For the record, the audience from which Hicks received a standing ovation is unlikely to have consisted of 900 writers. It is likely to have consisted of 900 ordinary Australians - some schoolkids, some senior citizens, some uni students, some writers ... while some were undoubtedly perched high in their ivory towers, others were not. You don't have to be a trendy lefty academic snob to appreciate literature or to attend the writers' festival. That said, I'd imagine that it would take some strength of character to remain seated while the other 899 audience members stood and cheered.

Just thought I'd clear that up.

As for Hicks, a few other posters have raised what I consider to be the most interesting point in this whole debacle. What on earth possessed Hicks to join forces with the Taliban? What was missing in his life that pushed him that far? What could they offer him that an ordinary, sane and humane life could not? Perhaps those answers - if we ever retrieve them - will be the best thing to come out of this whole sorry saga.

Pelican

>> Many like LEGO believe only those who oppose his views need atone for wrongdoing, those who parrot his own worldview can apparently get away with murder. <<

Exactly, which is why the old saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a fraught way to deal with exigencies - your enemy's enemy may well come back to bite you.

As for Hicks; Pelican, Lexi and Poirot have made pertinent comments (as usual) regarding his motivation. Would like to add that Howard's handling was less than well thought out, using the hapless Hicks as a scapegoat for all "terrorists" ultimately backfired.

Like jailing for life a drug-mule instead of the drug-lord.

'The calculated and cynical actions of well-informed government bodies, on the other hand, unmotivated by idealistic feelings, but by ideological supremicism, are far more culpable.'

Oh rubbish squeers. You know who makes up governments, multinational corporations and 'the military industrial complex'? People!

Yet lefties assume they're all full of conspiracy and all sorts of evil. I say they're full of half-arsed slacker bastards like myself.

They're full of aspirational yes men, tiresome bureaucrats, career protecting politicians doing the bidding of the squeakiest wheels.

You know what has to happen, people have to make decisions, trade-offs, least worst scenarios, and unintended consequences, and cover their arse just like the guy who's been taking 3 hour lunch breaks and carrying around bits of paper as he walks past the boss to create the illusion he's just come from a meeting.

I'm sure Hicks is an idiot, moreso than a Taliban honcho, but why the standing ovation?

Just like cancer survivors and victims all fight equally hard and that fighting doesn't make them a hero, so too a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time because he was an idiot.

A standing ovation? How bloody ridiculous! I want a standing ovation if he gets one. I think Bill Clinton deserves one for his Lewinski affair then too. He was an idiot with no malice.

Houellebecq,

Only time for a quick response, but look I agree and that's a common-sense appraisal.
Nevertheless geopolitics has been choreographed by the US since WW2, and despite the fact that the various offices are peopled by ordinary sad sacks, each office has a specialised area of intelligence or research or strategy or something, and together they precipitate, fabricate and formulate government policies--each of the no doubt tens of thousands of slack arse individuals involved do the "working out", probably without the faintest idea of what they're contributing to. One thing is for sure, and that is that every major action serves a political agenda; they may be able to be defended/rationalised in the detail, but the devil's in the detail and the trend is to maintain and /or increase geopolitical dominance. The actions of States are generally irreconcilable with their professed ideologies--constitutional spin.

Maybe the standing ovation was for a person who lived the false ideology---but I'll have to read the book too.

Ammonite was correct in saying that Hicks was a Howard government scapegoat....and it was the fact that he survived this dubious honour that probably accounts for the standing ovation.

The moment the U.S. decided to flout the usual conventions in the treatment of prisoners of war, was the same moment that the government heightened its spin in regard to Hicks and others. Ordinary people were urged to just accept the rise of places like Guantanamo and state sanctioned torture as a new kind or normality - because of the "threat".

Remember that Dr Haneef was lined up in an act of desperation in the dying days of the Howard government to play the same role.

'Remember that Dr Haneef was lined up in an act of desperation in the dying days of the Howard government '

And I've never forgiven Kevin Andrews for his impersonation of Goebbels in the whole affair.

But it wasn't all bad, in the dying days of the Howard governmnet, the orang-utans in Indonesia were saved.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/conservation/howard-pledges-help-for-orangutans/2007/11/11/1194724814449.html

BTW: The decision to revoke Haneef's visa was given in principle support by the Shadow Minister of Immigration, Tony Burke