Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Yes, Jenny Hume, "the security of this country depends on the US" and "it is a fact." That we in Australia have got ourselves in a position where we are beholden to an imperial power whose leadership is unaccountable to the Australian people, and whose moral rationale tends toward the opaque, is one of the great quandaries of our time with which we all must grapple, in our own way.

The world order is a 'work in progress' and most of us get some of it somewhat wrong some of the time while waiting for the dice to fall. Most of us, however, do not get things so wrong, wrong, WRONG! as the architects of the Iraq conquest have done.

That this, arguably criminal, incompetence and dereliction has contributed to the most catastrophic foreign policy failure of at least the last forty years would probably explain why it's become such a talking point, for better or worse, and will continue to be for the forseeable future.

Sadly, it's inevitable that any discussion of the minutiae and dimensions of this disaster will reflect poorly on those architects. As the latter also happen to be American, the railing of some against perceived 'anti-Americanism' will inevitably also be a feature of 'debate'.

Those 'assessments' you've alluded to, of the 'immaturity' of 'the left', are apposite so far as they go, albeit quite often as one-eyed and immature as those they intend to criticise. I didn't see much evidence of 'maturity' in the conduct of so-called debate in the lead-up to the invasion, while the conduct of the leadership of 'the West' has tended to inscrutable on the basis of stated rationales.

But please, yes, let's slag off at 'the Left' and pathologise their behaviours. 'The Left', meanwhile, will please refrain from likewise pathologising 'the Right's' uncritical, complacent, filial fixation on Big Strong Daddy USA, who as an article of faith will protect and provide, if only those 'anti-Americans' will let Him just get on with it without hindrance. Free thought is one thing, but if only 'the Left' would just get with the program and think correct thoughts like 'the Right'.

The purported 'inconsistency' of 'the Left' you've identified in relation to Tibet and Burma is, with respect, a red herring. Many on 'the Left' are active on those issues, as undoubtedly are many on 'the Right'. It's inconceivable, of course, that some of us might invest as much energy against the evils of China and Burma as we do in criticising our own. (While tapping this out, I see Fiona has posted some remarks in relation to this point.)

Personally I'll be happy to discontinue my 'anti-American' rants just as soon as Webdiary stops posting Iraq-related threads. Travelling 'round in circles is really such a monumentally futile waste of time.

As for the Iraqis "killing their own", you should know as well as anyone that, by definition, those "they" kill are not "their own". The tribal and sectarian fissures within the Iraqi 'nation' have been comprehensively discussed here and elsewhere. Post-invasion 'planning' failed to address this potential problem. The arrogance and hubris of turning an entire country into a free-fire zone, and then expecting it to stop being so at one's whim, further contributed to this failure. The introduction into Iraq, consequent upon the invasion, of 'nihilistic' Islamist terror — as distinct from the more familiar state terror, as perfected by Saddam — is yet another consequence of those failures.

As much as internecine slaughter among Iraqis cannot be excused, neither can such failures as these and others. Occupying powers have clear obligations under customary international law to protect subject civilian populations from harm and violence.

Wagging one's finger and tut-tutting about the carnage is fine if that's what cranks one's gear, but doesn't address the complexity of the problems faced by the unfortunate Iraqis.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When in a hole, keep digging.

Drolleries, I know, but somehow those expressions continue to leap to mind in relation to this topic.

Jenny Hume: "If the left were consistent then it would be just as concerned about the slaughter in other parts of the world such as Tibet and Burma. But these places do not allow for the anti US paradigm to be pushed so they are largely ignored by the left  when it comes to WD at least. That speaks volumes."

Here's what that old, unreconstructed leftie Mungo MacCallum had to say in today's edition of Crikey:

The almost universal view from the west is that the Chinese occupation of Tibet is a crime. Tibet was, and should be still, an independent and peaceful nation minding its own business and threatening no-one. The Chinese takeover was an act of naked aggression which could not be legitimised by spurious appeals to history and geography, as Beijing has attempted for at least fifty years.

