digest interview. When he is asked: “Give me the headline you want to see on the biggest paper in America the day after The Passion opens,” he replies: “War ends.”

The Passion’s central message comes in a flashback when Jesus tells His disciples: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. For if you love only those who love you, what reward is there in that?” It is the central message of Christianity, which many of us too easily forget. Miraculously, and against all odds, Gibson has made that message more difficult to ignore, and will reignite the faith of many in the process.

* * * *

Miranda claims that the film isn’t anti-Semitic because only some Jews are bad guys and plenty more are good guys. She may be right – I haven’t seen it and don’t intend to because I think the whole ‘crucifixion thing’ has long been turned by bad Catholics into a deeply destructive (and creepy) fetish, rather than the profoundly moving creative metaphor it was really meant to be. Funnily enough, Devine didn’t and presumably still doesn’t extend the same flexibility of appraisal to the debates about the neo-cons and the Iraq War and terrorism. No; apparently all the many Jews worldwide who opposed the war and remain among the fiercest critics of the American neo-conservatives aren’t similarly living, breathing arguments against HER anti-Semitism blanket slanders. Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Eric Akerman, Naomi Klein, Susan Sontag, Ian Cohen anti-Semitic?

Only if that term no longer has any meaning, Colin Rubinstein.

But how about that cracking line from Mel’s dad – that the Americans weren’t simply ‘to blame’ for the attacks of S11, but actually DID them. Wow, Miranda – even a Lefty West-hater like me wouldn’t try to take the root cause argument to those extremes! But – where’s the Devine vitriol? Why is she extending so much deference to Mel Gibson’s pathetic calls for the media to lay off his nasty old man? This is a woman who relentlessly flays us sad Lefties for our ‘anti-Americanism’ – I’m confused!

Scott Burchill is lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, and comments regularly on the war in Iraq for Webdiary.

 

The failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has had interesting effects on political life in the Western world: some amusing, others deadly serious.

With both the Federal Government and the intelligence agencies leaking in an attempt to repair their sullied reputations, Canberra is awash with incontinents busting to find sympathetic journalists willing to pose as public urinals. Growing anger and constant reminders of what the Howard Government said before the war about Iraq’s WMD are acting like a diuretic on the body politic.

It happens all the time, though not always with such a rapid flow of information. It depends on willing conduits in the Fourth Estate. On July 10 last year, “WMD doubts are ludicrous” screamed the headline of Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian. Underneath, the paper’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan claimed that “the US has material in its possession in Iraq which, if it checks out, will be conclusive evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs. The evidence that Hussein had WMD programs is so overwhelming, he [John Bolton, US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Security] can barely understand how it is doubted.”

Two days later Mr Sheridan went further:

“The US has discovered what it believes is decisive proof of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and taken the material to the US for testing. …They believe the material will contain chemical weapons materials.”

Of course it didn’t. Unsurprisingly, a headline saying “We’re sorry we mislead you but we so badly wanted to believe this leak,” has yet to materialise.

All leaks should be treated with circumspection, regardless of where the stream emanates from. Writing in the late 1970s, the British historian E.P. Thompson argued that:

“The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the ‘secrets’ which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defence correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.”

Putting to one side the blame game and the buck passing, there are serious concerns arising out of this tawdry saga.

First, it is astonishing that the Australian Government is not interested in why the intelligence upon which it relied to start a war with Iraq was so faulty. Nor has it expressed any concern that it led the public astray. Having opposed the parliamentary inquiry examining pre-war intelligence which will report today, the Government has already leaked it because it knows that it clears them of Opposition charges that intelligence was manipulated or sexed up.

Faced with a collapsed pretext for their war, Canberra now effectively blames its intelligence “suppliers” (Washington and London) who can also find out where the problem lies. Howard and Downer are acting like dodgy retailers – when the customers complain about misleading advertising it’s the wholesaler’s fault.

Another inquiry will be needed and reluctantly established. One question it should address is why the end users of inconclusive intelligence expressed not the slightest doubt, qualification or ambiguity about its claims when they prepared this country for war. As the 12 month anniversary of the invasion approaches, they remain utterly shameless about their conduct – as do their cheerleaders in the media who urge them “not [to] make any foolish admissions” (Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 26 February, 2004).

Secondly, in his address to the nation on 20 March 2003, Mr Howard said that “a key element of our close friendship with the United States and indeed with the British is our full and intimate sharing of intelligence material”. Following September 11, the Bali catastrophe and the WMD fiasco there are now grave concerns over the value of these arrangements. With its confidence shot, the public has every right to be concerned about the quality of both our own intelligence and that of our allies upon which we so heavily rely.

Thirdly, by retrospectively claiming that the war was justified regardless of what they argued beforehand, Howard and his counterparts in Washington and London are saying that the benchmark for aggression has been lowered: from “possession of WMD” to “intention and capability”. This authorises an attack on just about any decent high school chem lab run by a teacher with sociopathic tendencies. Nothing less than a revolutionary change to the very basis of international society, it is extraordinary that this shift remains unremarked upon.

Finally, Howard likes to upbraid opponents of the war by claiming that if they had their way, Saddam would still be in power. This is more than just a morally dubious ‘ends justify the means’ argument. Speaking to the national media on 14 March 2003, the PM said he “would have to accept that if Iraq had genuinely disarmed, I couldn’t justify on its own a military invasion of Iraq to change the regime. I’ve never advocated that. Much in all as I despise the regime.”

Howard ruled out humanitarian or any other concerns as a justification for war. Given that Saddam appears to have already disarmed himself when this remark was made, the logic of Howard’s position is that he too believes that Saddam Hussein should still be in power.