Whatever, dude

The sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, along with the US election campaign, has focused attention on the merits of going to war in Iraq.

Phillip Coorey makes the point that those who were too enthusiastic for war in 2002 look a little silly now. I have no idea why there wasn't a kind of PunditWatch in force to embarrass Bolt et al much, much earlier.

Then there were Alexander Downer and Christopher Hitchens seeking to quell the sniggers at their cheerleading with a toujours l'audace defence of their respective positions. However well this may or may not work as an exercise in arse-covering, neither Downer nor Hitchens offer much practical help to the citizen in deciding whether more blood and treasure into Iraq.

If Australian troops withdraw from Iraq, Saddam Hussein is not going to spring back to life, and nor will he give back the A$300m that smart Alec gave him.

The most common criticism is that they pursued the de-Baathification policy too zealously. Initially, the Americans wanted a modest de-Baathification process, knowing that many of the people who made Iraq work at all were Baath Party members because it was impossible to hold any position of authority without being in the party.

The Americans only planned to remove from office the top two levels of the bureaucracy — that is, ministers and deputy ministers or their equivalents. Once the Iraqi Interim Government took over, that is a government made up of Iraqis, it addressed the de-Baathification process with much more zeal. Arguably, the Americans should have done more to restrain them from assuming they could.

Why did Americans understand Iraq better than Iraqis? If the people running Iraq are clowns, why should Australians help prop up such a government?

The more serious criticism of the Americans is that they should have sent more troops to Iraq in the first place.

Fine, this criticism may be made of the Americans - but why did Australia send so few troops, and why make such a fuss when it is drawn down?

... decisions have to be made about the future of Iraq. We should all contemplate what we wish for. Personally, I wish for a united Iraq in which the distinctive traditions and beliefs of its diverse peoples are respected through democratic and pluralistic institutions, a country that can develop successfully its natural resources and play a constructive role in dealing with the many difficult, painful and bloody issues of the Middle East.

This is possible, but it will take time. Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told me last June that outsiders had to remember that Iraqi society had been brutalised for decades and it couldn't be stitched back together in a short period. To achieve a decent outcome for Iraq would require the presence of foreign (largely American) forces for quite some time.

The argument here is: decisions have to be made, but by whom? However well-intentioned Downer's professed sentiments for "a decent outcome", he ignores the idea that what is happening in Iraq is what happened throughout the decolonising third world a generation ago: diverse groups will unite to drive out the occupying power, and fracture thereafter.

Always beware people using the passive voice. Hitchens should know better than this:

A much-wanted war criminal was put on public trial.

The Kurdish and Shi'ite majority was rescued from the ever-present threat of a renewed genocide.

A huge, hideous military and party apparatus, directed at internal repression and external aggression was (perhaps overhastily) dismantled.

The largest wetlands in the region, habitat of the historic Marsh Arabs, have been largely recuperated.

Huge fresh oilfields have been found, including in formerly oil-free Sunni provinces, and some important initial investment in them made. Elections have been held, and the outline of a federal system has been proposed as the only alternative to a) a sectarian despotism and b) a sectarian partition and fragmentation. Not unimportantly, a battlefield defeat has been inflicted on al-Qa'ida and its surrogates, who (not without some Baathist collaboration) had hoped to constitute the successor regime in a failed state and an imploded society.

Who decides, who benefits?

Americans should thank both God and Allah that the clowns of Abu Ghraib didn't get to Saddam. Imagine the Chomsky-Pilger axis whipping up sympathy for yet another third-world dictator.

There is, however, one position that nobody can honestly hold but that many people try their best to hold. And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it's not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn't count, and we are not involved.

It is inescapable that at some point, Iraqis must govern their country by themselves. The impediment to that has been removed, and at some point the US-led Coalition of non-Iraqi forces must leave. The question is not whether they should leave, but when. When the death rate in al-Anbar province diminishes to that of, say, south-central LA? At what point do you trust Iraqis to manage their own affairs?

A time will come when the Iraqi army and police can handle domestic security alone. At that point there will barely be any need for foreign troops in Iraq.

Surely barely should be replaced with not in Downer's sentence above. The foreign intervention should be judged by the countries that contributed troops against the degree to which they facilitated not just security forces, but a political system in Iraq capable of resolving and minimising conflict. The policies pursued by Downer and others were and are not conducive to this end, and stand condemned.

Hitchens and Downer have implicitly accepted Powell's so-called Pottery Barn rule: you break it, you own it. They stand there with shards in their hands with no clear idea how to impose a fix upon this broken country, nor how to rally the locals to do so themselves. Proponents of the Iraq war should spend less time covering their own backsides and more time helping those in whose name they acted (or cheered) to resolve the conflict that will ensure six millennia of Iraqi history does not vanish in an orgy of violence, but also that the reputations of two plummy-voiced men are not tarnished to the point where they are ignored.

Greg Sheridan: bad for Australia

Greg Sheridan's analysis of the world in which we live is poor. Readers of The Australian are poorly served in understanding the United States, and Australia's relationship with it, because of this poor analysis.

He presents his opinions as "respectable" because he interviews someone with an impressive-sounding title, prints what they say as fact or otherwise laudable, then when Greg parrots their own opinions back to them, that's "respectable".

This piece on the possibility that Barack Obama might become US President plumbed new depths in silliness and showed that - far from being a shrewd observer of the world beyond our shores - Sheridan is some sort of gimp who's trussed up in the abandoned building of neoconservatism.

The case for Obama rests on the fact that greater US power and prestige directly benefits Australia.

