In a position to help

I sometimes agree with Christopher Hitchens and sometimes disagree, but always in reading his writings is it necessary to be on the ball and engage with what he's saying. This article, however, only requires that the discerning reader believes that the President of the World Bank has higher obligations than the social politenesses one might experience at Washington drinks parties.

First, let it be said that it doesn't matter a damn whether, or how well, you know Wolfowitz or his girlfriend. You can live a good and helpful life without knowing either; it is not at all mean-spirited to hope for such an institution to be run well and to benefit those countries that need its help.

Second, the relationship between Wolfowitz and his girlfriend is none of your business or mine. What matters is the sheer lack of credibility that Wolfowitz and his institution have in combatting corruption. The World Bank employee who has to front officials in third-world countries and tell them that siphoning off World Bank money for their private gain - that person has been nobbled by Wolfowitz. Maybe he should send his girlfriend to do that job. Maybe he should do it himself. Maybe he should send Hitchens.

Third, I have no opinion on the World Bank's position vis-a-vis Uzbekistan. None (there, that should sink any accusation that I'm opinionated!).

Once you get over that, Hitchens' article starts looking thin. There's the surly tone of anyone who picks on my mates picks on me, the kind of emotional buy-in to issues that usually brings with it a powerfully analytical intellect expressed in simple prose. On the face of it, it's chivalrous of him to stick up for Shaha Riza - but the very idea of someone well-versed in the ways of Washington going out with a high-profile man and not expecting her private life to come under scrutiny is mind-boggling. It's both patronising and, for someone who made his name as an investigative journalist, hypocritical for Hitchens to go down this path.

The issue of Wolfowitz's past is entirely valid. The very idea that a man might ascend to a position without considering his recent performance in other positions is absurd. Can we now admit that it was Wolfowitz, and not General Shinseki, who was "wildly off the mark" about the issue of troop numbers required to meet objectives in Iraq - and if so, can it be doubted that Wolfowitz busily ignoring good advice at the World Bank now? The similarity of his career path to that of Robert McNamara, another smart and diligent man who bungled a war, is inescapable. It is absolutely fair game for those who criticise the man and his impact on American life.

Aha, you say, but why did Wolfowitz take so long to release these nonincriminating internal memoranda? Who acts so defensively if they have nothing to hide?

"Aha" is something I say rarely, if ever. As for Wolfowitz, he is a leading member of a governing clique who genuinely believes himself to be above scrutiny, and it is possible Hitchens is trying to insinuate himself into such company to enjoy the rarified pleasure of action without repercussion. Those who hammer away getting people like him and his dining companions to disclose what they do and why with the public resources entrusted to them do important work. It would be fair if they did something similar to a Clinton appointee. It would be fair if people started scrutinising similar actions in Australia by the Howard Government, and in NSW by Sorry Morry's outfit (actually it would be more than nice; you've gotta keep your hopes down). It's part of the whole transparency thing: if you won't practice it yourself then you're the wrong person to demand it of others.

And, if you're the sort of person who doesn't practice what he preaches but still likes having a powerful job, it's incumbent upon people like Christopher Hitchens to demand disclosure and to investigate why a senior official would demand publicly that others do the opposite of what he actually does. Perhaps Hitchens could use his slight knowledge of such people to expand his knowledge and convey it to readers, or perhaps he has just grown weary of questioning the way things are done around here.

Choices that work

While AWAs are being signed nobody is sticking their neck out and lauding them in principle. There is no groundswell of public support for the government can point to, and while it's unpopular it's not being modified, so as you'd expect Howard has given a key sales role with no resources to a moderate. Notice how, in the Health portfolio, Senator Patterson looked weak as she stood fast as directed by Howard; when the heat got too much he replaced her with Aboott, who backed down furiously and had resources galore that were denied to Patterson; yet Abbott has the reputation for firm resolution and Patterson is political roadkill. Loyalty, eh!

With his current portfolio Joe Hockey will either have the moderation leached from him, like Ruddock; he'll collapse intenally, like Vanstone; or he'll cop the blame from the right for failing to defend the indefensible. Hockey has a key role to play in pulling the Liberals together when they next go into Opposition, but none of that matters to Howard loyalists and their post-Howard Götterdämmerung fantasies.

