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.

 

Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

“Another year, another war, another conga line of suckhole quotes to commemorate. As 2003 comes to a close, it’s time to rejoice in the bum jokes again.” Polly Bush

G’day. This is the last Webdiary for the year, folks, so thanks to all of you who wrote and read this year. And what a bloody big year it was, although I reckon next year will be even bigger. I’ve just written my last Sun Herald column for the year, out Sunday, and you can check it out online then at margo kingston opinion.

 

I’m in blind panic mode over my book, so no break for me. Hope you have a good one. Webdiary will return at the start of February.

Today, Polly Bush’s annual Polly Waffle awards. Thanks, Polly! Last year’s awards are at Pollie Waffle awards, 2002. Let’s chat again next year.

***

Pollie Waffle Awards 2003

by Polly Bush

Another year, another war, another conga line of suckhole quotes to commemorate. As 2003 comes to a close, it’s time to rejoice in the bum jokes again.

It was the year that saw one million Australians take to the streets to oppose bombing the bejeezus out of Baghdad, the year that Peter Hollingworth was evicted from the Big Brother mansion, the year that John Howard provided a pained expression while presenting the rugby world cup medals, the year Mark Latham climbed his own ladder of opportunity, and the year Saddam was found hiding down a dusty hole, not to be confused with a cupboard in Rockhampton.

Keeping with Webdiary tradition, the Pollie Waffle Awards “celebrate the drone and the dribble, the babble and the drivel, and the pure porkies our nation’s finest have serenaded us ordinary, extraordinary and not-so-ordinary folk with” in 2003.

[Last year’s conventional drum roll replaced with this year’s Saddam tribute of sporadic machine gun fire in the air]

To begin proceedings, we delve back to the not-so-memorable Federal budget.

The 2003 McHungry Award goes to �

Former Family and Community Services Minister Amanda Vanstone, who, after her Government provided the budget relief of a couple of extra bucks a week, said:

“$5 � hell, what will it buy you � a sandwich and a milkshake if you’re lucky.”

Lucky Mandy wins an unpaid national advertisement campaign with a Mchappy McZillionaire company that swiftly produced a picture of the Minister sucking on a rival’s (yeah guess who) milkshake. The image was combined with the Minister’s comments and the underlying words, “She’s obviously going to the wrong place.”

Never a shy flower, the Minister for Fast Food Promotion was so flattered by the advertisement she generously decided to share her hard-earned tax cuts with the creator of the advertisement. How?

“I’m that impressed that I’m taking the guy who thought up the idea � out to lunch,” Senator Vanstone said.

Also in response to this year’s federal budget is another gong. While the Budget made Senator Vanstone hungry, it caused regurgitation from others, which leads to �

The 2003 Finger-Down-The-Throat-Award. The award goes to �

Federal MP for Parramatta Ross Cameron.

The Liberal MP in Sydney’s western suburbs took on those horribly unfair and ungrateful baby boomer sods who, how dare they, complained about the lack of spending on luxury services like health and education. Cameron got the bucket out, responding:

“People turn around and have this massive collective whinge – they make me want to throw up.”

Cameron’s prize is contesting his 1.2% held seat in next year�s federal election, and counteracting the new Opposition Leader’s Meatloaf-appreciation-constituents head-banging across the rest of Sydney’s west.

Moving up the NSW coast to another marginal seat leads us to �

The Bettina-Arndt-Feminism-Is-A-Filthy-Word-Award.

This award is presented to pig-farmer-and-politician descendant, Larry Anthony.

The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (they should really think about changing that word “affairs”) wins a gong for continuing the Howard Government�s degradation of women�s voices in Australia. In response to Nicola Roxon’s take that the Federal Government’s Inquiry into child “custody” was “dog whistle politics to men’s groups aggrieved by the Family Court”, Anthony said:

“I respect the Member’s long academic interest in women’s rights – but she must not let that cloud her vision when it comes to children and young people.”

For this, Anthony wins a grunt from the men’s rights lobby, who heard the whistle loud and clear. He also wins the prize of Roxon being reshuffled to Shadow Attorney-General – a probable sign of pending opposition if the Government decides to turn the whistle into legislation next year.

This prize leads us to the annual Dog Whistle Award, which unfortunately for others only really has one contestant until the Member for Bennelong hangs up his cricket pads or alternately gets his arse wiped in next year’s federal election.

Yes, as long as our Man of Steel continues to flush through the extra taxpayer dollars at Kirribilli House, this award is his to keep.

For 2003, John Howard�s Who-Let-The-Dogs-Out corker comes from one of his many and varying reasons why Australia joined in on mass destructing Iraq. Prior to sending in the troops, Howard pulled on raw grieving emotions when he requested the nation lie back and think of Bali:

“I will, amongst other things, be asking the Australian people to bear those circumstances in mind if we become involved in military contact with Iraq.”

Howard’s eventual prize is Saddam’s head [insert sporadic machine gun fire] making it all worth it, changing the initial emphasis on ridding the world of still undiscovered weapons of mass destruction to the “liberation” of the Iraqi people.

Howard also picks up another prize this year � the Nothing-Wrong-With-The-1950s Award. Joining in on some Vatican-fun, Howard rejected gay marriages, arguing:

“Marriage as we understand it in our society is about children, having children, raising them, providing for the survival of the species.”

For this, along with insulting homosexuals, Howard wins the prize of insulting every heterosexual couple who can�t have, or god forbid, don’t want children. He also wins a declining birth rate, and nominates himself for prime first contestant on Australia’s version of Queer Eye for an Aging Balding Very Straight Guy.

Despite these being national awards, there is a special international inclusion in this year’s ceremony. The Most Visually Inspiring Award for 2003 goes to fellow dictator liberator President George W. Bush, for his description of going power walkies with our steamy esteemed green and gold tracky clad Prime Miniature:

“I was breathing hard and Barney was breathing harder. I had trouble keeping up with him.”

For this prize, the President’s dog Barney wins a bone, which appropriately leads to �

The Most Inspiring Political Performance For A Baz Luhrmann Production Award.

[intermittently interfuse Saddam tribute gunfire with edited snippets of show tunes, opera, and n-ce-n-ce-n-ce sounds of bum-f^&* music]

Thanks to Andrew Denton the world now knows the truth. The character of a bumbling snooty sounding duke audiences around the globe cringed at in Baz’s Moulin Rouge was based on �

Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, the one and only Alexander Downer.

Looking for inspiration, actor Richard Roxborough needed only tune into the news to catch a grab from the fishnet wearing globetrotter. As Roxborough explained to Denton earlier this year:

“This is completely a true story. I was watching the news and Alexander was banging on about something or another and I thought, there’s my man – absolutely perfect”.

Alexander wins the prize of not being taken as seriously as his shadow minister, which leads to … The Honorary Peter Beattie Award for Most Brazen Media Tart. The award goes to …

Shadow foreign affairs Minister Kevin Rudd.