The "greater US prestige and power" Sheridan refers to is the notion that after Bush, the only way is up. They're trapped in a silly mindset which has led to a range of silly foreign policy positions, from the sheer absence of any adequate response to post-Castro Cuba (an inevitability for 49 years), the absence of any rethinking of Iraq now that so much has changed. Obama promises a new and fresh way of looking at these and other issues, and these inspire hope.

That, and the fact that "the case for Obama" will be made by millions of Americans who do not give Australia a second thought.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric seems to serve no purpose beyond itself.

This doesn't explain why he is the frontrunner to become the next President. This criticism was valid when made against other candidates, like Mitt Romney or Joe Biden, who have since fallen by the wayside.

The same criticism may be made of JFK, or George W Bush in 2000 (except for the "soaring" bit).

That explanation is Sheridan's job. His failure is not some inadvertent slip, it is endemic.

This is bad for Australia in four ways. It has led Obama into protectionism, he campaigns against Clinton because her husband passed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Second, the Left of the Democratic Party has no interest in Asia and can barely find it on a map.

Most important, Obama steadily increases the stridency of his opposition to US troops in Iraq.

First, Greg can't even count to four. Second, his assertions about Obama and Asia are directly refuted by this, a striking piece of intelligent thinking that might not come off - but wouldn't it be great if ...

The fact that a rival publication gazumped Greg is no excuse for him ignoring it. In fact, it's a dereliction of duty on Sheridan's part.

Members of the Bush administration are worried that the Democratic primary has gone on so long.

So what? They would, wouldn't they. This sentence shows that Greg Sheridan is not smart enough to do his own stories but has to have some fathead Yank with too little to do in a government job spoon-feed Greg his stories.

This has resulted in both Obama and Clinton appealing only to the Democratic base on the Left, and not yet tracking back to the centre.

This is what happens in American politics: Democrats track to the left and Republicans to the right until their respective conventions, whereupon they track to the centre as far as they credibly can until polling day. If I was a foreign policy expert, I'd point this out to my readers rather than leave it hanging there, giving clowns from the Bush Administration credit they don't deserve.

Iraq has faded as an issue because the US strategy there is now working. There is a real chance the US could prevail in Iraq ... But Obama, playing not least for the Hollywood Bush haters, has left little room to manoeuvre as president on Iraq.

The "Hollywood Bush haters" aren't much of a constituency, as Al Gore and John Kerry found to their cost. What Obama has done is transcend the frame of the Iraq debate; that takes skill and courage, and Sheridan should at least describe these qualities for readers, however little he shares them.

Obama is all over the place on foreign policy. He has threatened to bomb Pakistan to kill terrorists (imagine if Bush or McCain had said such a thing) ...

Yes, imagine. It would be an admission that Bush's policy of treating Musharraf with kid gloves has failed, which it has. Fuck them, a few nasty little madrassahs go up in smoke, and no harm done.

... but also to journey to Tehran to fix a grand bargain with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Not ruling out meeting the guy doesn't constitute "a grand bargain", any more than Nixon meeting Mao constituted a defection.

Finally, the Left of the Democratic Party cares least for the military and for alliances.

What about all those "Democrat wars" in American history, and their pleadings about the UN and Bush's running roughshod over traditional alliances? I have trouble forgiving Sheridan's ignorance of the field he claims to cover, but I won't forgive dishonesty on that scale.

But the chief way Washington conceives of Australia is as an ally, and the chief US thinkers about us are the military.

That free trade deal was a waste of time then!

In my view the best candidate from Australia’s point of view is McCain ... Because he has been such a fierce critic of the way the Bush administration initially mismanaged Iraq, and the war on terror more generally, he can plausibly represent significant brand change from Bush, while still being from the same party. Though he cannot compete with Obama in the celebrity stakes, he has a sincerity which many people internationally might well respond to.

McCain has moderated his opposition to Bush to the point where their policies are identical. Even those who despise Bush agree that he's sincere. Sincerely perpetuating the mistakes of Bush-Cheney would be appalling for America and those who admire it still.

One reason McCain would be good for Australia is that he would stay strong in Iraq. He would not let the Middle East spin out of control.

The chief criticism of US policy in Iraq is that the more you continue current policies (or, as Sheridan puts it in his insecure way, "stays strong"), the more it spins out of control. This has been a long-standing criticism, backed p with much evidence over many years. Greg Sheridan betrays himself, his employers and his readers by whistling past that graveyard.

So why do I think an Obama ascendancy could cause war in the Middle East? It’s a simple calculation ... Many Israeli leaders say that a nuclear armed Iran represents an existential threat to Israel. If they really believe this, they have no alternative but to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. If they believe McCain will win, they will have faith that the Americans, one way or another, will try to handle the Iranians. If they believe Obama will win, they not only believe he definitely won’t handle Iran effectively, but he might even stop them from doing so.

It's not a "calculation" when you're spooked by unnamed Israelis.

If Bush believes Iran will go nuclear, he might have faith that McCain could handle it. He will have absolutely no faith that Obama would handle it.

This is the guy who sat back and did bugger-all when North Korea and Pakistan went nuclear. Who cares what he thinks?

The odds are against a US strike on Iran under any circumstances, and I would say the odds are even against an Israeli strike. But either or both are much more likely if it looks like Obama will win.

Sounds like they're inevitable no matter what happens. And aren't those National Intelligence Estimates a load of rubbish! Wish you'd told us that six years ago, Greg.

At a time of political change at home, and far-reaching change abroad, this is no time to have Greg Sheridan at The Australian.

Polly filler

John Roskam doesn't understand the sovereign role of the majority of voters in setting the direction of government in this country, apparently.