WorkChoices was an idle piece of work slapped together by a government that had not expected to have a fifth term, it's too late to back down on it (but those aspects that really jar with teh focus groups will be watered down between now and the election). It is the first piece of IR legislation in which major employer groups and unions were not closely consulted in the development process.

The reason why the employer groups have not rallied behind WorkChoices is because they have no skin in the game, it is a monument to their irrelevance. When was the last time the Australian Industry Group (which has the silly abbreviation of Ai, the greeting made famous by Ali G), the National Farmers' Federation, Australian Business Ltd or VECCI actually drove some reform? They are being ignored on infrastructure and tax reform and pretty much everything else. The glory days of leading reform and careful consideration about policy in the 1980s are well behind us. Employers' First (the old NSW Employers' Federation) only makes an appearance to complain about lost productivity over public holidays - mean and irrelevant.

A Rudd Government will almost certainly replace WorkChoices with legislation developed in close consultation with unions and employer bodies. This will bury the issue politically for the rest of the next term of government, but beyond that dissatisfaction will emerge with legislation drawn up by orgajnisations increasingly irrelevant to the working lives of most people, what with declining membership and a move away from corporatism. It will be interesting to see how much of WorkChoices (or, for that matter, Jobsback!) is fished out of the bin, dressed up and wedged back into the statute books in order to regulate working relationships into the second decade of this century.

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.
• 
  
• 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.

A bird in the hand, and other cliches

After reading this article, the biggest scandal I can see is the tangle of cliches and the descent of a once-respected journalist into Koutsoukis-dom:

• "real-world land" (you can see it from Canberra, can you Steve?)


• "And after failing to land a blow ... the Government isn't about to let go" (Boxers don't grip each other when landing blows, Steve)


• "As the ALP's peak organisational body met in the Sussex St head office of the NSW Labor machine, the Liberal Party federal executive was discussing election tactics 300km away, in R.G. Menzies House in Canberra." (and you thought the ALP and the Liberal Party would discuss tactics in the same room?)


• "Rudd's loss of grace" (this is no small thing for a committed Christian like Rudd. Having met with a committed felon doesn't strip away redemption from the Lord God, whatever impact it may have had with the press gallery)


• "Howard and his senior team are hoping the fallout from Burke will have a more lasting impact" (yes, and if not? Howard, Costello and Downer may well be able to smell blood, but is that blood Rudd's? Analysis please Steve. In this paragraph alone Steve compares members of the government to riders, hard men and baying hounds)


• "Rudd had been mainly sure-footed since defeating Kim Beazley on December 4 in the Caucus ballot." (right, but we're talking about events pre-dating that, aren't we?


• "But the Prime Minister is banking on voters backing his experience (the Government celebrated 11 years in power yesterday) when he calls the election later this year. Central to his campaign is undermining Rudd's credentials for national leadership" (not reinforcing his record as one of achievement, one with a future? Just because this is the strategy, does that mean it's a sound one?)


• "It has been the Coalition who has been on the defensive in recent weeks, as Labor targeted Howard over Iraq, interest rates and nuclear power." (so they're just the Coalition now? Just a bit of moral equivalence, tit for tat? I thought they were the government, and that Labor was holding them to account, answerable to Parliament and all that)


• "But cheapjack populism only goes so far" (eleven years and counting, Steve)


• "The shadow of the Panama hat grows wider" (any new revelations Steve? Do tell)
  
• "Rest assured, though, the L-plates are being removed from their containers." (do you think that treating Rudd and Latham the same is a sound strategy? Really? What are the ramifications if it isn't, Steve?)

It's interesting that conservative commentators like Lewis and Gerard Joseph Henderson have only started referring to the leader of the Opposition as "St Kevin" after, and not before or during, his early honeymoon as Labor leader.

It's interesting that the lawyer of choice for Perth spivs in the early '90s, Julie Bishop, has kept very, very quiet, and managed to rise through Perth political circles without ever meeting Burke or Grill. If Bishop's opposite number, Stephen Smith, isn't busy with the research on Bishop then he's more useless a politician than I think he is. Until further notice, let us praise the sole remaining Cabinet minister from anywhere west of Adelaide: hosanna in the highest to St Julie.