Krudd shot from virtual unknown to Mr News Grab in 2003, and most recently spent the weekend following Simon Crean’s friendly “tap on the shoulder” (euphemism for knifing) um-ing and ah-ing over his leadership ambitions, while coincidentally parading the fam munching out in the Brisbane burbs (Lillith Bartlett was safely tucked in bed that weekend). Rudd proved he is the true generational change leader by regurgitating his line that:

“Once upon a time I said of course I’d like to be a leadership candidate for the parliamentary Labor party by 2020 and that remains my aspiration.”

Rudd’s prize is backing Beazley in the caucus vote the followed Crean’s stabbing, and ultimately missing out on this year’s generational leadership change. However, his second chance draw means that should new leader Mark Latham lose next year’s election, he might just end up Labor’s next Prime Minister � which possibly won’t happen until 2020 anyway.

On the topic of leadership ambition, the Oops-I-Did-It-Again Award for 2003 goes to �

Kim “unlucky talisman” Beazley, who only managed to lose two leadership ballots this year.

During his first shot at Crean mid-year, Beazley repetitively reassured us this would be his last shot at becoming a three-time election loser. Beazley told the ABC’s PM program:

“There”ll be no second ballot. Not as far as I’m concerned.”

The weekend before the ballot against Crean, Beazley again stated:

“I’m in the business of winning this ballot and as I said, I’m not a spoiler. I’ve said from the outset, I’m here for one shot.”

In the business of losing, Kim lost that ballot to Crean, spurring him on to declare following the vote:

“I also said that this was one challenge, the one challenge I would make. I said it, and I meant it.”

Yet on November 28 2003, Kim “not a spoiler” Beazley decided to have one more whack at it. Moments after Crean had thrown down his poison chalice, Beazley announced:

“As a result of his decision to stand down, I’m announcing today my intention to contest the leadership again of the Australian Labor Party.” Following his loss to Mark Latham most recently, Beazley also picks up the Eat-Your-Own-Words Award for comments in his defeat speech:

“It is never the time in the Labor Party for disunity and it is far too late for disunity now.”

Beazley’s efforts in 2003 win him the remote chance of the Labor Party being in Government again in the foreseeable future, thanks to his defeats in the caucus room.

The Gritted Smirk Award for 2003 goes to �

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello again!

Patiently waiting for that earmarked 64th birthday party for John Howard, Peter Costello missed out on blowing out the candles and getting his ultimate 2003 wish. Later, his failed plea for generational change was picked up by the Labor Party in its election of Mark Latham as leader, a salty rub into Costello’s leadership aspiration wound.

Following Latham’s elevation, The Age’s Louise Dodson asked the Treasurer whether he welcomed the concept of generational change. It was a ball Costello couldn’t dodge:

“Oh, that is a real googly Louise. I think I will just sort of step back and raise the bat as that goes � through to the keeper.”

Costello’s prize is another good dose of self-imposed tolerance.

Speaking of imposed exiles, the Oh-How-They-Change Award goes to �

Pauline Hanson

Prior to becoming a prison reform campaigner, Hanson came out beating the Laura Norder drum during her attempt for a Senate seat in the NSW election:

“I think that we need to have tougher sentencing that befits the crime.”

Later, following Hanson’s ‘You Used To Bring Me Roses’ experience, this comment was picked up by Labor’s Mark Latham, who threw back, “Mrs Hanson spent the last New South Wales election campaign campaigning for tougher penalties � and now she’s got one.”

Hanson also wins her own honorary award � the Please Explain Gong, for her response during the state election campaign on how good a job NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney was doing:

“Well, I don’t, and I’m not going to comment on that.”

Quizzed further on her knowledge of Moroney, Hanson replied:

“Well, at the election, I will know. “You have to realise that yes, I am from Queensland, I’ve only been involved in federal politics.”

This 2003 multi-Pollie-Waffle award winner also picks up the Blurry-Crystal-Ball Award for this corker, also said during the campaign:

“If I felt that there was any chance of a conviction against me, I would not be standing for a NSW seat.”

Hanson’s prizes include no NSW seat and a conviction of electoral fraud, successfully overturned on appeal after an 11-week lock up at Brisbane�s WACOL prison. Other gifts include a new-found appreciation of the perils of prison life, an outpouring of shock from political foes across the spectrum, a renewal in public support, a ridiculously bad music single launched by her son, and a lifetime nemesis in Tony Abbott, whose shady set-up of the curiously named �Australians for Honest Politics� fund caused more outrage than applause.

The You’re Joking! Award for 2003 goes to �

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock

The hilarious grey-green stallion cracked yet another funny in the House this year, when the Opposition compared his tactics of tackling terrorist organisations in his new portfolio with his asylum seeker strategy as Immigration Minister. The longest serving member of parliament mused:

“I’ve become fascinated by this new term �wedge politics�. I’m not sure what wedge politics is all about.”

Ruddock’s prize is a big piece of ASIO legislation cake, slightly chewed on by the ALP, but pretty much still intact.

The next gong is the Tying-the-Extraordinarily-Long-Bow Award. And the winner is �

Senator George Brandis, for his comments that a “feature of contemporary Green politics which bears chilling and striking comparison with the political techniques of the Nazis and the fascists is not merely their contempt for democratic institutions but a very cynical willingness to use those democratic parliamentary institutions to achieve anti-democratic ends”.

Brandis’ bold statements came after Greens Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle were rugby tackled by some Government members in the House of Representatives during a joint sitting of parliament for President Dubbya�s fly-by-wreath-laying-crocodile-hunter-bbq-ing visit.

Senator Brandis wins a special prize from fellow Liberal Senator Jeannie Ferris, who, with the help of Prime Minister John Howard�s tut-tuts, more recently got away with gross hypocrisy by attacking the stupid but sad actions of the Leader of the Australian Democrats. On that note, Senator Bartlett’s decision to hold a press conference with screaming toddler in hand in response to the booze-up broohaha almost qualifies himself for the next award. But not quite.

Instead, the very special Child Care Advocacy Award goes to …

Wilson Tuckey

The West Australian MP gets the Goose of the Year gong for his use of ministerial letterheads in a desperate and reckless attempt to get his son off a traffic fine. While defending his actions in barracking the case of his 40-something-year-old son, Tuckey descended into absurdity, hollering across the House:

“WHY DO YOU HATE CHILDREN?”

Iron Bar Tuckey’s prize is being dumped from his ministerial position, with Iron John not-so-convincingly arguing there was no connection with Tuckey�s clear breach of ministerial conduct and the reshuffle that followed.

The topic of reshuffling brings us to our last Pollie Waffle prize for the year. While 2002 produced the unforgettable ‘arselicker’ comment, 2003 had the same politician continuing to provide us with bum jokes.

And while many tipped Bomber Beazley’s re-elevation to the not so prized ticket of leading the Australian Labor Party in the ballot early this month, in retrospect it wasn’t all that surprising that he lost another winnable contest. Instead, the rise of Mark Latham to the position of Opposition leader, at the very least provides an interesting election year in 2004, and no doubt a plethora of more waffle on its way.