Keating had dragged reform of economic policy along at a cracking pace. Issues such as Mabo, the Redfern speech and the republic threatened to do so with social policy. The whole idea of John Howard was to ease the pace of social reform and see which elements really were unsustainable, and which were just victims of Keating's sharp tongue.

Howard showed that the republic was not an issue that burned in the national soul, and that Australia wasn't so desperate to be shot of the monarchy as the old Fenians in the NSW ALP Right. Howard thought that 1950s paternalism was an idea not properly tried in Aboriginal policy. He thought that unions could be legislated out of the employer-employee relationship. He thought that processing a refugee application required the refugee him/herself to be "processed". He thought that if the Americans went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Australia should send a deployment that was big enough to attract political attention from Washington yet small enough to minimise monetary and casualty cost.

Howard has now outlived his usefulness. He was wrong not to apologise to the Stolen Generation, those who were removed from Aboriginal families for no reason other than they were Aborigines. He was wrong about refugees, the incarceration of people within a legal void is a poor preparation for life in Australia or anywhere else. He was wrong about Iraq and Afghanistan has developed to a point where Australian forces are no longer required.

Good policy doesn't turn into bad policy overnight.

No, but an idea that upset a majority of the population was never sustainable. The Rudd Government's policies on the matters Roskam identifies as the core policies of the Howard government surprise only those who dismissed the very prospect of a Rudd Government until it actually came about.

If key policies can be ditched so quickly after what, in the end, proved to be a relatively narrow election loss, voters will inevitably ask whether Liberal MPs ever believed in those policies in the first place.

Those policies were imposed on Liberal MPs, who did not question them closely. They accepted Howard's assurances that they were both good policy and that they would lead to electoral success, and are now bearing the consequences of his failure of judgment. Roskam feels that they should bear this and other failures of judgment in perpetuity, like the rock of Sisyphus.

There's also the problem of what replaces the old policies.

This is a pressing problem for the government, which promised to replace them but was less than precise about what; they are responsible for governing, and responsible also to their Labor base. They have to replace WorkChoices with legislation that is acceptable to the Labor base but which is also sustainable across a diverse national workforce in a growing, changing economy. Good luck!

The Liberals have been excused the pressing responsibilities of government. They have to come up with a policy before the next election, and can learn from the mistakes that Labor are making. They needn't be hurried as John Roskam would wish, and indeed Roskam does himself no favours by urging them to do so. This lot are busy exercising the freedom to think for themselves, a precious quality that must be nurtured over time.

None of this is to say that policies cannot ever be changed. When circumstances alter, policies should be altered.

This assumes that WorkChoices adequately addressed the challenges facing Australia in 2005, much less in 2007-8. It didn't, and doesn't. It was a policy for 1985, when the ACTU and the H R Nicholls Society were at the peak of their influence.

What's notable about each of the Liberals' recent policy changes is that each was done in a hurry and each was done in reaction to something that Labor did.

Sounds like the Liberals are getting used to Opposition, John.

The Liberals can't afford to be put into such a position again.

This is why they shouldn't have frittered government away, and should act as an incentive for them to get it back again.

But at the moment there's every chance that the Liberals will respond to Labor's moves on the republic in the same way as they responded to Labor's initiatives on the apology and the Pacific Solution.

This is true, they run the danger of following Kim Beazley into reactive, crumbling opposition. It took Beazley ten years to get to that point, not ten weeks.

Many Liberals would say that the very last thing they need is a divisive internal debate about the republic. But if you can't have a divisive internal debate when the party is in opposition, federally and in every state and territory, then it's legitimate to ask when would be a better time.

Well said. Some debates cannot be fobbed off an it is poor political management even to try.

The best thing for the Liberal Party would be if the decision on the republic were taken out of their hands: if the voters decided on a republic, Liberals would have to decide whether they really wanted to be part of a governmental process from which the Crown was absent. Some Liberals feel they should take an active role in shaping the republic, but it would be extraordinary - too much to expect, really - for any Liberal leader to do that and keep a united party at the same time.

It will probably take three years for the Liberals to arrive at some sort of position on the republic. The advantage of starting the debate now is that they'll have the time to engage in analysis and reflection.

This assumes an environment tolerant of differing opinions, and the Liberal Party is the opposite of that. Moderates found this out in the late 1980s when they started losing preselections, political death being the ultimate form of censorship. Roskam has no excuse not to know better.

It's something the party hasn't done enough of since November 24.

Nor for the decade-and-a-half before that. There's the flaw in your argument John. For some time yet, debate within the Liberal Party will lumber and lurch like awkward teenagers learning to dance (the presence of cretins like Sophie Mirabella won't help). Clapping your hands in annoyance and insisting they all bounce and glide like Nureyev might make you feel better, but any sensible person knows it will be a slow process - until the next Leader comes along, with a gang of enforcers compelling everyone to shut up.

Roskam's despair of the political process is echoed by his colleague Chris Berg, and reflects a tendency of denigrating democracy itself - not just the odd dodgy decision, but the very idea of having government policy responsible to and reversible by the popular vote. Insofar as the Eye Pee Yay warrants concern, this is a worry and deserves close attention.

O, say can you see?

John Ruddick thinks that a sufficient number of stunts like this will constitute "media experience", a potent credential in securing Liberal preselection for Parliament. He may succeed at that, but only so long as you are impressed by the quantity of is media exposure rather than the quality. In the quality of a4a you see clearly that John Ruddick offers nothing beyond the stunt.

Conservatives believe that government involves long-term and well-thought-out policy that is in line with the past, addresses the present and promises continuity and room for growth into the future, in a responsible and sustainable way. John's problem is that he loves the rush of short-term sensationalism more than the hard and worthy work of representative and legislator. He just can't manage even the anodyne, third-rate analysis you get from his fellow aspirant, Josh Frydenberg. I have mentioned John in passing, but if you can bear to look at Ruddick's s(h)ite you'll see what I mean.

