US Intervene in Australian politics

So we have a chance to show our national identity.

A letter writer to Crikey:

"Has any one else noticed or is it just me? The Bush Administration is now formally campaigning in Australian politics. On their own, the comments by the President at the joint press conference last week condemning Labor policy on Iraq could have been seen as an unwitting intervention. But the cumulative effect of comments by Secretary of State Powell and the menacing, bullying messages from Presidential thug and neo-con Richard Armitage leave no doubt that the Bush Administration is now officially campaigning against Australia’s Labor Opposition, and is specifically playing the man against the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham.

The precision and refinement of their attacks leaves no doubt that this pre-emptive strike has been laser-guided by the Prime Minister."

Margo Kingston in the SMH:
"Howard knows he’s got his 2004 Tampa: director George Bush and Latham knows it too.

In 2001 the fear politics was headlined “WE will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.

In 2004, it is “We will do everything the Republican Americans tell us to because we hope that if we do they’ll look after us in the course of their endless empire wars.”

This time, it’s Latham who might defiantly assert: “WE will decide when we go to war and the circumstances in which we go and leave.”

To save their careers, Howard and Bush have made a Faustian pact to change Australia into the 51st state – without voting rights – after making Australians too frightened to freely exercise their democratic vote."

Kurt Vonnegut at 81

"Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

Kurt Vonnegut, Cold Turkey, 10 May 2004

We have lost our moral compass under John Howard

Margo Kingston in the SMH:

"Last week The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that last year Australian Major George O'Kane at the US military headquarters in Baghdad helped draft a response to the first Red Cross report on abuses in Abu Ghraib prison. He reported back regularly to his superiors. The Howard Government had claimed ignorance until the pictures of the horror were released last month. As usual, John Howard did not respond by setting out the facts, but by obfuscation. Why? What do we believe in?

Even on purely practical grounds, we should have protested. The downside for the coalition of torturing ordinary Iraqis is enormous. But I bet we didn't, just like we won't ask for the videos of the interrogations of our citizens in Guantanamo Bay.

We have lost our moral compass under John Howard, and thereby aided a superpower which is dooming itself and the world to endless war. Last week, the International Institute of Strategic Studies confirmed that the war had rejuvenated al-Qaeda and swelled its ranks, now estimated to be 18,000, with 1000 now in Iraq."