[drum roll, gun fire and farting sounds]

The 2003 Bend Over And Feel the Breeze Award goes to �

Mark Latham, who, by winning this prize also highlights the most profound political interview of the year, with the ABC 7:30 Report’s Kerry “knock out” O’Brien. In his first interview with the new opposition leader, Kerry cut straight to the chase, dropping the bomb:

KO: What is this obsession you have with bottoms?

ML: I’ve no particular obsession with bottoms, it’s a figure of speech –

KO: Howard the arse-licker and the brown nose kissing bums, as you put it, Abbott hanging out of the Queen’s backside, the conga line of suckholes.

ML: Well I think ‘bum’ is a word that gets used a bit in this country. It’s not a swear word. I’m sure you have used it yourself, so … …you take together a full public life. I have been in public office for 16 years. I will go through your tapes and have a look at some of your commentary –

KO: Feel free, but I’m not aspiring to lead this country.

ML: No, no, but you’re leading a fine current affairs program.

KO: I’m glad to eventually have you on it.

ML: I’m very pleased to be here and let’s keep talking about the Australian language.

Indeed. New opposition leader Mark Latham’s 2003 prize is an orgasmic “oooooohhhh” sigh from the media scrum on the announcement of the caucus vote. Breath it in folks, that’s the fart of fresh air, potentially sweeping across the country in 2004. Bend over, soak in the breeze, and have a bloody good one.

 

Martin davies image. www.daviesart.com

 

Martin davies image. www.daviesart.com
“We read Him here, we hear Her there, We chase those true lies everywhere, Whispering scribe of the story we’re in, That devilish, dastardly Doctor of Spin!”

Jack Robertson is Webdiary’s media critic.
We read Him here, we hear Her there,

We chase those true lies everywhere,

Whispering scribe of the story we’re in,

That devilish, dastardly Doctor of Spin!
The Meeja Watch Most Memorable Person Of 2003 is ‘The Spin Doctor’.

Yes, it’s been a year without peer for these fickle, feckless, flighty, flitty, flirty and only-ever-fleetingly found creatures of metaphysical manipulation. Whereas last year we embraced the ‘Ordinary Australian’ (Person of the year: The Ordinary Australian, that contrived electoral un-person who was publicly everywhere but not really there at all, 2003 has been dominated by precisely the opposite political phenomenon: The Man Who Is Nowhere To Be Seen But Has His Inky Digits All Over The Shop.

The Spin Doctor, that Scarlet Pimpernel of Public Debate.

The Spinner is vocationally-bound by his Guild Rules to remain faceless and nameless, but ego gets to the best of us in the end, and thus The Spin Doctor featured prominently in 2003, especially in the selling of the Iraq invasion ‘ perhaps too prominently for his own survival.

Both here and overseas, he simultaneously attained new depths of ignominy and heights of publicity, during such inglorious episodes as the suicide of British whistle-blower Dr David Kelly, the ‘outing’ of active CIA agent Valerie Plame (payback for her husband’s querying of the Niger uranium claims), and the attacks on our own Andrew Wilkie (via prime minster’s office innuendo and alleged leaks to Tame Media Spin-assister Andrew Bolt).

It was over Iraq that The Spin Doctor finally showed us both the sharpness of his teeth and the grubbiness of his knickers. Never more so than in the tactics uber-Spinner Alistair Campbell deployed in ‘selling the war’ to Britain, and then in later ‘damage-control’ after Kelly killed himself, itself the result of his Spun ‘no-names’ outing by Tony Blair’s government.

The Spinner’s vileness was revealed fully in Campbell’s diaries, testimony and general obnoxious demeanour during the Hutton Enquiry, laying bare his contempt for democracy, his ugly language and his ‘whatever-it-takes’ mentality, characteristics only ever rampant in someone who believes he will never be called to public account for them.

We read the sly emails that flew to and from the Number Ten Communications centre, directing the secondary and tertiary Spin; heard about the Lobby briefings, the way in which Kelly was unmistakably identified but not technically ‘named’; saw the buck-passing and fire-walling over his death by Blair and Hoon and their elected ilk; and were able to watch, in real time and as predicted by almost everyone, the Hutton Enquiry become Strategic Spin itself, distracting debate from the over-arching issue (Blair committing a reluctant population to an unnecessary war based on endless lies), and focussing instead on the containable specifics (who said what, when; that ‘sexed-up’ dossier; who leaked Kelly’s name; the BBC’s role, Gilligan, etc).

All in all, it was a rare public exposure of how The Spin Doctor works, and how much he poisons the democratic franchise, too.

The entire war was, of course, a tour de force of Spin. Since we’ve flogged the lies to death already – and since, in the happy wake of Saddam’s capture, to reprise them fully yet again is doubtless to invite more abuse as ‘whining appeasers who would prefer that he were still in power’- we need only recall the Big Two in glancing pastiche (the Spinner’s preferred mode, anyway, since concrete statements are too easily discreditable).

This is more or less how the war was Spun, in particular by various quasi-official Spinners working in their ’embedded’ intelligence groups in the Pentagon, their think-tanks, and the Rupie press:

1. Saddam and WMD

Iran, Gulf 1, Niger, 45 minutes, tubes, centrifuge, gassed Kurds, anthrax, drones, Frog nuke parts, Russian AT missiles, Scuds, chemical suits, fridge vials, dirty bombs, Richard ‘Rent-a-mouth’ Butler, blabbing defectors, all hidden, all buried, well-he-would-say-they-were-destroyed-wouldn’t-he’, prove a negative, he kicked out the inspectors!, they were spies anyway, Scott Ritter = internet prowler, Wilkie’s a lefty nut (busted marriage), Kelly was a wacky Buddhist, ONA ‘assessments’, UN records, chemical factories, bugger Old Bailey proof, SADDAM-APPEASERS!!!, Pearl Harbour, worst nightmare, profound conviction, terror nexus, Saddam has WMD, let’s roll..

2. Saddam and al-Qaeda

Prague meetings, airline mock-up, terrorist training camp, Afghan al-Q veteran with busted leg in Baggers, Dick Cheney says so, Saddam and Osama, financial trails, Sudan, Palestinian suicide bomber payments, Ansar al-Islam and Iraqi intelligence, Osama and Saddam, ignore the terrorist experts, Guantanamo interrogations, Stephen F. Hayes says so, SADDAM-APOLOGISTS!!!, al-Qaeda with a nuke, Greg Sheridan says so, Winston Churchill, worst nightmare, profound conviction, terror nexus, Saddam has links with al-Qaeda, let’s roll.

We can all rejoice at the sight of Saddam in chains, and congratulate the soldiers who caught him. But we should also congratulate their Spin Doctors. In January they sold the line that toppling Saddam did not alone justify invasion, but disarming him of WMD did. In December they sold the line that Saddam turning out to be disarmed of his WMD already didn’t make the invasion unjustified, because Saddam had now been toppled. Spin Doctoring at its finest, where what was said yesterday no longer exists. Oh, except that they do keep reminding us anti-invasion types that we’re all still appeasers. You figure it out.