There were thirteen original states in the USA, represented by thirteen stripes on the US flag. Here are thirteen points on this site:

1. The Battle of the Coral Sea was only important because of the Australian successes at Kokoda and Milne Bay. These Australian victories on land provided the pivot around which the American push succeeded. It is one thing to say that the Australian and American efforts complemented each other, or even that the Americans devoted greater resources; Aussies would never negate their own efforts to praise those of the Americans. This is not an alliance, this is fawning.



2. The events he describes are strangely passive for such a mighty nation. There are better stories to tell about Menzies, because all sorts of third-world scumbags told Nixon how much they love America - not necessarily to the benefit of their countries.



3. South Vietnam was not "on its way to being an Asian tiger like ... Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore". Its government was corrupt, small-minded and not at all investing in people and infrastructure like those other places. The more support they got, the more corrupt they became: the departure of the Americans was not an act of murder, but euthanasia. "The Western left" was never powerful enough to force either victory or defeat, but fighting the wrong fight in the wrong way could lead to no other outcome. President Eisenhower foresaw that a war in Vietnam would be a disaster, and if Australia had truly been a friend we should have held them to their best intentions.



4. "If we have the guts to see Iraq through it will end up similar to Jordan and Egypt – a fairly stable nation where things aren’t perfect but are improving". It's hard to know what "improving" means in that context: things are no better or worse in those countries than they have been since the 1950s, without direct American intervention. Nouri al-Maliki governs not a country but a few blocks in Baghdad, a smaller constituency than Clover Moore. He is the new Arafat, someone who says in English what Americans want to hear but whose actions and omissions show someone in league with the worst opponents of America, capitalism and a stable society. As far as who he means by "we" - perhaps Ruddick might have succeeded as an Army officer, giving him both the leadership he craves and the responsibility he dreads.



5. Demonstrators against capitalism and free trade also rely on downloads from the US, which is ironic. It is not anti-American to say that inventions from beyond the US are also important to Australians. This is a silly statement that doesn't even serve to knock down the straw man Ruddick sets up here.



6. "The biggest beneficiaries of the fall of the USSR have been the Russian people" who see that all that crap that Marx spouted about oligarchy and mass poverty is being borne out. Ruddick hasn't made the case for Australian participation in the Cold War, which is a pity.



7. "America does far, far more than any nation today or in history for those less fortunate". The Marshall Plan was not about patronising the Europeans, it was about getting them back on their feet - such a pity that it has never been repeated. Beyond the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, when you give people handouts you make them dependent on you which breeds sloth and resentment. It's holding America to its best standards when you criticise America for falling short of that Olympian standard. Read the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty and know that the last five lines stand against everything John Ruddick stands for.



8. "The American Constitution ... The Australian Constitution has provided us with beautiful stability of government and it is a merger of the best elements from Britain and America". It is a lament for both our countries that notionally conservative governments are trashing our constitutions and the freedoms embedded in them.



9. "If (American culture) distresses you ask yourself, ‘what is it about me that dislikes success?'". If you were a conservative, you'd know that material success is not the only, or even the best, measure of success. Much that is popular can be corrosive of society. American sports tend not to be popular outside north America, and it is not anti-American to point this out.



10. The bit on Murdoch is, like the rest of the site, meant to be provocative: in reality it's just a combination of fawning and self-pleasuring.



11. It would have been embarrassing for Ruddick to attempt to defend this, which is probably why he didn't try. Truman was about the hard work necessary to build a framework: Bush is more like Rutherford B Hayes, a dilettante whose only historical significance is to presage disaster. Rice is a stuntmeister who's light on the policy; unlike John she looks good in knee-high boots.



12. "in the 1980s New Zealand ended its proud tradition of fighting for freedom ... They currently have troops in East Timor, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands." Well, which is it? The Wallabies know that when they take on the All Blacks they have to be consistent, and so it is when Ruddick attacks people he falsely declares his "friends". It is simply a lie to declare that "Whenever the going gets tough, however, New Zealand takes the soft option". NZ's stand on nuclear ships did not delay the end of the Cold War and reversing it will not affect their economy one way or another. If you're going to be in favour of "ANZUS", you shouldn't diminish the A or bag the NZ.



13. Like many who defend the Queen's position, John Ruddick commits numerous offences against the Queen's English but refers to a one-person operation with the royal pronoun, implying that his site includes the support of others than himself. He's finally found a political movement that won't roll him!

See the message below the Free Newsletter field on the left of his pages: he wants a commitment from you, dear reader, but he owes you nothing and he hopes that's OK by you. Once you know John you realise this is a genuine insight into the guy.

I first met John Ruddick when the ministry he aspired to was Anglican, but even with Jensenism ascendant the message of compassion and modesty from the gentle carpenter must have grated on him. Since then he was shunned by his fellow Young Liberals in seeking to govern them, and did not even offer preference-fodder for serious rightwing candidates in Liberal preselections. He was a performing monkey for a radio buffoon who spent as much time laughing at Ruddick as with him.

Once APEC is over and Bush leaves office, what then? After the coming election there will be a rush to the exits for many who realise their political heyday is behind them, and a shellshocked Liberal Party will contemplate the rebuilding of its fortunes. Ruddick will almost certainly fall short. Chances are you'll see him in a marginal seat thanks to his rightwing buddies, but voters won't warm to him. He overestimates how clever he is in disguising his Hansonite Anglo nationalism, which will get him lots of publicity but will damage the Liberal Party.

