Intr'usting piece.

The entire Hicks situation disgusts but doesn't really surprise me. Australian politics are very similar to the US model, we even have a less politicised version of Guantanamo that is Nauru. (Remember that place? whatever happened to those refugees?...)

The thing is... Australia doesn't have the same resources as the US, and our interests are subtly different. I'm not so sure our government is willing to believe that.

“..the presence of its troops there is not part of the solution but of the problem”. For one bunch of Iraqi’s killing another bunch of Iraqi’s? Come on! We are all fed up with the Iraq situation for different reasons, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. Iraqis are responsible for any killing they do. When, and if, foreign forces leave the hellhole, they will continue doing it. Now that Saddam has gone – or rather his monopoly on killing has gone – the lunatics will really get stuck into it, as Gary sort of admits; and we will be further plagued by “refugees” by the boatload as happened after the Reds kicked us out of Vietnam (where we shouldn’t have been in the first place). It is to be hoped that the lefties who like to see hordes of people coming here illegally are preparing for the influx.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and, ideally, foreign troops should have knocked off Saddam and left the Iraqis to work out the rest of it for themselves. But, that’s not what happened, and now a pullout would be irresponsible and harmful to Iraq and Iraqis. However, that is far too logical and sensible for politicians and totally impractical and naïve voters in the West, so there probably will be a pullout long before there is a chance see Iraq in reasonable condition so that Australia and other Western countries will not be inundated by people who find living in their own country intolerable.

On Australia’s foreign adventures in general, I wholeheartedly agree with Graham’s final paragraph

Leigh is correct why should Saddam have a monopoly on killing Iraqi's he killed 700,000, over the period of his rule. By contrast we have only killed 650,000 innocent men, women and children in our time there. We are catching up, the longer we stay, the more we kill.

What puzzles me Leigh is if they are having their own civil war anyway, why are we still there, it seems they will kill each other whether we are there or not, so why spend huge amounts of public money putting our people in harms way, when there are so many domestic issues to urgently deal with. Pardon, oh! George.W hasn't told us we can go home yet! One last small thing has anyone found a[1] weapon of mass destruction yet?

Very interesting article Gary.

If you were to add IR Laws and privatisation of Telstra you would have the Howard agenda pretty much completed.

It's probably easier to view the invasion of Iraq as 'armed boaties going the other way'.

The Hicks debacle continues to confirm my belief that Australia (and the US) has not been a democracy governed by the rule of law for some time.

Foreign troops are undoubtedly part of the problem. Hindsight is 20/20 but whatever became of foresight? If you care to re-read the newspapers of the weeks prior to the Iraq war, the one that John Howard repeatedly promised at the time we'd made no commitment to, you'll find no end of predictions what would probably happen. The left was saying it'd be a disaster; the right was using phrases like 'cake-walk'.

Would a pullout now be better or worse than a pullout in, say, 6 months? Depends on how many soldiers you're prepared to waste. The political situation can only be determined by Iraqis, in their own time.

As for the wider gist of the article, Australia's reputation under the coalition has certainly nosedived. A little introspection by the clowns in Canberra, at any point over the past few years, would've been useful

I don't agree with most of this but at least the guy has done some research unlike most moon-howling Howard-haters. Again, I'd like to see the left come up with some alternatives. What would you have done about Saddam, how should we deal with Indonesian human rights abuses etc etc? The left in this country needs to start presenting some alternatives otherwise you will continue to all howl at the moon and the electorate will not listen.

Matt,

I don't speak for everyone on the left, but a common belief among them is that the US intervention in Iraq was a cynical and oppurtunistic exercise in US hegemony. Saddam was an asshole but at least, according to US officials, he was 'our' asshole. We all know now it was nothing to do with terrorism. Nothing to do with WMD. Nothing to do with a coherent foreign policy. Everything to do with securing oil supplies. Everything to do with George W's miniscule brain, and Australia's sycophantic, a-different-reason-every-day-for-invading strategy.

If the US left Iraq the moment they got what they [said they] came for, your stance would have some credibility. Why no intervention in Darfur? Or any number of countries with despots in power? You might not be aware of this matt but the west is complicit in the geopolitics of every continent, particularly in the M.E. There's no silver bullet; today's situation is the culmination of several generations of screw-ups.