The original St Kevin was famed for his modesty and patience, qualities that inspired poetry but not found much in Australian politicians (of all people, Gerard Joseph Henderson has no excuse for being ignorant of this). Having met with a convicted felon some time ago is the only bird-in-the-hand that Howard has to go on in the way of attacks on Rudd.

If the polls show anything less than a double-digit decline for Rudd and the ALP, all the ebullience and baying that Lewis describes (and reflects) will have been for nothing. If you walk a thousand roads you're bound to tread in some shit. Beazley visited Burke in prison, and he portrayed it as sticking by his mates. Rudd has supped with the devil of ambition, took a long spoon and stood up to the media until they ran out of questions: what if it ends up humanising this antiseptic man (Rudd, I mean)? Since when has the Australian public voted for saints, Gerard? Really.

Howard has to assume that Rudd's patience will give out and that public preceptions of the government's record remain sound enough to build momentum for credible policies going forward. Rudd has to keep his nerve and keep plugging away at Howard's record, rendering it best a nostalgia trip that can be safely left behind. What will come of St Kevin's nestlings, and where will they fly? Where will they nest? These are questions that can't be answered now and journalists do themselves no favours by hyping their projections.

The blinkered media pack do readers a disservice by their double failure, both to put this story into its proper perspective and to investigate other stories. This is the sort of thing that would help bury any perception that the fastidious Rudd cuts corners on the way to the top, and would serve to blunt continuing attacks. After AWB, if Downer and Howard aren't modest enough to shut up then they should be ignored. Cliches and mixed metaphors are signs of sloppy thinking, and Steve Lewis can take no comfort in claiming that all his colleagues are equally giddy over this non-story.

Out of range

In this article, Bronwen Maddox claims that it's best to talk to the Taleban rather than fight them, because fighting them is all too hard.

Negotiated settlements are usually best if they're on offer, which they're not in modern Afghanistan. All the wank surrounding "holding talks" is less repulsive than a pile of corpses. However, negotiation with the Taleban and al-Qaeda is not possible. Western forces and moderate Muslims should destroy them, and with them the desire for a fundamentalist Islamic order brought into being by terror and bloodshed.

If they fear being destroyed, then let them come to the negotiating table cap-in-hand, as Adams and McGuinness did when the IRA was dying on its feet.

It is the most woolly nonsense to assume the Taleban may negotiate peace with those they have sworn to destroy. If indeed the British Foreign Secretary faces, as Maddox asserts, "the prospect of one day talking to the Taleban" then she is a fool. The Pakistani and Afghan governments cannot deal with the Taleban - indeed, Maddox cites Musharraf's failed deal on blocking foreign fighters into this area, but fails to appreciate how it completely undermines her whole point.

[Musharraf's] army is under such strain partly because of the separate tribal unrest in Baluchistan, a patch of trouble Musharraf ought to settle quickly and through political means, answering their grievances about their share of local gas revenues.

Well Bronwen, if he's been knocked on his backside and roundly mocked by the bad guys, how do you rate his chances of getting a deal to stick? What do you think they'd do with all that dough from gas, hmm?

In the cat-and-mouse game of Muslim conquerors throughout history, the Taleban do not speak from a unified position and they renege on undertakings whenever they feel like it. All who make possible organised violence from a fundamentalist Islamic motivation are Taleban.

A better understanding of the difference between locals and blow-ins, and smarter cultivation of the former and targetting of the latter, will make Afghanistan and the wilder fringes of Pakistan less receptive to the Taleban and al-Qaeda than they are. Maddox identifies this shortcoming but glosses over its importance in securing a lasting solution. Negotiation with an undisclosed spokesperson from a mobile phone would be fatuous, an exercise in both the impotence of Western institutions and in enhancing the wily Taleban as they play for time - time the Westerners don't have.

"There is no other possible position [fighting, not talking] on a day when a suicide bomber, claimed by the Taleban as one of theirs, tried to kill Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, at Bagram airbase near Kabul." Once you understand that such days are more typical than days of extended chats and commitments kept, the whole thing will hopefully become clearer to you Bronwen.