He could go back to Tamworth - his brother has edited the local paper and even though local Liberals and Nationals are desperate to get rid of Tony Windsor and Peter Draper, the fact is you'll only beat them with grown-up candidates who can relate to other grown-ups and the issues that affect them in a grown-up way. The CEC would love to have him, and he them ideologically - but he's enough of a pragmatist to know that even though he'd be a big fish in their little pond, they can't get him elected.

No, young John has been foisted on big-city suckers and while they may well take him on, people4ruddick would find the poverty of the national debate made worse by his being part of it. There are more important things for Australia - and our foreign alliances - than slaking the ambitions of yet another attention junkie who can't and won't give back.

Why Bush isn't really President

This article shows why George W. Bush is not really President of the United States.

Every decision that Cheney wanted - the war on Iraq, the tax cuts - have all come through, with funding and resources in spades. The whole abstract democracy thing, the nearest thing Bush has to an idea of his own, hasn't come through and has not been resourced.

"Policy is not what the president says in speeches," the bureaucrat replied. "Policy is what emerges from interagency meetings."

In that statement is the truth that what is done is more important than what is said. Those who claim that Bush is not just de jure but de facto head of the American government, that he's a clever man in his own right and can survive the departure of Karl Rove, is just PR puffery and wishful thinking. Compounding this is an inept foreign policy chief, whose qualifications in Soviet policy ill equip her to deal with Putin, let alone other international leaders and predicaments.

The American media has played little role in explaining to the people of that country why Bush is such a poor leader (rather than the weak construction that he is poorly perceived), and why the gap between what he says and what he does creates opportunities for enemies and competitors. The meek acceptance and presentation of Bush's framing as a strong leader has got to stop, it's not helping anyone - not even Bush. The media place a high premium on interviews and direct quotes, but Bush's all-talk performance shows that a weak leader can be a distraction, and ultimately more trouble than he's worth.

In a parliamentary democracy, Bush would have been rolled by now. Australians who favour a republic should help us avoid this eighteenth-century despot model, as I've said before.

All his life, Bush has had people clean up after him and the next President will be no different. If they use the same decision-making processes to choose their next President as they did with this one, they'll end up with another dud and will only seal American decline.

The world is a foreign place

Yep, the world is pretty complex all right.

At the start of his article, Greg Sheridan wants to go the biology-is-destiny thing but he knows that nobody writing after Auschwitz can get away with that tosh, not even if you're a theatre reviewer from Montreal. Does anybody believe projections 40+ years into the future? Where is the seer from the 1960s who predicted this world we live in now?

Our age, I suspect, is going to be characterised by three great strategic issues: the war on terror or, if you like, the fate of Islam; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the rise of India and China.

Each of these issues is immensely complex and each is more complicated because of the dynamic of globalisation. Moreover, it is the way these three issues interact with each other that is most difficult to understand and respond to.

Leaving aside the utter redundancy of the second clause in the first sentence quoted above, this is the essence of Sheridan's article. Maybe some day into the future we will see a combination of events and interpretation of which this forms a root. Today, though, it seems like the mutterings of a discombobulated old man who has woken after a slumber.

"Consider this potential chain of interaction", he says, setting up a crenellated tower of enteric substance worthy of Frederick Forsyth, which falls on top of him because there isn't enough reportage to support it, and nor is there the cracking novel the sketch would suggest.

His apology for underestimating the geostrategic importance of the Middle East (!) is important, but I hope this article wasn't a show-cause for why the Foreign Editor ought not be sacked.

Saudi Arabia continues to pump tens of millions of dollars into its longstanding attempt to Arabise, standardise and in a sense radicalise Asian Islam.

See Greg, this is the job of a foreign editor: when you say "Saudi Arabia" here, what do you mean? Do you mean some members of the extended royal family, or funds from the government treasury and the full deal? Wouldn't it be lazy to say that "America" provides both evangelical Christianity and porn in overwhelming quantities? Isn't that kind of learned and granular complexity the very job of a foreign editor?

In all of this we are hugely fortunate as a nation to have so intimate a connection with the most powerful nation in the world, the US, which for all its imperfections is by a vast distance the greatest source for good in the world today.

This is not reportage or analysis. It is the bleating of a man pathetically grateful for an invite.

Tonight the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, a unique and priceless initiative in private diplomacy and astoundingly frank strategic exchange, begins its annual meeting and will try to come to grips with many of these issues. It has a lot of work ahead of it.

What do you expect it to achieve, Greg? What comes of this "work", this coming to grips? When you understand that, and look for it in vain in your writings, you'll see why your writings are so disappointing, why it is necessary to go elsewhere to build your understanding.

Sheridan's work on the Bush-Howard relationship was dead as soon as it was released. If he has nothing to say, as is clear from this article, then he'd be better off saying nothing.

Baghdad Syndrome

There were many reasons why US and other allied forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The only one that remains valid is that Saddam Hussein was a nasty man/genocidal killer/psychpath and that his people should have the chance to govern themselves without the capricious terror that underpinned Saddam's rule. This is the Christopher Hitchens line, the reason why all those ex-Marxists find themselves comforted by the kindness of strangers in the US Republican and Australian Liberal Parties.

All the rest of it, the WMDs and all that, has fallen away. It was all rubbish, Cheney and all the rest of them who put it about knew it was rubbish, a pretext to get others to act when the real reasons for acting weren't strong enough to motivate others to come through.

This isn't a rant about Halliburton and what the late Molly Ivins called "the awl bidness". This is about the failure of those who enabled the situation in Iraq to desert those who misled them into an untenable situation.