But the war gave us an even clearer glimpse of The Spin Doctor as Kafka, when the role was taken to illuminating extremes by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

His TV assurances about the absence of US tanks in Baghdad even as they practically poked their barrels into shot behind him (proving that WMD delusions are not a Western monopoly) might have been cause for much merriment among pro-war types, but such transparent spin-lunacy was only barely more laughable than the extended Jessica Lynch fantasy, still merrily Spinning its way to ever-more surreal extremes of only-in-America unreality, including the Hollywood make-over, the requisitely-controversial best-seller (has she really forgotten that rape, or did it never happen and it’s all just marketing spin’), and the inevitable anti-Jessica spin backlash. Both Lynch and Saeed al-Sahaf have about the same number of dedicated websites too, whatever that tells us.

And remember Tony Abbott’s stubborn insistence to Kerry O’Brien that Terry Sharples’ legal costs were not, technically, ‘money’.

Or Trevor’s Kennedy’s heartfelt insistence that he donated his chunk of ‘un-money’ to Abbott’s Hanson-nobbling Slush Fund solely because he hated to see taxpayers being ripped off by anti-democratic frauds, only to be revealed himself a few months later via Offset Alpine as – well, you fill in the Spin yourself.

Then Hanson’s Spin on Abbott, then Bishop’s Spin on Beattie, which got Emerson Spinning on Bishop while Beattie Span it back to Howard, who tossed it, via Carr, back to anyone who wanted it, which certainly wasn’t the Australian Electoral Commission. Then Hanson’s conviction was overturned, and suddenly no-one wanted to play either Go in or Get Out, Spinner at all.

Or what about Steve Irwin’s Spin on the PM ‘ the best leader on the world’ Oh really, Steve’ Or is it what a Spin Doctor calls $175, 000 of the advertising budget very well spent’

And so on. Well may we laugh at Saddam & Co’s nuttier delusions in 2003, but there were just as many transparent Spin Doctor self-implosions in the Anglosphere, too, and while it was the year of his greatest triumphs, 2003 may also prove to be the one he finally ran out of rotational traction. As they say, the wrong ‘un is only a wrong ‘un to the bunny who hasn’t yet lifted his bat and been clean-bowled by it. So exhaustively now has the Spinner trotted out his assortment of orthodox off-breaks, leggies, top-spinners, googlies, flippers, sliders and straight balls that it’s hard to see what tricks he might have left for next season.

Truly those wiles were on show everywhere in 2003. In Government – plasma TV, Manildra, Tuckey, all the PM’s interviews. Other politics ‘ Bob Carr’s realm where everything is Spin, ruthlessly controlled by his team, Australia’s Princes of Spin; the leadership tussles, with all their usual inane Spin games until POW!

Latham reminded us all how great un-spun politics can feel; Hollingworth’s failure to out-Spin both his own offensive Spin and the tightly-wound Rent-a-Top death-rolling of Hetty Johnson. US politics ‘ the Democrat race, where (Howard Dean aside) candidature Spin on their ‘current’ positions on Iraq has given words like ‘tortuous’ and ‘fluid’ new meaning; the election of Arnie S. in California after a campaign bereft of anything but Spin.

The Corporates ‘ how else but with Spin can one explain to an AGM those still-rocketing CEO salaries in a flat market year’ Celebrity ‘ where ordinary Australians chose Spin over The Real Thing ourselves, voting for Guy, Shannon, What’s-Her-Name and only then Paulini. Even in journalism, where The Australian’s collective defence of Janet A outdid the New York Times’ Jayson Blair in the Spin Doctoring-as-serious-reportage stakes.

But by far the lamest-but-still-successful outing, the supreme moment in Spin Doctoring for 2003, came in Sport, when that Dual Exponent Shane Warne dribbled out a few pathetic long-hops to Ray Martin back in February ‘ and got away with it. Best moment’ When the Self-Employed Spin Doctor claimed that he took diuretics simply because he was ‘stupid’, for even at this very early stage of 2003, we see the craft in its representative prime.

First, there is Warne’s steely-cool willingness to publicly admit that his employer (in this case himself) is a screaming idiot, if there is no other way to avoid more damaging accusations. How often was 2003 to see this wily tactic deployed!

‘Mr Tuckey was not corrupt, he was just stupid’; ‘the junior staff member was stupid to call Andrew Wilkie crazy’. ‘I was stupid to imply that the fourteen-year-old raped that helpless priest’. Bravo for setting the year’s tone, Shane! (And the ‘plausibility’ of that alternative explanation, too – who would not concede the chance, at least, that Warne is not a lying, drug-taking cheat at all, but simply thick as pig-shit’)

Then there are all the classic Australian Spin Doctor trimmings at work, here: Warne’s ‘straight-talking’ delivery that disguises what is actually total obfuscation; the wheedling hurt tone and plaintive voicing via which he proclaims his underdog status, even though he has more power, popularity and patronage than any other Player in the Game; the quivering-lip hints of emotion simmering beneath that buttoned-up ordinary Australian exterior, the manufactured ‘profound convictions’ ‘ why, darken the blonde tints, thicken those eyebrows, whip out the diamond stud and bung a Slouch Hat on his head, and Warney could probably even sell a tough line like: ‘No, I assure you I’m not remotely worried about Mark Latham in 2004, Kerry.’

Finally, that definitive early moment in the Year of the Spin Doctor incorporates what would prove to be the most crucial ancillary element of all in this victory: The Tame Journalist.

Marvel at Warney’s fellow Packer-Lacky Ray Martin, in the guise of ‘reporter’, as he pokes a respectful dead bat defensively at every lolly-pop from Kerry’s other Big Investment. With that kind of journalistic self-discipline and lack of scepticism, Ray could easily become a Fox News war correspondent or a Daily Telegraph columnist (although this interview clearly reveals Martin as irretrievably embedded in ‘ sorry, with – another mighty mogul, already).

Still, without the ceaseless efforts of these unsung heroes, The Spin Doctor would have a much tougher time of it, so a nod to Ray Martin, too, as representative of all the other meek, simpering, domesticated journalists who helped make 2003 his most triumphant.

But farewell, too, to the Daddy of them all, for 2003 also saw Alistair Campbell un-quietly retire after Hutton had wrapped. It was lovely getting to know Alistair in 2003, and perhaps in 2004 we might become just as intimately-acquainted with the Australian Guild Leaders too ‘ astoundingly well-paid Professional Public Liars such as Tony O’Leary ($”’, ”’, Howard), Walt Secord and Amanda Lampe ($178, 000 and $158, 000, Carr), and the spectacularly-inept Andrew Reynolds ($200-$300′ per hour, Hollingworth), who’ve all been working so hard for so long, without any public credit from us taxpayers at all. Let’s hope that next year our journalists give them the level of personal attention they deserve.

Alistair Campbell’s finest hour as Liar-in-Chief of The Spin Doctor Guild’ Well, the many filthy examples-of-the-craft he leaves behind as the legacy of his long time as the Dark Prince of Bullshit Castle are none of them as instructive as the deeper belief he reveals by his leaving of it when he did: that The Man Who Is Nowhere To Be Seen But Has His Inky Digits All Over The Shop ‘ The Spin Doctor, the Meeja Watch ‘Most Memorable Person of 2003’ – is utterly, utterly useless to his elected-politician King, once he has become The Man Who Is Seen Everywhere.