Since then there has been widespread repression and violation of human rights and attacks on people and property aimed at destroying the entire Tibetan culture. While the Chinese remain, things can only get worse. Morally, there is no alternative to a free Tibet. The international community should use every legitimate means to bring this about, starting with a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

If only it was so simple. For starters, an Olympic boycott would almost certainly do no good at all; the patchy boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 did nothing to get the Russians out of Afghanistan. Indeed, given the paranoid state of Chinese politics, a boycott could be seriously counterproductive, leading to still tighter control from the Communist Party. Anyway, the Dalai Lama himself has advised against a boycott.

So it seems only sensible to rule this out. But that leaves ... what? Trade bans involving the world’s largest importer of raw materials and largest exporter of consumer goods are obviously impractical; they might eventually hurt China, but they would wreck the rest of the world economy in the process. And again, there is no reason to believe that this kind of punitive action would benefit the Tibetans.

All that is left is persuasion and diplomacy, and these have not been too successful in the past either. The core fact that must be recognised is that, to Beijing, China’s territorial claim to Tibet is incontestable and non-negotiable.

In practice this has been the political reality for many years: Chinese sovereignty over Tibet is bipartisan policy in Australia, as it is in most of the world. Again, even the Dalai Lama accepts that Tibet will not regain full independence. The best that can be hoped for is a fair degree of autonomy, free of the constant authoritarian presence of the Chinese military. But this would involve an end to the protests in Lhasa, which are generally regarded by the rest of the world as entirely justified.

To Beijing, of course, they are acts of open rebellion, a threat to national security, and must be treated as such. The mainstream view in China is that the arrival of the People’s Army signalled not an invasion but a liberation (sound familiar?) by which the peasants were freed from a cruel and intolerant theocracy run by bloated monks who stole the wealth of the people to create an obscenely opulent lifestyle for themselves and whose leader fled to India to plot for his return to resume his oppressive regime.

In the years since then the material well-being of all Tibetans has increased immeasurably, particularly in the fields of health, housing and secular education. Society has been reformed and modernised, giving people from all backgrounds more choice of careers and lifestyles. The younger generation in particular now have opportunities of which their parents could not even dream. And this has been made possible by the sacrifices of their fellow Chinese, who have worked in a severe and alien environment to bring the benefits of civilisation to their benighted fellows; not many Han Chinese actually enjoy life on the plateau.

Under the circumstances, those demonstrating for a return to the bad old days must be seen as criminal reactionaries, enemies of the people. But of course they are not; they are the people, or at least the more militant representatives of the people. What the Chinese view overlooks is that the Tibetans’ hunger for independence can override any feelings of gratitude for increased material well-being, and that indeed the extra prosperity and education they have acquired will in themselves generate a desire for more control over their own lives.

This should not be surprising; the Tibetans are hardly unique. In recent times we have seen the same drive in East Timor, in former Soviet states and in the Balkans. And perhaps we are still seeing it in Iraq. The Chinese themselves have gone through similar periods in their long history. Nationalism is a force which, once unleashed, is very hard to stop. But in the case of Tibet, Beijing is determined to show that it can be done, and nothing the rest of the world says is going to change its mind – at least in the foreseeable future.

I'm left of centre, this is Webdiary, and Tibet is most definitely a topic for discussion. However, like so many international problems, there is no easy solution.

Ultimately the left should recognise that the security of this country depends on the US. That may stick in the collective throat but it is a fact.

One assessment I read of the left's view concerning Islamic terrorism and complexities of the situation in the ME was that it was immature. I would go along with that, but it is also more than that. It is deliberately biased in so far as comment must at all times reflect the anti US paradigm. That makes it intellectually moribund in my opionion.  

Meanwhile, I see the Iraqis continue to murder their own innocent men women and children trying to go about their daily lives. For that there can be no excuse. No excuse whatsoever.

