G�day. John Howard copycats George Bush and does a �surprise� visit to our troops in Iraq on Anzac Day (except that the big media knew, but were �sworn to secrecy� – at least the big US media were lied to by Bush so it was a real surprise.)
More partisan political photo opportunities, more abuse of our troops for his personal advantage. Yuk. This bloke wants to single handedly destroy our one day of the year as a unifying moment for Australians. No shame, John. No shame.
He pulled out most of our forces after Saddam�s statue fell and organised fake �victory� parades while our hapless soldiers� colleagues from Britain and the US were dying in Iraq trying to create a peace. Now he’s finally admitted it’s still war, and says we could send more troops, reneging on a long standing commitment not to do so.
Who in Iraq told him the latest line to run? Here�s what Downer said on Meet the Press on Sunday:
PAUL BONGIORNO: So, are you saying there would be no foreseeable situation where our Government would send more troops back into Iraq?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, I can’t imagine a situation where we would send more troops.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Scott Burchill recommends The Los Angeles Times story �Insurgents fortify positions in Najaf, at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-najaf26apr26,1,3286292.story?coll=la-home-headlines (subscription required):
NAJAF, Iraq – As U.S. troops await orders to enter this Islamic holy city, militant Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and his militia are strengthening their control here, stockpiling weapons, seizing key religious sites and arresting or detaining those who challenge him.
In the last two weeks, Sadr’s followers – many rushing here from Baghdad, Fallouja and other areas of Iraq – have fortified their positions in the city and the neighboring town of Kufa, including at Najaf’s gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, one of the most revered mosques in the world…
The open challenge to the U.S.-led administration in a city seen as sacred to Shiite Muslims, who make up 60% of Iraq’s population, has put coalition authorities in a quandary. Two weeks ago, U.S. military officials amassed 2,500 troops on the outskirts of Najaf and declared their intention to restore order to the city and kill or capture Sadr. Last week, they softened their stance, saying they wanted to allow more time to reach a peaceful settlement in Najaf.
But on Sunday, L. Paul Bremer III, the civil administrator of Iraq, called Sadr’s growing weapons cache “an explosive situation.” Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division, said soldiers probably would advance into an area on the edge of Najaf being vacated by withdrawing Spanish troops. He said that although the Americans would not interfere with religious institutions, the move would further squeeze Sadr’s forces.
“We’re going to drive this guy into the dirt,” he said.
And see U.N. Iraq Resolution a Tough Sell for the Yank�s latest (last?) attempt to get the UN to take the nightmare off their hands:
The Bush administration is preparing a broad U.N. resolution to endorse its plan to transfer power in Iraq, but it may face a tough sell on proposals guaranteeing legal protection for foreign troops and letting Washington make the final judgments on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.letting Washington make the final judgments on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, according to U.S. and U.N. officials…
The general goal of a new resolution is to rally international support behind the new provisional government, which is still being negotiated by U.S. and U.N. officials, and ease year-long international friction over the U.S.-led military intervention to oust Hussein.
With serious deliberations on a draft now underway within the administration, U.S. officials are optimistic about rallying enough Security Council support – unlike the resolution authorizing the use of force last year. “We are working on such a resolution, and I’m confident we’ll be able to obtain such a resolution,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Dutch RTL television Friday.
Yet what some U.S. officials have already dubbed the “mega-resolution” may be in trouble even before a draft is finalized. “This could be the last big diplomatic battle over U.S. Iraq policy,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy.
***
ANZAC DAY THOUGHTS
Phil Henry
My father penned the letter that appears below earlier today. As a returned serviceman, my father has very strong feelings about this issue. I wasn’t optimistic that his letter would get a run in the paper’s letters column but I thought maybe Webdiary might provide a forum to explore his ideas. Later today, I ran across this online piece. It’s brilliant. I thought about my father’s letter and decided he’s right on the money. Please make of this what you will.
*
25 April
To Margo Kingston, Webdiary, Sydney Morning Herald
Lest we forget! Enough, already! Another Anzac Day has passed, but lest we forget will be with us throughout the year.
When I attended reunions of the unit of which I was privileged to be a member, at formal dinners after the usual toasts had been honoured a speaker would recite The Ode:
“At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.
The assembled company, still on their feet, would repeat “We will remember them”. And then the speaker would intone “Lest we forget” and the mob would dutifully repeat it.
WHY?? We had just acknowledged and confirmed our enduring memory of the sacrifice of our comrades� lives, and by extension the sacrifice of all those who had done the same. Not only “why”, but also “what”?
It is my contention that the phrase has come to be used to stifle rational thought by invoking some supposed axiomatic belief which may never be doubted. Or some other weasel purpose.
To counter this tendency, I suggest reference to its origin in the poem addressed to the British people, oddly entitled “Recessional.” The date was 1897, the poet Rudyard Kipling, the world was a very different place, but the message is even more relevant today. It should be read and pondered, and the closing lines of the verses should be spoken aloud as written.
