Ted,. just to clear up two factual points first. As you would know from reading my website www.tonykevin.com and my contributions to OLO including the recent essay “Australia is still evolving”, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4859 , I was an Australian diplomat and ambassador until I retired with honour from that 30-year public service career in 1998. I didn’t have the time ever to be an “unregenerate former 60s lefty”, but hey, let’s not let simple research into public-record facts get in the way of a glib putdown in the inimitable Ted Lapkin style. As readers of my political writing know, I was radicalised after 2000 by the serious and chronic failures of accountability and integrity of the Howard regime. This has nothing to do with Left or Right politics – it is about this man’s absence of decency or truth or compassion in his long march through those old Australian values.

Now as to your and John Howard’s tired fiction that “the jihadists” were targeting Australia long before Howard took us into war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I see no significance in the reference you cite that Bin Laden “took umbrage at “our” (sic) military campaign in E. Timor to liberate that country from that part of ‘Dahr al Islam’ known as Indonesia”. While there may be some obscure text before October 2002 on those lines, Australia was not on any “jihadist” real-politics radar screen until John Howard put us there with his manic desire to be noticed around the world as George Bush’s most loyal and energetic military ally. I remember well on ABC television news the Taliban Foreign Minister being interviewed in Pakistan around the time the US forces were toppling his regime in late 2001. Asked by an Australian journalist if the Taliban was angry with Australia he didn’t know where or what Australia was, and had to be prompted twice to answer the question. Eventually he mumbled something lamely on the lines of “yes, I suppose we are angry with Australia too.” ( part 1 of 2)

(part 2 of 2)
At the time of the first Bali bombing (October 2002), it was already public knowledge that the Australian Government was loudly supporting the proposed invasion of Iraq – Downer gave a saber-rattling speech in Washington in July 2002 - and was taking part in detailed US military contingency planning for it. If one is looking for a genesis for “jihadist” hostility to Australia, one can find it around those public facts.

Finally, Ted, you are trying as ever to line up Australia alongside George Bush and the Tel Aviv hawks in a so-called “clash of civilizations” war scenario between good “Judeao-Christians” and bad “Islamists”. I won’t be sucked into such crude war games. I have a more real model of the world which starts with a notion of common humanity that transcends differences of faith or culture. The rational as well as morally right Australian policy is to stand back from the Israel--Palestinian Middle East mess, to get our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to support European efforts to bring about negotiated peace of the many conflicts in the region which US and Israeli policies are knowingly exacerbating.

You are actually quite a dangerous person, Ted, the way you insert yourself chameleon-like into Australian politics with apparent knowledgeability and authenticity. You show an ability to slide from one role to another at the blink of an eye: Israel Government spokesman, Australian NGO community activist, international foreign relations analyst, strategic analyst, arms salesman, character assassin - A man who can so expertly play so many roles at once must have an agenda. I think your cover is pretty much blown in Australia now: maybe it is time for a new country and a new role ?

Kalin,
I love your comment-great insight
"Guess we should ask them nicely...Then we can all be friends"
Encapsulates the thinking of all too many.

Tony Kevin,
Actually you are the dangerous one –you have this naive view that we are all going to live together in peace & harmony –if we only close our eyes.

What we are seeing from al qaeda & its ilk is nothing new.
Its been the practice of Islamicists for generations –as any minority groups living in Sudan, Egypt ,Pakistan ,Indonesia would testify .It's only now that some westerners are being exposed to it, that its become newsworthy-but clearly, some have still not cotton-on to its real causes/motivations.

Strewth,
What a topic like this & no Strewth buzzing around like a blowfly- Unheard of !
Must be off serving on the frontline with Hamas.

Ok Israeli forces have withdrawn from Lebanon (except a token force in some border village) .Now when does Hezbollah Start to disarm?

You claim to have never participated in the anti-Vietnam war movement. Perhaps the far-leftwing nature of your current views (anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-free market), combined with your age caused me to make an erroneous assumption about your activities during the wild and woolly 1960s. Fine, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

But in a way, that makes matters even worse. It’s not that you, like so many of your current political compatriots, have remained stagnant within the confines of the most pernicious ideology ever known to man. But if your narrative is true, you have actually regressed, and have slid back from the realm of political light into the domain of leftist darkness.

You chastise me for failing to take your professions of early political moderation at face value. But it turns out relying upon what you have written is rather problematic in view of the contradictions and divergent narratives that you present at different times.

In your OLO posting above, you claim to have been “radicalised after 2000 by the serious and chronic failures of accountability and integrity of the Howard regime.” But your own paper trail tells a different story.

In an essay for the left-wing Catholic magazine “Eureka Street” (October 2003), you claim that your personal political revolution took place during the mid-1990s. Your change of view was motivated by a belated recognition of Australia’s complicity in: “a cynical Cold War endgame that inflicted a cruel 13-year insurgent war (1979-1991) on the Cambodian people.”

You declared, “It became supremely important to me after July 1997 to tell the world what I thought was the truth about Cambodia.” Thus by your own account, your political metamorphosis began much earlier than you profess above.

And, timetable aside, you present two competing versions of what that metamorphosis entails. In your OLO posting you admit to having become “radicalised, but in “Eureka Street” you assert: “I don’t think I became especially radical.”

So which is it, 2000, or 1997? The transgressions of John Howard, or the misdeeds of Fraser/Hawke in Cambodia? Radical, or non-radical?

(To be continued)

tony kevin
There are some bad Islamists. Stoning, suicide bombing of inocent people enjoying themselves in night clubs because the bombers and their supporters don't approve of their lifestyle. Killing of non involved people in trains and buildings because you don't like their culture.
Indoctrinating teenagers into a belief which encourages suicide bombing - this is the ultimate obscenity.

The Indian and Chinese villagers have more to complain about than any of the Muslims. Do the Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists follow these very sick practices? After the Bali bombing a JI cleric showed no sympathy and suggested that the families of the victims adopt Islam.

I am sure that the majority of Muslims don't follow these hideous beliefs but neither did the majority of Germans believe in the Nazis. But these beliefs are a horror and they are not only directed against the West. Look at Darfur, the Pakistani invasion of Bangla Desh the Iran Iraqi wars. And who is being killed by Muslims in Iraq? The majority are other Muslims. Why are the two sides in Gaza fighting each other instead of concentrating their energies against Israel? And why were suicide bombers active in Egypt?

Do you really think that they will leave us alone if we ignore them?

There is some sort of problem here and to close our eyes to the reality is to invite disaster.

Hourus

1)They won. They don't have to disarm.
2)When the israelis also disarm.

doh!

Hi Ted

No way you can attack me is there?
No way you can answer my questions is there?

You know I've only seen you attack your opponents, and not their arguments. You cannot attack me personally so you ignore my arguments and questions.

Mate what you should be worrying about is people like me who do express points of view different from our government and attempt through moderation and friendliness to change their point of view. That's where Israel and you propagandists lost and are losing. You are all to busy fighting wars and battles to see that the mood is not set by extreme points of view but by moderates who ignore propaganda. People like me. And we don't view or do things like extremists or they way you propagandists expect.

There is only one way to deal with us. That is by looking at reality, facing your shortcomings and adjusting your ways so that are some way in alignment with the way we do things.

And that doesn't allow for land stealing or unjustified oppression.