Which is why we hope The Spin Doctor will end up winning this award two years in a row.

 

Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

“It is hard to believe that either Washington or London would relish the prospect of an open trial. They would not want Saddam to adumbrate their support for him – credit-by-credit, pathogen-by-pathogen, weapon-by-weapon – during the 12 years before he became an official enemy by invading Kuwait in August 1990.” Scott Burchill

G’Day. Sick of the triumphalist pap that passes for commentary on Saddam’s capture in most Australian media? Want a realistic assessment of its effect on the ground in Iraq – an assessment reflected in the sombre tone of President’s Bush’s speech on the matter? Try Saddam, celebrity tryant: His capture may create more problems than it solves and the website of Michigan University history professor Juan Cole.

 

When I saw the close ups of the tyrant I thought of his accessories, did you? Who will join him when he’s tried for crimes against humanity? Which multinational companies and which western politicians? Reconciliation requires confession from all parties, after all, if all sides are to move forward to a democratic and free Iraq. You can bet the Iraqis haven’t forgotten history. I wonder if Saddam’s decision not to kill himself was about his final revenge – looking the West in the eye and saying “You too.” Tonight Scott Burchill, lecturer in international relations at Deakin University and a regular Webdiary contributor, recalls the past. See also US Takes Custody of Another Wayward Client

***

Hoping for amnesia

by Scott Burchill

Sometimes in politics the moral high ground can only be reached by wading through the lowlands of public amnesia.

Reacting to the capture of Saddam Hussein on 13 December, Prime Minister Howard declared his enthusiasm for a public trial:

“I believe he should be tried in Iraq. I think it should be an open trial. I think the details of what he did should be spelled out, detail-by-detail, slaughter-by-slaughter, death-by-deaths.”

Saddam’s arrest also vindicated the Man of Steel’s decision to commit Australia to war:

“If the alternative advice had been taken, “Saddam Hussein would still be running Iraq, he would still be murdering people, he not only would not be in captivity but he would have others in captivity in Baghdad.”

Denuding such an important discussion of its historical context and narrowing the focus to Saddam’s moral turpitude will induce self-righteousness in Western leaders every time. On the question of Iraq, however, such lofty sentiment lacks authenticity.

Isolating Saddam’s capture from the consequences of his removal from power is a clever polemical device which Mr Howard likes to employ. However such a strategy is unlikely to persuade the families of the 9,500 innocent Iraqi civilians killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq that their sacrifice was worth the cost. Or the recently unemployed, the victims of street crime and those who depend on essential services for their survival. These Iraqis don’t matter and aren’t counted in the West – literally.

History is the great antidote to public amnesia and it suggests the Prime Minister’s distaste for Saddam’s tyranny has not always been so passionately expressed.

Before the war Mr Howard’s humanitarian concerns for the people of Iraq were insufficient to support ‘regime change’ in Baghdad. He told the National Press Club in March that Saddam could stay in power, and therefore keep tormenting his people, providing he gave up his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

Given the Iraqi leader had evidently disposed of his WMD several years before, according to the Prime Minister’s logic – now derided as “alternative advice” – Saddam should still be in power.

This ‘change of course’ is dramatic, if unsurprising. A search of Hansard for the period when Saddam was committing the worst of his crimes – gassing Iranian soldiers in 1983-4 and the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 – fails to turn up any expressions of concern in the Parliament by either John Howard or Alexander Downer. It’s not until the WMD pretext falters in the weeks before the invasion that Canberra discovers human rights violations in Iraq.

There were certainly no expressions of humanitarian concern while Canberra supported a vicious sanctions regime which, over a decade, must have been responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands of Iraqis, while strengthening Saddam and compelling the population to rely on him for their survival.

It is hard to believe that either Washington or London would relish the prospect of an open trial. They would not want Saddam to adumbrate their support for him – credit-by-credit, pathogen-by-pathogen, weapon-by-weapon – during the 12 years before he became an official enemy by invading Kuwait in August 1990.

Saddam’s worst crimes, when presumably many of the mass graves now disingenuously “discovered” by the West were dug, had been committed when he was the West’s favoured ally and trading partner. At the time, his crimes against humanity, for which charges should now be laid, elicited little if any concern in Western capitals. Quite the opposite.

Historian Gabriel Kolko notes that:

“The United Stares supplied Iraq with intelligence throughout the war [with Iran] and provided it with more than $US5 billion in food credits, technology, and industrial products, most coming after it began to use mustard, cyanide, and nerve gases against both Iranians and dissident Iraqi Kurds.”

After he poisoned over 5000 people in the Kurdish city of Halabja on 17 March 1988, Saddam was rewarded by George Bush 1 with new lines of credit and praise from Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State, John Kelly, as “a source of moderation in the region.”

Twenty months after this horrific crime, Washington was still providing Baghdad with dual-use licensed materials, including chemical precursors, biological warfare-related materials and missile guidance equipment – enabling Saddam to develop his WMD programs. It’s difficult to believe that either George Bush 2 or over 150 companies in Europe, the United States and Japan which provided components and know-how needed by the monster in Baghdad to build atomic bombs, chemical and biological weapons, want this information publicly aired.

During the worst decade of Saddam’s rule (1980-90), the UK sold Iraq �2.3 billion in machinery and transport equipment and �3.5 billion in trade credits, supporting the creation of a local arms industry and freeing up valuable resources for the Iraqi military.

London responded to the atrocity in Halabja by failing to criticise Saddam (ditto for Washington), doubling export credits to Baghdad and relaxing export guidelines making it easier to sell arms to Iraq.

This behaviour is difficult to reconcile with the West’s belated concern for humanity in Iraq today. There will be no expressions of regret for the support he was given at the peak of his crimes. When Saddam comes to trial, the West will just be hoping that he too has joined the culture of forgetting so pervasive amongst his captors.

 

Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

“Empowered by the American people, I will work to restore the legitimacy that comes from the rule of law, the credibility that comes from telling the truth, the knowledge that comes from first-rate intelligence, undiluted by ideology (and) the strength that comes from robust alliances and vigorous diplomacy.” Howard Dean

Howard Dean is the Democrats frontrunner to stand against George Bush for the job of President of the United States next November.

 

Fulfilling the Promise of America: Meeting The Security Challenges of the New Century

by Howard Dean, Governor of Vermont, December 15

In the past year, our campaign has gathered strength by offering leadership and ideas and also by listening to the American people. The American people have the power to make their voices heard and to change America’s course for the better.

What are the people telling us? That a domestic policy centered on increasing the wealth of the wealthiest Americans, and ceding power to favored corporate campaign contributors, is a recipe for fiscal and economic disaster. That the strength of our nation depends on electing a President who will fight for jobs, education, and real health care for all Americans.

But the growing concerns of the American people are not limited to matters at home: They also are increasingly concerned that our country is squandering the opportunity to lead in the world in a way that will advance our values and interests and makes us more secure.