Lest we forget! Lest we forget!
Yours sincerely
Leon Henry, Kenmore, Queensland
*
Recessional
by Rudyard Kipling
God of our fathers, known of old–
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine–
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
*
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
*
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget – lest we forget!
*
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe–
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
*
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard —
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard–
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!
***
Antonio Yegles (Antonio�s �Who am I� piece is at Mate, where is my country?)
Good to see Howard is following his master Bush�s stunt by secretly turning up in Iraq; as any loyal lapdog should of course. He forgot the fake turkey though. Shouldn’t he have taken a slab of VB and a few Meat Pies to give to the troops? (Margo: One of Howard�s boys did the can of Milo handover – Howard�s spinners must have had fun with that.)
I wonder when he is going to don the fighter pilot suit, go for a taxpayer funded joyride and land on a aircraft carrier to declare: Mission Accomplished! Or should this be: Until the Job is Done!
Or should this really say: Whatever, whenever and however you want Dubya! War Crimes? What War Crimes? – All the way with Dubya!
***
Peter Funnell in Canberra
The Governor-General of Australia gave a superb address this ANZAC Day at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The GG took no side, save the fallen, did not glorify the horror, offered no endorsement of war and spoke of the basis of sacrifice and the precious gift that is our democracy.
It was a first rate example of leadership and plain common sense. Just what the nation needed to hear at this time. Well done GG!
Margo: Why wasn�t he the bloke who went to Iraq for Anzac Day? He�s the commander in chief under our monarchist Constitution, the one Howard pretends he supports. The speech is not yet on the GG�s website.
***
Georges Mayes in Ingleburn, NSW
My immediate thought was that Howard has used Anzac to promote his political survival, to boost his popularity whilst defusing the question of the recall of the Australian soldiers from Iraq.
Words like “Howard uses the dead of Anzac as human shields to deliver his political Iraq message unharmed because Latham will not dare fire any political missile” come to my mind. And I shiver at the thought that grown-up men, “honourable men” in Shakespearean parlance, came up with this “great ploy”.
And I shiver even more because I realise that “my thoughts” classify me as mentally unstable, whilst Howard’s ploy will lead him to political victory, the pinnacle of his career as the greatest Australian prime minister.
Cry, Cry Australia
***
Tim Gillin in Kensington, Sydney (Webdiary�s seriously pissed off conservative contributor)
Columnist Paul Sheehan writing in the SMH last year provided some interesting arithmetic about the human costs of Australia’s foreign policy.
In World War I, when (our) population was only 5 million, 300,000 men enlisted for duty and the majority, 216,000 of them, were either killed, wounded or captured. To put this in perspective, it was the equivalent of today’s US (with 290 million people) suffering 12 million military casualties.
Despite this, Sheehan went on to sing the praises of a century of our Governments’ foreign policy of “Imperial Fealty”, first to the UK and then the US, a policy that started with the Boer War and now sees us with troops in Iraq. A war that may end up, if the pessimists are right, with us opposing Iraqi patriots fighting for their homeland. Just as we opposed Afrikaner patriots fighting for theirs in the Boer War. We’ve come a long way.
Unfortunately Paul Sheehan did not do a cost/benefit analysis. Sheehan and a lot of ANZAC day commentators seem to think that “the cost is the benefit”.
What would the lives of these “sacrificed” men been like if they had lived? Did they want to be sacrificed? What would their families, children and grand children have wanted? How many potential leaders in business, government and sport did our country lose? Could it be that we really did lose the flower of our manhood then, that the bravest and most honourable were shot down? This could be an explanation of why Australia in the decades since has been run by a conga line of second raters.
If we look at the negative side of the ledger we have to ask some serious questions of a practical political kind too. What exactly did those “12 million modern US equivalent” casualties obtain for us in terms of British support during WW2 and beyond?
The saga of Churchill and FDR’s unwillingness to release Australian troops from mid-east service to reinforce their homeland is so well known in Australia it is hardly worth repeating.
Surely the lesson is clear. Imperial powers, even relatively benign ones like Britain and the US, talk the language of collective security to mask their own interests. Not only is the UN is willing to sell them a mask, but like The League before it, was always camouflage for the great powers. Smaller states cannot realistically expect the power elite in a far off global powers to repay us for past favours. Things just don’t work that way. (For a great analysis of “The UN Charter and the Delusion of Collective Security” see Joseph Stromberg’s paper.
Australia’s massive casualties in the Great War, what Joseph Schumpeter called the “Meaningless Catastrophe” of World War I , did not help us in WW2. We paid our ‘insurance premium’ many times over but when we needed to make a claim the office was shut. Too busy, sorry.
It’s worse than that. There is a strong case to be made that Churchill and FDR “sexed up” a previous dead letter dispute they had with Japan to pave the way for US intervention in the War against Hitler. Northern hemisphere scholars may argue this ultimately had a great result for mankind, Mr.Stalin certainly liked it. But the risk and the cost to our homeland was too great.
