HAWKE’S A DOVE

Let’s compare the words and antics of two former political leaders in the past 24 hours.

Let’s compare the public comments of a former American president and a former Australian Prime Minister. Bill Clinton and Bob Hawke.

Clinton was in Florida to give a speech to university students and he took exceptional care to make sure he did not criticise his successor, George W. Bush, the commander in Chief of the American soldiers currently fighting and dying in Iraq.

In fact, he stressed that it was essential to support not only American troops but also their leader at war.

He said: “ There will be ample time to debate how we got there and what we should do when it is over. We ought to want those young people and President Bush to know we are praying for them,”

Closer to home the Silver Bodgie took a different tack. He wasn’t addressing 9000 students like Clinton. He was launching a book about a Gallipoli veteran.

Hawke called on the Howard Government to bring the Australian troops home.

He said: “ I wish the Prime Minister and the Government would consider the position and understand that the stated objective of the war—to increase security of Australia – is not only not being achieved but the opposite”.

Where does this ageing whacker get off? What message does this send to out troops in danger when a former Prime Minister slags the mission?

Hawke, who seems to have stopped taking his Viagra, also said there was no such thing as a “ just’ War.

So I guess the Gulf War to which he committed Australian forces in 1991 – without a Parliamentary vote or a public plebiscite – was “unjust” too.

He did concede some wars were “ necessary” like the war against Hitler but said in the current Iraqi war “ Australia should never have been in and should be out”.

Imagine how he would have reacted if former Prime Minister Fraser had lambasted and undermined him when he committed our troops to the Gulf a decade ago.

I believe the Hawke comments in a time of war are close to sedition. And his attack on President Bush scurrilous. John Curtin must be spinning in his grave.

Friday, April 4, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002