If the left were consistent then it would be just as concerned about the slaughter in other parts of the world such as Tibet and Burma. But these places do not allow for the anti US paradigm to be pushed so they are largely ignored by the left  when it comes to WD at least. That speaks volumes.

If you have a moral code then you practice and preach it across the board, and I would include in that one's conduct toward each other in this society. Frankly the comments I read on the blogosphere, put there by Australians toward other Australians on unmoderated sites, reflect an appalling lack of concern for the feelings of their fellow human beings. I see the very worst of human nature on those sites.

Sometime war-booster Andrew Sullivan reflects on "What I Got Wrong About Iraq", under the sub-heading "Narrow moralism".

I recall very clearly one night before the war began. I made myself write down the reasons for and against the war and realized that if there were question marks on both sides, the deciding factor for me in the end was that I could never be ashamed of removing someone as evil as Saddam from power. I became enamored of my own morality and this single moral act. And he was a monster, as we discovered. But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster, and that unless one weighs all the possibly evil consequences of an abstractly moral act, one hasn't really engaged in anything much but self-righteousness. I saw war's unknowable consequences far too glibly.

The rest is worth a read, too. (Via Antony Loewenstein.)

There did come a time when it was said by those opposing the invasion of Iraq that there can be no excuse for the deliberate killings of Iraqis by other Iraqis.  That time was before the invasion, during the invasion, and during the occupation. Indeed, I've seen not one opponent of the invasion ever "excuse" the killing. 

And it must be said, irrespective of where you stood in relation to the invasion of Iraq, that there comes a time when it has to be admitted by those supporting the invasion that there can be no excuse for refusing to understand and acknowledge all factors causing the circumstances in which there has been deliberate killings of Iraqis by other Iraqis.  

Before April 2003, about half of the city's neighborhoods had no particular ethnic character. Over the course of five years, Baghdad has been reduced to half-destroyed buildings and next to no public services, dotted by partially deserted, mutually hostile mini-ghettos that used to be neighborhoods, surrounded by cement barriers reminiscent of medieval fortifications.

In late 2004, thousands of Sunnis, driven out of Falluja began arriving in Baghdad. In increasingly crowded neighborhoods, ethnic friction rose. Sunni militias, originally organised to deal with local crime (after the Iraqi police force was dismantled) began to turn on Shia residents in some of Baghdad's hundreds of mixed neighbourhoods.

During 2005, the first stream of displaced Shia began arriving in Baghdad's vast, already overcrowded Shia slum of Sadr City. Then in January 2006, the bombing of the revered Shia shrine, the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, triggered sweeping Shia reprisals against Sunni communities. In Baghdad, a struggle for the dominance of mixed neighbourhoods began.

And we're to believe the US invasion and occupation played no part in creating this situation?

Irrespective of where you stood in relation to the invasion of Iraq, there comes a time when it has to be admitted by those opposing the invasion that there can be no excuse for the deliberate killings of Iraqis by other Iraqis.  

One can only wonder just how they justify their mass killing of innocent people.  I could understand them targeting US troops, but these people are deliberately targeting men women and children in markets and such places, knowing what the result will be.

It demonstrates an appalling lack of empathy with human suffering and a total disregard for the lives of their fellow citizens and Muslims.  It is a terrible indictment of the faith they claim to hold. There is no excuse for such acts. If you want to fight an invader then you target the troops, not families out shopping.

I think it is time to stop apologising for these killers as patriotic fighters trying to evict an invader, and see them for what they really are. Mass murderers with a whole lot of agendas of their own that can have little to do with the US.  

Would we make excuses for people in Australia if we had been occupied by the Japanese and they went about blowing up hundreds of their fellow Australians in the shopping malls during that occupation?

I say it is time the slaughter carried out by Iraqi insurgents was seen for what it is and that the left stop trying to use it as just another reason to condemn the US. Making the US the fall guy for the sake of it, as appears here to be most often the case, achieves nothing. 

Any perception that the killing will stop if the US pulls out is totally naive.  That view also reflects a shallow inderstanding of the complexity of the problems that are currently plaguing the Muslim world, particularly in the ME and parts of Asia.