If someone lies to you to get you to do something, and you find out about the lie, you should - for your own self-respect - stop doing whatever you were misled into, and abandon both the situation and the liar who dropped you into it in the first place.

The phenomenon whereby victims end up identifying with and defending those who have coerced them into an untenable situation, and end up attacking those who seek to rescue them, is known as Stockholm Syndrome. In reading this article, and others like it about Australian, UK and US politics, it would seem that a generation faction cohort brigade bunch large number of politicians have succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to Iraq.

Bush, Cheney et al. lied to get troops into Iraq. As soon as the non-existance of the WMDs were discovered, once Saddam was found and detained - once the US Congress went Democratic, that should have been it. Straight out. Bush and Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld, Blair and Howard on trial, what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it, testimonies from mothers, widow(er)s, maimed veterans. Going to war is serious business and lying in order to procure one is a massive crime against the state - it really is a form of treason.

Failing to acknowledge that you were lied to in voting for war, and to condemn that lie, shows a sorry case of Stockholm syndrome in regard to Baghdad. Surely the healthy response is to admit that you were lied to, disavow any responsibility and turn on those who put you up to it. What's stopping them?

Australian politicians did business with Saddam's Iraq because they were a major market for one of our major exports, wheat. Now the Americans have elbowed us out of that market, what are we defending by keeping forces there?

• The US alliance? When a sizeable proportion of the US population is dead against Iraq, having an ally in the same position is hardly a break. Aussies left Vietnam in 1972 and while the hawks in the Nixon Administration might have been less than impressed (including a young Dick Cheney), so what?


• The poor set-upon Iraqi people? It's not clear that they are doing as much as they can to make their society peaceful and prosperous, and without such a commitment Australian troops can't do much. As it stands, Australians are only guarding Japanese troops rather than contributing meaningfully to the welfare of Iraq - as already indicated, we're there because we're there.


• Standing strong on western values? As if. There's more than enough to do within five hours' flying time from Australia, including education and getting serious about habeas corpus, for a middle-ranking power such as us. Air traffic controllers aren't going to be doing much evangelism about western culture to descendants of Hammurabi.

It's stunning that the Republicans have made the Democrats out to be timid pacifists:

• Democrats led America through two world wars and made the running in Korea, and ramped up the war in Vietnam to a half-million-troops peak.
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• Republicans led America to stalemate in Korea, botched democracy in Iran, botched Vietnam, and put up the shutters against Latin America. Yeah, they were there when Communism fell apart but they didn't do much good with that, either.

What is stunning is that the Democrats think they have to look tough by ramping up their commitment to a war that can't be won. US Senator Joe Lieberman is in a similar position to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in that he cannot back down on committing troops to Iraq without his credibility suffering irreperable damage; both are old men and cannot turn back now.

Senator Hillary Clinton is not necessarily stuck fast - her supporters are keen to the point of embarrassment to forgive her, if only she'll ask. But she has a tin ear for that as well. Like George Bush I she'll only win if her opponent is absolutely unelectable; surely her supporters will come to realise that. If you're going to become the change you want to see, then turning your back on the cashed-up, tightly-programmed, control-freak candidate has to be the way forward for Democrats in 2008. Hillary Clinton's supporters want her to be a bold point of difference from Bush, but she doesn't; and her wishes must be respected if her position can't. She's not going to change.

Senators John McCain and Chuck Hagel were brave men in Vietnam; less so in Washington. When Senator John Kerry likened the hopelessness of Iraq to that of Vietnam, Bush demanded an apology - and got one.

The reason why Senator Obama and Opposition Leader Rudd enjoy such high poll ratings is their perceived freedom to concentrate on terrorism without being distracted by Iraq. Let's hope that perception has a sounder basis than the WMD.

We're there because we're there

Much has been written about US involvement in Iraq, but not nearly enough has been written about Australia's participation independently of some wider western-alliance context, as though the reasoning that applies for or against aspects of US involvement also apply to Australia by default.

Clearly, Australia can't distance its involvement from that of the United States. The nearest thing to a justification of Australian involvement in Iraq from Australian commentators is that we have to humour the Yanks and provide them with a figleaf of internationalism in their crusade, and such comfort as comes from an offsider, a kemosabe, an Enkidu. The whole notion of "whither thou go, I goest" falls apart when the US is essentially engaging in a folly, waging a war that can't be won. Australians generally perceive the US alliance as generally benign and A Good Thing for the most part, with distance adding some allure without the cultural suffocation sometimes felt by Canadians.

Apart from supporting our great and powerful friend, what else is Australia hoping to gain from involvement in Iraq?

Australian frigates patrolled the Persian Gulf in between the Gulf Wars, to uphold UN sanctions against Iraq (while letting whole boatloads of Saddam-bribe wheat sail by). In the 2003 invasion Australian SAS troops went hunting for bandits in western Iraq. Currently, Australians control air traffic at Baghdad airport, protect a small Australian presence in the diplomatic compound ("Green Zone"), look for WMDs (stop that sniggering!), and about 500 Australian troops are in rural Iraq (i.e. far from Baghdad, where apparently 80% of attacks occur) guarding a Japanese engineering project. There's a frigate and an aeroplane in logistical and surveillance support, and some training of Iraqi personnel.

None of that can be said to be winning hearts and minds with Iraqi communities. Australian troops are not being strewn with flowers as they walk the streets of grateful communities, despite the pic in the above-linked brochure, with impressed natives imploring them not to leave and engaging in the kind of cultural exchange that might lead to them being inspired to emigrate here. The Iraqi government does not and need not care whether Australian forces stay or go.

The Japanese could look after their engineers themselves if they had to. The Americans could do the air traffic and other support tasks, especially with their surge. Why the Australian government has not outsourced embassy security in Baghdad, like it does elsewhere, is a mystery.

