HOWARD’S HENCHMEN

American Vice President Dick Cheney is now in Australia and in a speech earlier today publicly praised the continuing alliance and mateship of Australia and the U.S. and thanking Prime Minister Howard for being on the front foot in the war on terror.

In private he was probably about to tell the PM not to waiver and not to put further cracks in the strangely-named Coalition of the Willing.  They are not so much cracks as giant fissures.

Lame duck British PM Tony Blair – trying to prove he is NOT a lame duck in his final months in office – is pulling a large number of his troops out of Iraq.

Indicatively, he is taking them home and not re-deploying them to help the United States with its planned new surge of 20,000 troops. Denmark is withdrawing its 460 troops in August. Lithuania only has 50 troops in Iraq but they are going home too.

And the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has resigned after losing a vote over the future of 2000 Italian troops in Afghanistan under NATO.

John Howard must be feeling like the last person on George Bush’s dance card. Certainly his cohorts are sounding shrill and even silly and reckless in their public protestations.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer refuses to use the word ‘withdrawal’ when talking about the Brits. He says it is a ‘removal’. Duh?

But that automaton of a Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, has committed the most embarrassing blunder. He has claimed our involvement in Iraq is as important to us as Kokoda and Milne Bay where Aussie Diggers stopped the Japanese tide from reaching our shores.

To many RSL vets and to other Australians that is akin to sacrilege. Without down-playing the war on terror it is ludicrous for anybody – let alone the head of our Defence force – to depict the war in Iraq as ‘ our new Kokoda’.  I don’t see hordes of Iraqis swarming over the mountain ranges in Papua New Guinea or bombing Darwin.

Personally, I believe that Howard and Nelson are blindly ignoring a growing number of Australians who, rightly or wrongly, say “ it’s not our war’. Isolationists who think we should not have troops in Iraq, or Afghanistan or other trouble spots – including places like the Solomon Islands.

Invoking the memories and the bravery and the symbolism of the Kokoda Trail to sway public opinion on Iraq is not only reckless. It  insults your intelligence.

Friday, February 23, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007