Afghanistan is one of the main games in the war on terror (Iraq isn't). Talks are an option after the Taleban have been destroyed as an operational force, not before.

Maxine McKew in Bennelong

Let's accept that Maxine McKew is the next Labor candidate for Bennelong. Now that it's been announced there's too much at stake for the wide boys of the NSW ALP not to get their way. Farewell Pierre Esben, we hardly knew ya - but keep an eye out for any cushy jobs to which this Parramatta City Councillor might be appointed.

If Labor were really serious about winning Bennelong - and I mean steely-eyed, nothing's-gonna-stop-us serious - they would have chosen John Watkins. Watkins has the profile, both at high-level policy-driven politics as well as at the grassroots in that area. He would have tied Howard down and given encouragement to both Rudd and Costello. Of course he'll show McKew where the pressure points in that electorate are, and he is the fallback option if she falls over.

Will McKew beat Howard? The answer to that depends on a lot of factors that can't be dependably forseen this far out from the election. While the Rudd honeymoon can't last, it's unlikely that voters will be as bored with him as they were with Beazley, or as repelled as with Latham. Howard and Costello might pull out some super spending proposals, but they might go absolutely nowhere politically if voters have stopped listening to them. It's possible that another catastrophe like September 11 will cause the electoral pendulum to jerk suddenly this way or that.

The polls are based on a false premise. "If there was an election held last weekend ..." - yeah but there wasn't an election last weekend was there, nor was there 4-6 weeks of concentrated hoo-ha before that. It might be as much as you have to go on, it might even be necessary, but it is not sufficient.

The real unknown factor here is McKew herself. She says, "public life matters. It's the main game", but it depends what you mean by public life. Is public life the big-ticket items in the budget, committing troops to battle - or is it speeches and glad-handing at Truscott Street Public School, Epping Rugby Club, and/or St Therese's Church Denistone?

Howard does the latter very well indeed. This quality is often underestimated in him; big-time MSM reporters like Maxine McKew barely regard it as worth mentioning except in patronising terms. Howard doesn't have charisma as such - not in the Kidman/Clooney sense, but in a room or a shopping centre he does exude energy and he gets energy from interacting with people. By sheer graft he can make people feel important: you can sneer at the person who feels strangely empowered that the Prime Minister of Australia shook my hand, but all that sneering hasn't dislodged him from office yet.

Does Maxine McKew identify with people? McKew seems like a nice person on telly, but it is possible for someone to seem nice while actually being a swine once the cameras are off. What would kill McKew in Bennelong is an insensitivity to ordinary people.

Is she going to listen to some old person bang on about their operations, or weather the blast of some parent frustrated by issues that public policy alone can't really fix? Is she going to interrupt a voter in mid-sentence to take a mobile phone call from Kevin Rudd?

Bennelong is a very churchy area: if she takes the Lord's name in vain in a flash of anger/frustration, if some wild and scabrous story comes out from twenty years before, this will count for a lot with Bennelong voters - more than it warrants perhaps, but on election night such an event will make itself felt.

Maybe she'll count on the Old Mates' Club of the parliamentary press gallery to close ranks for her - she's be dreaming, particularly if one of the local rags breaks a story (and if she disdains said rags as beneath her, then she's finished).

McKew has seen political careers rise and fall, but that's not the same as being in the game yourself.

The worst-case scenario for Labor and McKew in six months from now is if she's wounded, she's bored, the gloss will be gone and Howard will run rings around her, campaigning hither and yon across the nation utterly unconcerned about his own seat. A whispering campaign in the area of "I met that Maxine McKew and she's a cold fish/nasty piece of work" will ensure that whatever glamour she brings to the contest does not translate into votes.

Memo to Bennelong Liberals: you could start a whispering campaign yourselves, but people in the community who know you well enough to hear you out about McKew will also know that you're Liberals, and that you would say that. Still, give it a go, and leave Howard to wear the backlash; besides, you didn't get where you are by listening to me.