Australia's presence in Iraq is a token presence. Australians who complain that American media ignores our contribution have a point about the insularity of that country, but it is more than outweighed by two considerations. First, the number of Americans who have died in that conflict is almost four times bigger than the entire Australian force there, and this sacrifice must be respected even by those who are passionately against the whole shooting match (the appropriateness of that sacrifice is a matter for Americans themselves). Second, the absolute tokenism of Australia's presence: the US has 15 times the population of Australia, and even if you take that into account a force of 800 is a tiny proportion of the overall allied force there. It is not making the sort of tactical difference on the ground that Australia's small force made in Vietnam. It would not be missed if it were gone, and the fact that Australians are not required to boost our contribution in the I'll-see-you-and-I'll-raise-you rhetoric surrounding Bush's surge underlines the insignificance of Australia's contribution, and hence its impact on the alliance.

Then, yes, there's wheat. Iraqis are entitled to be upset with us over the whole oil-for-food scandal, without any obligation to be grateful for bellies filled years before at such enormous if unwitting cost. That bribe money has been spent on killing people, Iraqi civilians and Americans. You don't have to be a bleeding heart to be ashamed at that, a shame that winning the Ashes can't even address let alone balance. You'd think we'd tiptoe quietly away out of sheer decency, like Australian troops did from Gallipoli.

Australian forces are doing a great job in Iraq. They'd do a great job wherever they were deployed, really. They'd be better off deployed in and around Australia, as part of a sign that we are finally taking seriously the area in which we live. The threats Australia faces are mostly cultivated close to home. Australian forces are best deployed in addressing threats to Australia.

This is not an argument for Fortress Australia, nor even for the popular but farcical notion that countries in the Pacific (or even Southeast Asia) constitute the Australian "backyard". It is an argument for recognising that Australia has a role in its alliance with the United States, and we have done too little in warning them against folly in the first place. To that extent the Australian government was right to invest so little in the pending disaster, without the hurt of snubbing them altogether (though the small number of Australian casualties makes such warm feelings easier). Australia has a role in sending forces far from its shores to uphold that alliance and its values, in line with this country's military history. It will be all the more effective in doing so with a greater forward presence in Polynesia and Melanesia.

Australian policymakers can be forgiven for floundering on defence issues in the aftermath of the Cold War, and commended for resisting the butter-not-guns populism of those who thought that military forces had become largely unnecessary - a sentiment that dominates official thinking in New Zealand. They cannot be forgiven for maintaining a pointless, unjustifiable presence in Iraq that lacks legitimacy from locals or any recognition worth the name from the Americans. Australian forces have done a great job as always, but they are not needed in Iraq. They are needed elsewhere. What they - and we - need is a government with the sense to deploy them to best effect.

Defence tactics

Labor has attracted a lot of criticism about Joel Fitzgibbon becoming Shadow Defence Minister, a trier up against one of Howard's most effective ministers. Beazley has forgotten more than Fitzgibbon has ever learned about Defence, and this may well be true whatever happens over the coming year. However, why would Labor fight an election on Defence? How could it win? Insofar as it's not a contradiction in terms, the genius of Fitzgibbon is becoming apparent.

Steve Lewis from The Australian said Fitzgibbon would appeal to ordinary defence personnel, and he may be right. Those personnel sick of being treated as background for Howard's photo ops may find a sympathetic ear, provided Fitzgibbon doesn't get a big head about his Important New Role.

For the Opposition though, Defence is a management issue. During World War II Missouri Senator Harry Truman initiated investigations into defence maladministration, a campaign that catapulted Truman to prominence and ultimately the Presidency. In the 1980s Congress uncovered similar waste, such as $1000 toilet seats and other examples of overcharging that dented the Reagan Administration's image of strong defence and financial prudence. So too, by careful graft the Labor Opposition can undermine one of the Coalition's real policy and electoral strengths, to get the traction that the wider issue of Iraq hasn't achieved.

Fitzgibbon may be the man to do it, provided he doesn't try and tackle the big stuff. Stories like this are absolute gold for Labor. The Brendan Nelson of old would be all over this, but maybe it doesn't seem to matter when you're off to Washington for chats with Condi. I hope his driver took him past the Watergate - those second-rate burglaries can get messy.

Apart from updating the electronics it isn't clear why the FA-18 needs to be replaced with the F-35. Even if Australia has not been sold a dog of a product this time, the only real argument that can be made is in favour of maintaining the status quo of military hardware among powers in our region. A lot of money to be spent for no apparent gain, apart from the possibility of keeping in sweet with the Americans. Watch hardware costs drop with the advent of pilotless drones capable of speed and payload, then smack your forehead at those who couldn't, wouldn't wait for the sales.

There probably is an argument for increasing defence spending, but it is also true that organisations with unlimited budgets get complacent and wasteful. There are few things more useless than a complacent defence.

Politically, a promise to provide better equipment and crack down on the time-serving lunkheads who constipate any effective fighting force would do wonders for Labor, putting them at least even in an area where they are traditionally weak (even with the overhyped competence of Beazley as leader). Someone so frightened of women cannot claim to be effective at facing the enemy (and it's surprising Labor hasn't made more of this). Members of the Defence Forces are strong Coalition voters - a focus on the basics while neutering any strategic concerns would do wonders for morale and recruitment, giving the ADF the sense of an organisation that's going somewhere. Politically, making defence personnel disposed to Labor would put several Coalition seats in peril.