I don't get the connections, Eliot: Personally I don't recall any news stories about the death of Stuart Cameron, which doesn't mean there weren’t, but that in itself doesn't justify an invasion. What the deaths of people like Rachel Corrie arguably by a 'shredding machine', a bull dozer-would that justify the invasion of Israel? Not in this case because it's a firm ally of the US but at another time it would be used as propaganda.

As to Habib – no connection to Iraq – his incarceration at Gitmo was illegal and as everyone there seems to have been ill-treated or tortured before they got there I don't see why he would have avoided it. But how would you prove that in a court? Virtually impossible as you and Piers Ackermann well know.

Judges don't always get it right do they? That's why they have appeals courts where I have had two cases overturned. But certainly not a libel case – the most horrendously expensive of all legal matters in the first instance and I've won one in the UK but only because I was mistaken for someone else by the charming News Of The World who caved in on day one and coughed up expenses and damages – in those days enough to buy a new little mini car. If it had gone beyond that as they hoped, I would have had to bail out.

But you seem to be arguing that the invasion of Iraq was the correct thing and picking up a few small points to justify it – like those in your posts. If so they occur everywhere and the Americans do it every day. They help brutal South American right wing dictators remove democratically elected governments for business reasons (it's never really ideology despite their claims) and if that's your way of thinking no-one can change that – but others think differently.

But on a day when 54 more Iraqis are killed, the US Baghdad embassy is attacked, and the US toll has nearly reached 4000 – for the Bush and his team to be claiming Iraq is now a shining light of democracy is lurching into the realms of fantasy. It isn't going to get better either. I have a feeling this is the one time the US isn't going to get its hands on the spoils – ie, oil.

Eliot: "Can anyone recall so much as a word of protest back here in Australia ..."

Now you mention it, I don't recall at the time any protest from any quarter, including the then-Labor government.

And again, when the former prime minister was setting out his case for the 2003 invasion, there was no mention of the killing of an Aussie. Human shredding machines, yes. Assassinated aid workers, no.

Perhaps Mr Howard felt that the case pertaining to Cameron wasn't as strong as the one about the shredders. I guess, now that the shredders haven't turned up, Mr Howard's case for war is vindicated by these revelations about the Cameron slaying.

Michael de Angelos: "No-one is under the impression Saddam was an angel (although those human shredding machines are yet to turn up) and he certainly had people murdered and wasn't a person to cross - ever."

He certainly was a handful, wasn't he? And tough as an old boot. Take this, for example:

"Saddam Hussein said he was not afraid to die and aggressively took on the court trying him, bullying a witness who described the horrors of his rule, including a meat grinder for human flesh."

Of course, you cannot believe everything 'eye-witnesses' say.

For example:

"I am satisfied that Mr Habib's claims that he was seriously mistreated in the place of detention in Islamabad cannot be accepted," Justice McClellan told the court.

"I can only conclude that this evidence was given in order to enhance his forensic position in the present litigation.

"I have reflected at length on his evidence and and have ultimately concluded that I cannot accept the allegations of mistreatment in the detail which he gave the evidence in this court."

Well, I guess we can believe some eye-witness accounts.

Just getting back to Stuart Cameron's murder again...

"In one letter, Iraqi intelligence boasts about its performance after killing Mr Cameron, a former Australian army major and father of two, and other aid workers. At the same time, however, Saddam's regime was publicly expressing outrage and blaming Mr Cameron's death on Kurds."

Can anyone recall so much as a word of protest back here in Australia over this rather bland and implausible account of the aid workers' deaths by rascally old Saddam? 

No-one is under the impression Saddam was an angel (although those human shredding machines are yet to turn up) and he certainly had people murdered and wasn't a person to cross - ever.

Another good reason for the British, the USA and certain European countries not to continually arm him while piously complaining about his record.