The best-case scenario, of course, is that which the papers are full of today: high-profile, will give Howard a run for his money. Some run, some money.

Zimbabwe against the world

It's interesting to see the rhetoric that people use in lining up one way or another on the big issues, and how the various worldviews apply - or don't apply - to that part of the world known as Zimbabwe.

The dictator of Zimbabwe, Mugabe, is a nasty little türd who is driving his people into misery, poverty and early death. Nothing good can be said for such an individual. May that long-suffering country soon dispatch him beyond this world in order that they may survive in this. More power to those who work against him; even those who shield him from the inevitable are doing Zimbabwe a service, however indirectly or unwittingly.

Not having been there, I can't do much to help the opposition to Mugabe. If I wanted to speak out or act against Bush, or Blair, or Howard, big organisations would sweep me up in warm embrace. There'd be demos to join, chants to yell, petitions to sign, letters to write, all that stuff. Where is your anti-Mugabe movement? Here is a grand cause for a demo. Nobody defends the bastard, and all decent people stand against him. Whaddawe want, whendawe wannit ... hello? Anyone? Hardly what I'd call "fever pitch".

Mugabe is nominally socialist in an era where this is irrelevant for all but a few on the commanding heights of newspaper opinion pieces. Mugabe isn't white and he does a solid line of invective against Tony Blair. His opponents seem to be bourgeois neo-kulaks and centrist do-gooders, and where is the old Trot who doesn't love giving such a bit of stick?

The left have always fancied themselves as being unrelentingly anti-fascist, but this was never true. As long as you get your rhetoric right, the Western left will forgive you much - particularly if you say one thing in charmingly broken English, and another thing in your native tongue to break people in a thoroughly uncharming way. This ruse worked for Arafat, it worked for Castro and Ortega and Gaddafi and Mobutu, and basically any tinpot scumbag with an army and a flag. Saddam Hussein had plenty of fans in the Western left. Even ratbags without flags, armies or much of a clue, like Baader-Meinhof or the Black Panthers, were fawned over and insulated from rightist assaults. Now that those guys are dead (Hussein, Arafat), cowed beneath the Western yoke (Ortega, Gaddafi) or enjoying their pelf in exile (Mobutu), surely they'd turn their lonely eyes to you, Mugabe. But, it would appear, no.

If you're the sort of sorry soixante-huitard wanker who thrills every time Castro and Chavez (but not so much when they imprison/execute dissidents), then surely you'd stick by Mugabe like shit to a blanket. Where are you, Pilger, Chomsky, Tariq Ali? Why do you desert your brother Bob so? Have you all followed Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens in full retreat from the (imaginary) ramparts?

Then, there's the right. If you're really serious about standing up for democracy, like Bush and Blair and Howard, then Mugabe would represent some low-hanging fruit. No armed forces to speak of (it appears fully occupied suppressing civil society), no sympathetic body of support - he's a godless commie!!! It woulda/coulda/shoulda been cheap 'n' easy to wipe out Mugabe and Send A Clear Signal to his better-entrenched ilk. Kim Jong Il, Ahmedinejad, even Saddam; they'd have all learned the lesson and either made nice or gotten out. A cakewalk, as it were.

Troublesome Africa would be much better governed, and investments there returning much more strongly, had Mugabe gone down for the Greater Good. Zimbabwe has a much stronger tradition of democratic (and, yes, pro-business) government than places like Afghanistan or Iraq. The problems with Chalabi or al-Maliki "going native" wouldn't have applied in poor old Zimbabwe.

By overstating the importance of Saddam Hussein, and ignoring that of Mugabe, it's hard to maintain that the war in Iraq isn't all about another quality that Zimbabwe lacks - a black liquid that President Bush and his most fervent backers refer to as awl.

Zimbabwe really is the shoal on which the rhetoric and the hopes of the world for many in the West are wrecked. Action-oriented problem-solvers dither in the face of an opponent who is not nearly as formidable as he is despicable. This forces those who keen for this benighted land into waiting - for how long, for what desolation will Mugabe leave behind?

While this land is, as it seems, to be exempt from the wider forces sweeping the globe, the certitudes that we apply in our outlook on the world remain inadequate.