When it comes to our national security, we cannot afford to fail. September 11 was neither the beginning of our showdown with violent extremists, nor its climax. It was a monumental wake-up call to the urgent challenges we face.

Today, I want to discuss these challenges. First I want to say a few words about events over the weekend. The capture of Saddam Hussein is good news for the Iraqi people and the world. Saddam was a brutal dictator who should be brought swiftly to justice for his crimes. His capture is a testament to the skill and courage of U.S. forces and intelligence personnel. They have risked their lives. Some of their comrades have given their lives.

All Americans should be grateful. I thank these outstanding men and women for their service and sacrifice.

I want to talk about Iraq in the context of all our security challenges ahead. Saddam’s capture offers the Iraqi people, the United States, and the international community an opportunity to move ahead. But it is only an opportunity, not a guarantee.

Let me be clear: My position on the war has not changed. The difficulties and tragedies we have faced in Iraq show that the administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help, and at unbelievable cost. An administration prepared to work with others in true partnership might have been able, if it found no alternative to Saddam’s ouster, to then rebuild Iraq with far less cost and risk.

As our military commanders said, and the President acknowledged yesterday, the capture of Saddam does not end the difficulties from the aftermath of the administration’s war to oust him. There is the continuing challenge of securing Iraq, protecting the safety of our personnel, and helping that country get on the path to stability. There is the need to repair our alliances and regain global support for American goals.

Nor, as the president also seemed to acknowledge yesterday, does Saddam’s capture move us toward defeating enemies who pose an even greater danger: al Qaeda and its terrorist allies. And, nor, it seems, does Saturday’s capture address the urgent need to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the risk that terrorists will acquire them.

The capture of Saddam is a good thing which I hope very much will help keep our soldiers safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer.

Addressing these critical and interlocking threats terrorism and weapons of mass destruction – will be America’s highest priority in my administration.

To meet these and other important security challenges, including Iraq, I will bring to bear all the instruments of power that will keep our citizens secure and our nation strong.

Empowered by the American people, I will work to restore:

* The legitimacy that comes from the rule of law;

* The credibility that comes from telling the truth;

The knowledge that comes from first-rate intelligence, undiluted by ideology;

The strength that comes from robust alliances and vigorous diplomacy;

And, of course, I will call on the most powerful armed forces the world has ever known to ensure the security of this nation.

I want to focus first on two ways we can strengthen the instruments of power so we can achieve all our national security goals. Then I want to lay out my plans for dealing with the central challenges I have identified: defeating global terrorism, curbing weapons of mass destruction.

First, we must strengthen our military and intelligence capabilities so we are best prepared to defend America and our interests.

When the cold war ended, Americans hoped our military’s job would become simpler and smaller, but it has not.

During the past dozen years, I have supported U.S. military action to roll back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, to halt ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, to stop Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo, to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda from control in Afghanistan. As President, I will never hesitate to deploy our armed forces to defend our country and its allies, and to protect our national interests.

And, as President, I will renew America’s commitment to the men and women who proudly serve our nation and to the critical missions they carry out. That means ensuring that our troops have the best leadership, the best training, and the best equipment. It means keeping promises about pay, living conditions, family benefits, and care for veterans so we honor our commitments and recruit and retain the best people.

It means putting our troops in harm’s way only when the stakes warrant, when we plan soundly to cope with possible dangers, and when we level with the American people about the relevant facts.

It means exercising global leadership effectively to secure maximum support and cooperation from other nations, so that our troops do not bear unfair burdens in defeating the dangers to global peace.

It means ensuring that we have the right types of forces with the right capabilities to perform the missions that may lie ahead. I will expand our armed forces’ capacity to meet the toughest challenges like defeating terrorism, countering weapons of mass destruction, and securing peace with robust special forces, improved military intelligence, and forces that are as ready and able to strengthen the peace as they are to succeed in combat.

When he ran in 2000, this president expressed disdain for “nation building.” That disdain seemed to carry over into Iraq, where civilian officials did not adequately plan for and have not adequately supported the enormous challenge, much of it borne by our military, of stabilizing the country. Our men and women in uniform deserve better, and as President, I will shape our forces based not on wishful thinking but on the realities of our world.

I also will get America’s defense spending priorities straight so our resources are focused more on fighting terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and honoring commitments to our troops and less, for example, on developing unnecessary and counterproductive new generations of nuclear weapons.

Leadership also is critically needed to strengthen America’s intelligence capabilities. The failure of warning on 9-11 and the debacle regarding intelligence on Iraq show that we need the best information possible about efforts to organize, finance and operate terrorist groups; about plans to buy, steal, develop, or use weapons of mass destruction; about unrest overseas that could lead to violence and instability.

As President, I will make it a critical priority to improve our ability to gather and analyze intelligence. I will see to it that we have the expertise and resources to do the job.

Because some terrorist networks know no borders in their efforts to attack Americans, I will demand the effective coordination and integration of intelligence about such groups from domestic and international sources and across federal agencies. Such coordination is lacking today. It is a critical problem that the current administration has not addressed adequately. I will do so – and I will meet all our security challenges – in a way that fully protects our civil liberties. We will not undermine freedom in the name of freedom.

I also will restore honor and integrity by insisting that intelligence be evaluated to shape policy, instead of making it a policy to distort intelligence.

Second, we must rebuild our global alliances and partnerships, so critical to our nation and so badly damaged by the present administration.

Meeting the pressing security challenges of the 21st century will require new ideas, initiatives, and energy. But it also will require us to draw on our proudest traditions, including the strong global leadership demonstrated by American Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, to renew key relationships with America’s friends and allies. Every President in that line, including Republicans Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the first President Bush demonstrated that effective American leadership includes working with allies and partners, inspiring their support, advancing common interests.

Now, when America should be at the height of its influence, we find ourselves, too often, isolated and resented. America should never be afraid to act alone when necessary. But we must not choose unilateral action as our weapon of first resort. Leaders of the current administration seem to believe that nothing can be gained from working with nations that have stood by our side as allies for generations. They are wrong, and they are leading America in a radical and dangerous direction. We need to get back on the right path.

Our allies have been a fundamental source of strength for more than half a century. And yet the current administration has often acted as if our alliances are no longer important. Look at the record: Almost two years passed between September 11 and NATO assuming the leadership of a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. More than six months have gone by between the fall of Baghdad and any serious consideration of a NATO role in Iraq.

It can, at times, be challenging, even frustrating, to obtain the cooperation of allies. But, as history shows, America is most successful in achieving our national aims when our allies are by our side.

Now, some say we shouldn’t worry about eroding alliances because, whenever a crisis comes up, we can always assemble a coalition of the willing. It’s nice when people are willing, because it means they will show up and do their best. It does not, however, guarantee that they will be able to accomplish all that needs to be done.

As President, I will be far more interested in allies that stand ready to act with us rather than just willing to be rounded up as part of a coalition. NATO and our Asian alliances are strong coalitions of the able, and we need to maximize their support and strength if we are to prevail.

Unlike the kind of pick-up team this administration prefers, alliances train together so they can function effectively with common equipment, communications, logistics, and planning. Our country will be safer with established alliances, adapted to confront 21st century dangers, than with makeshift coalitions that have to start from scratch every time the alarm bell sounds.

