Howard has his Tampa 2004. Like Tampa, it involves the participation of a foreign power and exemplifies the politics of winning votes through fear. Unlike Tampa, that participation is voluntary and very, very deliberate.

 

In August 2001, The Norwegian vessel the Tampa answered an SOS call from Australia�s coastguard to rescue boat people from a sinking boat. Howard grabbed the chance for the politics of full-on fear and loathing, including baseless claims that terrorists could be aboard the boats and an SAS boarding of Tampa to turn it away from Australia. International maritime law and refugee laws were trashed as the 2001 version of Jewish people fleeing the Nazis and floating the seas without anywhere to land. Our �ship of fools� was populated with Afghanis and Iraqis fleeing the evil Taliban and Iraq, both regimes we since toppled.

But this time, Labor leader Mark Latham handed Howard the opportunity, if he dared subordinate Australia�s national interest to the altar of his lust for power.

Of course he dared. In last week�s talks between Howard and Bush, they discussed domestic politics. The deal: Howard would continue to be Bush�s echo chamber on the war in public, and to privately close ranks with the Americans, as Australia did when we became aware that the Americans were committing war crimes at Abu Ghraib. And Bush would publicly put the American alliance on the line to arm Howard with Tampa Mark 2.

This morning�s page one lead story by Paul Kelly in The Australian left us in no doubt about the deal or that Rupert Murdoch, an enthusiastic Bush backer, would promote the campaign through his media assets.

The US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is America�s second most senior diplomat, but diplomacy, let alone respect for Australian democracy, went out the window in his chat with Kelly.

He mounted an unprecedented and blatant propaganda strike to re-elect Howard through fear that if we elected Latham America would abandon the alliance. His arguments could, and probably were, written by Howard. The echo chamber payback.

Armitage also laid on the line something Howard has only dared hint at � that the Free Trade Agreement with the US was conditional on us staying in Iraq. Yes, it is blood for money. And it is money for political slavery.

Armitage dismissed Latham�s statement affirming his decision to bring our soldiers home by Christmas � the one he wrote after Bush whacked him in Howard�s company last week – line by line:

“Mr Latham said he looked to the day that a Labor government could work with the US to further strengthen intelligence, strategic and cultural relations. Apparently economic and political relations were not so important. Now you either have a full-up relationship or you don�t.

“I would argue that the US has spent a lot of time and energy trying to develop a free trade agreement with Australia, but these are things the people of Australia have to decide for themselves.” (see US steps up Latham attack).

(And have a look at today�s Australian editorial on Abu Ghraib, almost literally a composite of Alexander Downer�s increasingly ludicrous attempts to deny what the facts have shown � that Australia was an accessory after the fact to the war crimes at Abu Ghraib and helped the Yanks argue that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. It even praises Downer�s Lateline interview this week, where he answered not one question asked and admitted he hadn�t even bothered to read the crucial documents in Australia�s possession. This ain�t journalism, it’s crude political propaganda which shames Australian journalism and stinks to high heaven.)

Publicly putting the American alliance on the table to protect the careers of Bush and Howard is, of course, appalling and dangerous. But it does exemplify the attitude of Bush and Howard to politics � to win at any cost, regardless of the national interest. The Bush/Howard play is a radical, momentous change in Australian and American policy on the Alliance. Australians now stare at the threat that Australia is either effectively the 51st state or is on its own. With the Yanks on everything, or against them on everything.

The so-called greatest democracy in the world is also interfering in British politics to protect the current President�s job. Fearing that Tony Blair could be removed from office before the US presidential election in November, thus dealing yet another blow to Bush�s credibility on Iraq, Bush�s thugs are pressuring their supposed ideological soul mates in Britain, the Conservative Party, to stop criticising the conduct of the war. In the traditionally conservative magazine The Spectator at Bush to Howard: hands off Tony Peter Oborne reported:

“… the most important leader of the international Coalition, by far, was and remains Tony Blair, the only foreign leader of whom American voters are even dimly aware. In recent weeks the Republican Party has woken up, with a gulp of horror, to the prospect of a Blair defenestration. Specifically, it fears that the British Prime Minister could damage George Bush�s international standing by quitting before the November Presidential election.

So an operation has been launched within the White House, the State Department and above all the Republican Party to keep Tony Blair in office. This takes a number of forms…

The Republicans are now stretching themselves to the limit to put pressure on the British Tory party to give Tony Blair the easiest possible ride.

This kind of direct intervention in British politics by the United States is far from unprecedented. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan helped out Margaret Thatcher by humiliating Neil Kinnock when he made an official visit to the White House.

Now the same kind of pressure is being applied, only in reverse. The White House regrets that the new leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, is failing to give unstinting support for the Iraq war and Tony Blair. There have been as yet no menacing calls from the Vice President. But Michael Howard has been left in no doubt that he is in the doghouse. �The White House hates Michael,� says one senior Conservative official, perhaps with exaggeration. �It feels that he is not standing shoulder to shoulder with Tony Blair. It is furious with him.� The official says that Howard has received �quite a few indirect messages� from the administration to the effect that it would be better if he stayed his tongue.”

The fear politics of Tampa Mark 2 is escalating so quickly that it looks to me like Howard will go early, perhaps as early as August 7.

First we had George Bush � the man whose handpicked puppet to rule Iraq Ahmed Chalabi had just been disowned as a suspected spy for Iran, and who was about to announce the resignation of the CIA director George Tenet � stand beside Howard to say it would be �disastrous� for Latham to pull Australia out of Iraq.

Both he and Howard (Howard after Bush, naturally) last week explicitly compared the war on Iraq to World War II, after claiming that Iraq is now �the frontline�. And now Richard. With us or against us.

If you accept the World War II analogy, then you�re forced to accept that America, the UK and Australia started it. Howard said he took us to war to make us safer from terrorism. Yet he stepped into the terrorist’s trap by invading a Muslim nation without ties to al Qaeda and now admits that “international terrorism has invested an enormous amount in breaking the will of the coalition in Iraq”. In other words, we made a mistake, but now we can’t afford to lose. Therefore it would be rational, wouldn�t it, to ask whether the government which put us in this dreadful position – where oil supplies are at risk, recruitment to al Qaeda has surged, and instability is now chronic in many Muslim nations – is the right one to lead us in an attempt to minimise the damage. Why is noone asking that question? Our mainstream media is largely captured, that�s why.

If Australians are shit scared that we�re entering World War III, they might do anything to keep America onside. That�s what Howard promises and what his media backers will ram down our throats.

It�s going to be hard for Latham to make Howard�s Tampa 2 a winner for him, and I bet more than a few Labor people are thinking back to 1975, when, it has been alleged, the CIA stepped in to destroy the Whitlam government.

I hope Latham sticks with the politics of hope and continues to assert Australia’s independence and national pride. A new government in America, Britain and Australia could yet avoid World War III. Which is what the world�s peoples are desperately hoping for.