Howard will move where he has to on Iraq, changing course as far as possible without imperilling a consistent image of pro-Americanism. He might investigate lax security at bases if he had to, but by then it might be too late. He'd lack both the wider context and the small-scale managerialism on an issue built up as a core Howard value. For Labor to take the high ground on Defence would be a grave danger for the dominant political tactician of the past dozen years. It might even lead to a realignment about what the Australian Defence Force is for, and should do - but it's way too early to tell, and too much to expect Fitzgibbon to do it by himself.

Iraq, Fiji and Australia

Never thought the first two countries had much in common, eh? Me neither.

Australia has 500 personnel in Iraq who are guarding a detachment of other foreign troops (foreign to both Australia and to Iraq). This is not a significant strategic deployment in itself. It is a non-UN peacekeeping mission, currying favour to an ideal more important to the current government than involvement with the UN. The Diggers are there because Australia needed to maintain good relations with the Bush Administration, and are still there because this need has not entirely disappeared.

At this point I'll just take time out to express my irritation at the Prime Minister of Australia referring to the President of the United States as "the President". One can understand why Americans refer to Bush as the President, and one can understand that if you are briefed relentlessly by Administration officials then in time you might also, as they do, refer to "the President". Bush is not the President, he is not our President; indeed thanks to Howard we do not have a President of our own, assuming we need one. There are other Presidents. The argument by his supporters that Howard is not in lockstep behind Bush fails until Howard has the discipline to stop this verbal tic, which may however become another indication of the twilight of Bush.

Iraq has an elected government which cannot govern that country without help from US and UK forces (other forces, such as Australia's, make little difference and need not be missed by Iraqis if they weren't there. Withdrawals might embarrass the US and British governments but the difference to the balance of power in Iraq would be scant). The Iraqi government faces threats from four sources:

• well-organised and funded Sunni and Shia forces;


• Saddam loyalists who can't imagine Iraq without him, funded by AWB money and other scumbags; and


• a criminal rabble, not entirely separate or separable from the Saddam loyalists.

The rabble is the weakest link because one or both of the two major forces will demonstrate their power by wiping them out or co-opting them. The Shia have 60% of the population of Iraq and 85% of that of Iran, apparently, so they have to be the favourites. Getting the rabble off the streets is one of the central features of any government, so the first cleric who does this is a long way toward supplanting the government.

According to the Prime Minister, the elected Iraqi government asked for our help, just like the "invitation" from the government of South Vietnam in 1965.

Australia has military personnel near, but not in, Fiji. They are offshore despite the fact that the elected government asked for Australian help. The elected government proposed to grant amnesty to the fools behind the 2000 coup and this would have caused more trouble than it's worth in terms of the stability of that country, let alone its future. The overly large Fijian army has already got the rabble off the streets, and hopefully the Australian force of the coast is large enough to pose a threat and keep the Fijian army from doing anything too rash. The personnel are there to react to any possible damage to "Australian interests", though it is more likely that attacks on property will be overlooked in favour of any damage to Australian people, represented in greater numbers in Fiji than in Iraq.

Australian property interests in Fijian tourism, real estate and manufacturing are significant, in a way that Australia's presence in Iraq is not. It has become a destination for outsourcing production that Australians will buy but for which we won't pay top dollar, like clothing. Drugs and illegal fishing moves past or through Fiji and other countries. They receive aid and the Australian government has a responsibility both to minimise wastage, and to overlook any wastage occurring as part of the longterm good.

In both countries, with its different tactics, Australia is trying to ensure longterm stability, with a view that instability there could ultimately threaten us here. However, in Iraq Australian troops are a figleaf for someone else's embarrassment, while in Fiji Australian troops play a vital support for Australian interests and a check on excesses by belligerents.

In the late nineteenth century a German military officer, Carl von Clausewitz, wrote that war is a continuation of politics by other means. His successors practiced, and had practiced against them, war on such an overwhelming scale that we may now regard the insertion of military forces as an expression of political failure and limited imagination. One can support the job the military have to do, and accept the necessity of them having to do it, while at the same time condemn the ineptitude of the policies - and yes, the policymakers - who led them there and us here.

The insertion of troops into Iraq represents a failure for Australian policymakers to imagine an alliance with the United States as a whole rather than just the Current Occupant. The waiting game off the coast of Fiji represents a failure for policymakers to recognise our true national interests and engage effectively with leaders of that community, and other communities across the Pacific, over time. The imbalance in our foreign policy is clear: too little focus on important foreign policy matters, to much focus on marginally relevant but big-picture stuff.

The fault of this failure is political, and generational.

While Australian politics and policy has undergone profound and far-reaching change since 1983, foreign affairs has been run by only three ministers - a political stability unmatched in any other area of policy, including the economy. Each of them liked to grandstand on the world stage more than do the nitty-gritty on the security of our region.

It's fair to give the benefit of the doubt to Australian diplomats in both Iraq and Fiji, they did what they could: but what they could do was limited in the absence of political support, all the more if their stern warnings and alarums were ignored. It is, however, an indictment on their work when one of Australia's genuine experts on the region is not a diplomat, not an academic, but a long-serving correspondent from the hated ABC.

There is also a generational issue. Australian diplomats have experienced a minister who doesn't want to be told anything controversial, and a chain of authority that also practices a blind-eye, deaf-ear, passive-aggressive approach to accountability. Even those who are working their way up DFAT on the eminently diplomatic get-along-to-go-along principle know that consistently ignoring bad news leads ultimately to disaster (they'd know it all the more immediately if Terence Cole's guns had been trained on DFAT). The future of Australian foreign policy will involve a greater focus on the region. Those who would be part of Australia's foreign policy going forward need to change the way they work. But what they might need most of all is a new minister, maybe a series of new ministers.