Rebuilding our alliances and partnerships is relevant not only in Europe and Asia. Closer to home, my Administration will rebuild cooperation with Mexico and others in Latin America. This President talked the talk of Western Hemisphere partnership in his first months, but at least since 9-11 he has failed to walk the walk. He has allowed crises and resentments to accumulate and squandered goodwill that had been built up over many years. We can do much better.

Third, I will bring to bear our strengthened resources, and our renewed commitment to alliances, on our nation’s most critical and urgent national security priority: defeating the terrorists who have attacked America, continue to attack our friends, and are working to acquire the most dangerous weapons to attack us again.

Essential to this effort will be strong US leadership in forging a new global alliance to defeat terror.

And a core objective of this alliance must be a dramatically intensified global effort to prevent the most deadly threat of all the danger that terrorists will acquire weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, biological, and chemical arms.

A critical component of our defense against terror is homeland security. Here, the current administration has talked much, but done too little. It has devised the color coded threat charts we see on television, but it has not adequately addressed the conditions that make the colors change. Our administration will.

We will do more to protect our cities, ports, and aircraft; water and food supplies; bridges, chemical factories, and nuclear plants.

We will improve the coordination of intelligence information not only among federal agencies but also with state and local governments.

And we will enhance the emergency response capabilities of our police, firefighters and public health personnel. These local first responders are the ones on whom our security depends, and they deserve much stronger support from our federal government. A Department of Homeland Security isn’t doing its job if it doesn’t adequately support the hometown security that can prevent attacks and save lives.

As President, I will strengthen the National Guard’s role at the heart of homeland security. Members of the Guard have always stood ready to be deployed overseas for limited periods and in times of crisis and national emergency. But the Iraq war has torn tens of thousands of Guard members from their families for more than a year. It also deprived local communities of many of their best defenders.

The Guard is an integral part of American life, and its main mission should be here at home, preparing, planning, and acting to keep our citizens safe.

Closing the homeland security gap is just one element of what must be a comprehensive approach. We must take the fight to the terrorist leaders and their operatives around the world.

There will be times when urgent problems require swift American action. But defeating al Qaeda and other terrorist groups will require much more. It will require a long-term effort on the part of many nations.

Fundamental to our strategy will be restoration of strong US leadership in the creation of a new global alliance to defeat terror, a commitment among law-abiding nations to work together in law enforcement, intelligence, and military operations.

Such an alliance could have been established right after September 11, when nations stood shoulder to shoulder with America, prepared to meet the terrorist challenge together. But instead of forging an effective new partnership to fight a common foe, the administration soon downgraded the effort. The Iraq war diverted critical intelligence and military resources, undermined diplomatic support for our fight against terror, and created a new rallying cry for terrorist recruits.

Our administration will move swiftly to build a new anti-terrorist alliance, drawing on our traditional allies and involving other partners whose assistance can make a difference.

Our vigilance will extend to every conceivable means of attack. And our most important challenge will be to address the most dangerous threat of all: catastrophic terrorism using weapons of mass destruction. Here, where the stakes are highest, the current administration has, remarkably, done the least.

We have, rightly, paid much attention to finding and eliminating the worst people, but we need just as vigorous an effort to eliminate the worst weapons. Just as important as finding bin Laden is finding and eliminating sleeper cells of nuclear, chemical, and biological terror.

Our global alliance will place its strongest emphasis on this most lethal form of terror. We will advance a global effort to secure the weapons and technologies of mass destruction on a worldwide basis.

To do so, we will build on the efforts of former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And our effort will build on the extraordinary work and leadership, as Senator and as Vice President, of one of America’s great leaders, Al Gore.

The Nunn-Lugar program has been critical to securing the vast nuclear, chemical, and biological material inventory left over from the Soviet Union. Incredibly, despite the threat that the nexus of terrorism and technology of mass destruction poses, despite the heightened challenges posed by 9-11, the current administration has failed to increase funding for these efforts to secure dangerous weapons. I know that expanding and strengthening Nunn-Lugar is essential to defending America, and I will make that a priority from my first day as President.

Our new alliance will call upon all nations to work together to identify and control or eliminate unsafeguarded components – or potential components – of nuclear, chemical and biological arms around the world. These include the waste products and fuel of nuclear energy and research reactors, the pathogens developed for scientific purposes, and the chemical agents used for commercial ends. Such materials are present in dozens of countries – and often stored with little if any security or oversight.

I will recruit every nation that can contribute and mobilize cooperation in every arena – from compiling inventories to safeguarding transportation; from creating units specially-trained to handle terrorist situations involving lethal substances to ensuring global public health cooperation against biological terror.

A serious effort to deal with this threat will require far more than the $2 billion annual funding the U.S. and its key partners have committed. We need a global fund to combat weapons of mass destruction not just in the former Soviet Union but around the world – that is much larger than current expenditures.

Our administration will ask Congress to triple U.S. contributions over 10 years, to $30 billion, and we will challenge our friends and allies to match our contributions, for a total of $60 billion. For too long, we have been penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to addressing the weapons proliferation threat. We urgently need to strengthen these programs in order to defend America.

The next President will have to show leadership in other ways to mobilize the world into a global alliance to defeat terror.

We and our partners must commit ourselves to using every relevant capability, relationship, and organization to identify terrorist cells, seize terrorist funds, apprehend terrorist suspects, destroy terrorist camps, and prevent terrorist attacks. We must do even more to share intelligence, strengthen law enforcement cooperation, bolster efforts to squeeze terror financing, and enhance our capacity for joint military operations – all so we can stop the terrorists before they strike at us.

The next President will also have to attack the roots of terror. He will have to lead and win the struggle of ideas.

Here we should have a decisive edge. Osama bin Laden and his allies have nothing to offer except deceit, destruction, and death. There is a global struggle underway between peace-loving Muslims and this radical minority that seeks to hijack Islam for selfish and violent aims, that exploits resentment to persuade that murder is martyrdom, and hatred is somehow God’s will. The tragedy is that, by its actions, its unilateralism, and its ill-considered war in Iraq, this Administration has empowered radicals, weakened moderates, and made it easier for the terrorists to add to their ranks.

The next President will have to work with our friends and partners, including in the Muslim world, to persuade people everywhere that terrorism is wholly unacceptable, just as they are persuaded that slavery and genocide are unacceptable.

He must convince Muslims that America neither threatens nor is threatened by Islam, to which millions of our own citizens adhere.

And he must show by words and deeds that America seeks security for itself through strengthening the rule of law, not to dominate others by becoming a law unto itself.

Finally, the struggle against terrorism, and the struggle for a better world, demand that we take even more steps. The strategic map of the world has never been more complicated. What America does, and how America is perceived, will have a direct bearing on how successful we are in mobilizing the world against the dangers that threaten us, and in promoting the values that sustain us.

Today, billions of people live on the knife’s edge of survival, trapped in a struggle against ignorance, poverty, and disease. Their misery is a breeding ground for the hatred peddled by bin Laden and other merchants of death.