But even if he did have an Aussie murdered, that doesn't explain why a sovereign nation should have invaded and hundreds and thousands of its innocent citizens be killed, or 2 million displaced, its infrastructure destroyed and its assets purloined by its invaders.

It draws curious comparisons as well. You knock Bob Brown for drawing attention to China which has an equally appalling record whilst Australia does business deals with it, or Indonesia which is still only has a surface human rights record as demonstrated in Timor(even worse, we hand our kids over to them), Burma etc.

Will try Jacob, and as I'm on a home office and garage re-arranging (nightmare) exercise it should turn up. It's no more than Howard actually said in office. I've always said that that is another enquiry that should have been held – why did our intelligence services supply us with false information? It can only mean several things – our allies lie to us, the PM lied, or services like ASIO lied. We need to know the truth if we are to have faith in them.

Kathy Farrelly, possibly you are correct about Kim Beazley. Certainly NSW premier Bob Carr was gung ho about invading Iraq and then turned against it when it went pie-eyed – but that's just pure Carr.

It's impossible to draw that conclusion about Kevin Rudd and impossible to draw conclusion about whether his "sorry", petrol prices, grocery prices, could be affected in such a short time. That sounds exactly like the questions from the Liberals in Question Time and for anyone to believe that any change could happen within four months must be expecting miracle.

Nor can Nu Labour and Tony Blair in the UK be compared in any way with the ALP. They have far more in common with Margaret Thatcher (Blair’s political hero) but are indeed, far more extreme. Everything Blair claimed he would do if elected – immediately cease the sell-off of state assets, end the incredible government sleaze – as in British corporations supplying Iraq and Iran with the weapons to attack each other and acting with mock horror – he immediately abandoned and stepped up. Blair has sold off everything not nailed down in the UK at rock bottom prices, hired in million dollar consultants, and the sold off assets are now propped up with government subsidies.

In fact, he made Howard look positively left wing and like, Bush and Cheney, still believes in a messianic mission in Iraq.

Anyone who thinks that we would not have become involved in the Iraq war had Labor been in power at the time is delusional.

Bomber Beazley would have responded to the strong alliance we have with America  in the same way as Howard did! As Blair did!

Liberal, Labor. Nothing much to differentiate between the two. Really! There isn't.

Still isn't, with the lip smackin', paper shuffling, podgy little dudd either.

What difference has "sorry " made to those poor unfortunate abused Aboriginal children's lives? None!

He certainly sucked everyone in there didn't he? The Rudd government has made it plain that there will be no compensation! Comprendez?

And don't get me started on the promised lower petrol and grocery prices promised by Rudd and his merry men. (I'm including Gillard here, she has more balls than Swan will ever have!)

"I still have that carefully prepared leaflet sent and signed by John Howard..."

For those like me who were out of the loop, Michael, are you able to scan or transcribe that historical document, perchance for publication here on Webdiary?

I'm a nostalgia buff.

Everything these blokes say is for home consumption. Just as Dick Cheney announced Iraq had been a major success and a bomb killed 30 in a market the same day, John McCain helicoptered into a market last year clad in bullet-proof vest surrounded by a 100 strong body guard for a "walk-about" saying, "see – no problems !!"

The very next a bomb went off in the very same market killing dozens.

But throughout the USA millions of Americans really do believe that Saddam and Osama are one and the same and flew those planes into the World Trade Centre or were both involved in the plot. After all – they’re both from the Middle East so what's the difference?

Robert Fisk tells of speaking tours to promote his book Great War for Civilisation throughout middle American and women rushing up after in tears and saying "but how can we protect ourselves – they're coming after us to kill us !" They really do genuinely believe all this rubbish and that their kids are over their fighting to save them from hoards of Afghans or Iraqis descending upon them.

But yes – politicians sickeningly exploit it merely for their own ends. And yes – I still have that carefully prepared leaflet sent and signed by John Howard to electors in Bennelong detailing in exact numbers the WMDs in Iraq and also giving a promise that he would never join an invasion for the sakes of regime change – something Lord Downer has forgotten recently.