In his piece Why are we surprised by war lies? Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill says:
On 25 November 1941, just two weeks before Pearl Harbor, there was a top-level meeting at the White House where, according to then US secretary for war Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt ignored the agenda and ‘brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese’. ‘He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked, perhaps [as soon as] next Monday’, wrote Stimson in his diary, ‘for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what should we do. The question was how we should manoeuvre them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves’.”
In Britain, Churchill’s government concurred that some kind of Japanese attack was bound to take place. ‘America provoked Japan to such an extent that the Japanese were forced to attack Pearl Harbor’, said Captain Oliver Lytletton, production minister in Churchill’s cabinet, in 1944: ‘It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into war.'”
So it is possible that it was the policies of Churchill and FDR that helped put Australia under Japanese threat in the first place, a threat removed mostly by the determination of Australian troops at Kokoda and Milne Bay, the equally courageous US Marines at Guadalcanal, and the USN and Australian Navy in the Coral Sea and Bismarck Sea.
The young Americans who fought with us are honorary ANZACs in my book, even if it makes sense to listen to America’s own founding fathers and distrust the leaders of all great powers.
I have as much admiration for our own veterans as anyone. Their loyalty to each other and their sacrifice should be honoured. Their advice should be listened to with respect. In some ways the respect and admiration ordinary Australians have for our diggers helps make us a better country.
The point is to avoid new Gallipollis, not replay them. We can’t risk another century of Imperial fealty. Maybe that’s the lesson the next generation should learn from Anzac Day.
***
REACTION TO Time for tit-for-tat leaders to grow up
***
Judy Wood
There are so many people in the community disillusioned by the current political parties and the way the media runs with every little issue put forth by Howard and his team. The game playing is so obvious and the media often is the messenger of the spin. I no longer believe anything in the papers or what comes out of the politicians mouths. It is so bad now that one is not sure whether it is spin or a truthful statement.
If the world was not in such a mess due to the invasion of Iraq it may not matter, but the times are tricky at the moment and we need to know the truth. The current leaders are very dangerous people.
The Bennelong Friends of Refugees group is also holding a meeting � May 14 at St. Anne’s Centre Top Ryde at 7.30 pm. Speakers are Andrew Wilkie, John Valder and Dr Carmen Lawrence. Yes, the community is finding other ways to seek information.
***
Jenny Haines in Newtown, Sydney
I think it is idealistic to expect that politics is not going to be adversarial and competitive when everything else in our society is! Having observed the corridors of power from afar and close up over the last 28 years, it must be almost impossible to survive without fighting with all your strength to get your views heard above the din, even if you are Mark Latham, and probably especially if you are Mark Latham.
So for all the idealists out there, it would be nice to have a new politics, but that is not going to happen now, in our current society. So cut Mark Latham some slack – he’s trying hard to define a new path for Labor and he’s making some courageous stands for which he is taking a beating, especially on Iraq.
I don’t agree with everything he says and does, but I’d far rather have him as PM than John Howard!
***
Malcolm Manville in Killara, Sydney
You raise an interesting concept in asking our politicians to grow up, although you�re expecting a near impossibility.
No matter how you perceive politics across the spectrum, by acting like adolescents politicians ensured we turn away. It seems to be their ploy to create indifference, cynicism and a lack of interest from the electorate. They do it because it suits them to do it.
When I see Messrs Howard, Abbott, Downer, Rudd, Ferguson et al appear on TV I feel I’m to receive a Logie winning performance. This was illustrated about a week ago when John Hewson referred to Paul Keating apologising for some of the things he�d said about him in public during the months leading up to the election, and said that he actually liked him. Very nice for Hewson, but did we hear an apology to the electorate?
Regarding your reference to the upcoming forum arranged by the North Shore Peace and Democracy group, which is at least trying to engage pollies in some form of open dialogue, why are they giving politicians the privilege of being presented with questions in advance? Most likely because they wouldn�t turn up, is my cynical response.
<p***< p=””>
David Tester in Cairo
I’m at the tail end of a 5 week trip through Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. I just had a quick look at the SMH and was unsuprised to see you writing nonsense again.
In case you haven’t noticed, Sharon is about to put his planned END OF THE OCCUPATION OF GAZA to his party�s vote for approval. The IDF is hammering the terrorists as they were in the process of making it appear the Israeli’s are being chased out.
The reality is Bush has told him to get out and Sharon has told his Cabinet that more than once. The end of the occupation of the West Bank will follow in a form that will depend on the outcome of the Gaza withdrawal. Perhaps by then, with Hamas governing Gaza, Arafat will come to his senses and negotiate the West Bank withdrawal process.
Yes, the Israelis will keep some settlements, but if the Egyptians etc hadn’t attempted to “drive the Jews into the sea” in 1967 they would never have been able to. I wonder if the Jordanians intend making a more complete Palestine by donating the East Bank to the new state. After what the Palestinians attempted in Black September I doubt it.