As President, I will work to narrow the now-widening gap between rich and poor. Right now, the United States officially contributes a smaller percentage of its wealth to helping other nations develop than any other industrialized country.

That hurts America, because if we want the world’s help in confronting the challenges that most concern us, we need to help others defeat the perils that most concern them. Targeted and effective expansion of investment, assistance, trade, and debt relief in developing nations can improve the climate for peace and democracy and undermine the recruiters for terrorist plots.

So will expansion of assistance to fight deadly disease around the world. Today, HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death in many places. We still are moving too slowly to address the crisis. As President, I will provide $30 billion in the fight against AIDS by 2008 – to help the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria meet its needs and to help developing nations meet theirs.

Fighting poverty and disease and bringing opportunity and hope is the right thing to do. It is also, absolutely, the smart thing to do if we want children around the world to grow up admiring entrepreneurs, educators, and artists rather than growing up with pictures of terrorists tacked to their walls.

We can advance the battle against terrorism and strengthen our national security by reclaiming our rightful place as a leader in global institutions. The current administration has made it almost a point of pride to dismiss and ridicule these bodies. That’s a mistake.

Like our country’s “Greatest Generation,” I see international institutions like the United Nations as a way to leverage U.S. power, to summon warriors and peacekeepers, relief workers and democracy builders, to causes that advance America’s national interests. As President, I will work to make these institutions more accountable and more effective. That’s the only realistic approach. Throwing up our hands and assuming that nothing good can come from international cooperation is not leadership. It’s abdication. It’s foolish. It does not serve the American people.

Working more effectively with the UN, other institutions, and our friends and allies would have been a far better approach to the situation in Iraq.

As I said at the outset, our troops deserve our deepest gratitude for their work to capture Saddam. As I also said, Saddam’s apprehension does not end our security challenges in Iraq, let alone around the world. Violent factions in that country may continue to threaten stability and the safety of our personnel.

I hope the Administration will use Saddam’s capture as an opportunity to move U.S. policy in a more effective direction.

America’s interests will be best served by acting with dispatch to work as partners with free Iraqis to help them build a stable, self-governing nation, not by prolonging our term as Iraq’s ruler.

To succeed we also need urgently to remove the label “made in America” from the Iraqi transition. We need to make the reconstruction a truly international project, one that integrates NATO, the United Nations, and other members of the international community, and that reduces the burden on America and our troops.

We also must bring skill and determination to a task at which the current administration has utterly failed: We can and we must work for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Our alliance with Israel is and must remain unshakeable, and so will be my commitment every day of our administration to work with the parties for a solution that ends decades of blood and tears.

I believe that, with new leadership, and strengthened partnerships, America can turn around the situation in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf. I believe we can defeat terrorism and advance peace and progress. I believe these things because I believe in America’s promise. I believe in our capacity to come together as a people, and to act in the world with confidence, guided by our highest aspirations.

Again and again in America’s history, our citizens have faced crucial moments of decision. At these moments, it fell to our citizens to decide what kind of country America would be. And now, again, we face such a moment.

The American people can choose between a national security policy hobbled by fear, and a policy strengthened by shared hopes.

They must choose between a go-it-alone approach to every problem, and a truly global alliance to defeat terror and build peace.

They must choose between today’s new radical unilateralism and a renewal of respect for the best bipartisan traditions of American foreign policy. They must choose between a brash boastfulness and a considered confidence that speaks to the convictions of people everywhere.

I believe we will again hear the true voice of America. It is the voice of Jefferson and our Declaration of Independence, forging a national community in which “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”.

It is the voice of Franklin Roosevelt rallying our people at a moment of maximum peril to fight for a world free from want and fear.

It is the voice of Harry Truman helping post war Europe resist communist aggression and emerge from devastation into prosperity.

It is the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt insisting that human rights are not the entitlement of some, but the birthright of all.

It is the voice of Martin Luther King proclaiming his dream of a future in which every man, woman and child is free at last.

It is the voice of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton bringing long-time foes to the table in pursuit of peace.

With these legacies to inspire us, no obstacle ahead is too great.

Our campaign is about strengthening the American community so we can fulfill the promise of our nation. We have the power, if we use it wisely, to advance American security and restore our country to its rightful place, as the engine of progress; the champion of liberty and democracy; a beacon of hope and a pillar of strength.

We have the power, as Thomas Paine said at America’s birth, “to begin the world anew”.

We have the power to put America back on the right path, toward a new era of greatness, fulfilling an American promise stemming not so much from what we possess, but from what we believe.

That is how America can best lead in the world. That is where I want to lead America. Thank you very much.

 

Hyena 2. Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

“After reading Chris Baker’s “View from here” I was inspired to write to Webdiary. His insight into how Australians are changing – overweight, overworked, scared – can be summed up in one word – AMERICAN. That is what Australians are becoming.” Petrina Goksan in the USA

After reading Chris Baker’s View from here I was inspired to write to Webdiary. His insight into how Australians are changing – overweight, overworked, scared – can be summed up in one word – AMERICAN. That is what Australians are becoming.

 

Being Australian and having moved to California three years ago, I was overwhelmed at the cultural difference to Australia.

After living here a short time my husband and I referred to Americans as “confidently stupid”. After a time, we realised that the “confidence” is actually a cover up of their insecurity and fear – fear of losing their jobs, fear of not being able to afford medical treatment, fear of not being able to afford to send their kids to college. These are the fears of the majority.

For the minority who have the money, they fear is losing it!!

The “stupidity” is actually ignorance, based on the propoganda that is fed them from all directions – the news media, blockbuster movies, their politicians and, most importantly, from advertising.

That’s what it’s all about here, advertising – getting the consumer to buy more of what they don’t need.

Being brought up in Australia, whenever you wanted to abuse someone for taking advantage of other people, you called them a “capitalist bastard” – the ultimate insult Well, in America if you call someone a “capitalist” it’s a very positive and honourable thing. They are the epitomy of what America’s about, making money.

Is that really what’s happening to Australia? Are Australians getting caught up in the illusion of Capitalism? There is no doubt that our Prime Minister is – why else would he sell the soul of our country to the Americans to fight a war in Iraq that was totally self-serving for the American capitalists with vested interests in weapons, oil, construction and all else associated with the billions of dollars that have been spent and will be spent?

For those of you who don’t know what capitalism in the raw really looks like, I’ll tell you. It’s dark and it’s ugly! It takes away all things that makes humans humane – tolerance, trust, generorsity and compassion. Everything comes at a price and the trick is that it is presented in such a way that you pay freely.

For those of you who think that you are not conforming to the dictatorship of capitalism, think about this. Have you ever bought something that you really didn’t need just because it felt good? Do you have a creditcard? Do you feel envy of someone else’s possessions or lifestyle? This is where it all begins, and once started it NEVER ends!

We need to start thinking like Australians again. We are a country of many cultures and many religions and this is something I’m very proud of – this is who we are. We are tolerant, we are trusting, we are generous and we are compassionate – and most importantly, individually we can make a difference.

So don’t let anyone tell you differently. Wake up and smell the wattle!