It appears the problem for supporters of the war - and it's incredible some remain still, I know - is they've run out of reasons, and name-calling against opponents is about all that remains.

Alternatives? Again, re-read the newspapers prior to the invasion. I believe the left was saying, "don't".

I wonder if the author was in favour of apartheid ending in South Africa. The situation with murder, child rape, and corruption is many times worse than it was. Was the ending of apartheid a mistake considering the state of South Africa now?

Ultimately Leigh, apartheid was unsustainable. Sooner or later it had to fall.
Yeah, South Africa's pretty screwed up, but prolonging the inevitable wouldn't have helped.

It's certainly a picture of almost total incompetence that the author paints of the government's foreign policy. Although i agree with the criticism for the most part, i think there is also an element to these blunders of a young and inexperienced nation trying to learn to swim in the big pond with the big fish.

Since WW2 when we realised our mother was no longer going to fight our battles for us and we had to call on the help of our big brother to come to our defence, we are now clumsily trying to stand on our own feet on the world stage.

Hopefully in the future when we see that big brother doesn't always know best, we will learn from these mistakes and become a self-respecting, self-determined nation with noble foreign policy that the rest of the world will look to as a model.

It is not often that find myself in a position having to defend Howard and I am certainly not a fan of him, Bush or the Iraq war.

However Australia has followed Britain or the US into every major war at the earliest opportunity. This holds up from the boer war (before federation) to the second Iraq. The sole exceptions have been limited conflicts that are not in our neighbourhood such as Suez and the Falklands.

So clearly it would have been a major break with history (or as they say in Canberra, frankly unaustralian) had we not gone to Iraq.

Like a younger brother we follow our elder brothers on their adventures without thinking of the consequences. The Deputy Sheriff tag used by our neighbours is very apt indeed.

If the government wans to makes its mark on history it would break with the Deputy Sheriff Doctrine and consider future wars on their merits.

I find Gary's criticism of Howard biased and unconvincing. In light of his lack of criticism of Howard's open support for Israel's intrusive involvement in the Lebanon, Gaza, East Jeruslem, the West Bank, Golan Heights and other nation's domestic affairs.

Why don't you show some consistancy and criticise that situation Gary?

Howard doesn't have a policy on Israel, Keith. We do what America does.

bernie

let's be fair, neither does the Labor mob...whoever is their leader.

Australia's foreign policy is focussed on maintaining full loyalty in following USA's foreign policies. This is because Australia feel insecure as a low-population white country on the edge of Asia which contains billions of colored people, so Australians think being loyal to USA is a necessary insurance policy in case of threat from some Asian country.

On the Pacific Islands, Australia maintains a very outdated racist colonial mentality where Australia wants to be the "big brother" to the little Pacific children who are incapable to be independent states. The reason for Australian interest, is because USA has sub-contracted this area to Australia and New Zealand. Any instability in this area would make Australia look bad in front of its boss Uncle Sam.

Both of these foreign policy outlooks are not based on reality. The fact is, there is not a cloud of threat facing Australia from any direction. No Asian country, not even Japan during World War II, ever have plans to "invade" Australia. What benefit would any Asian country gain by invading Australia?

In abscence of any threat, there is no credible reason for Australia to be a loyal American stooge for the sake of security insurance. In fact, following every blunderous decisions made by different American presidents such ad George Bush only endanger Australia by creating unnecessary enemies.

As for the neo-colonialist approach with the Pacific Islands, Australia should realise that these countries have little left except for their pride and self-respect. They are not going to sacrifice their pride to surrender to Australia's bullying tactics. We can see that Australian programs in PNG, East Timor, and Solomon Islands are failing because the locals are extremely resentful of Australians.

With the ALP on the same witch hunt against David Hicks as is the Howard Government, where is there a change to look forward to? There is none for they both are only too willing to make their own people the political prisoners needed for electoral point scoring to impress a stupid electorate.

Howard is refusing to go into Fiji so I guess there is little resources to take from them. It is of my view that Fiji should be left alone without any trade or any other sanctions against them.

The Fijian military has never oppressed their own people but removed governments who allow foreign powers and business from destroying the Fijian natives.

Even inside Australia, an abuse against Australian's is so common as the government oppresses their fellow people the right to be as we were so that Communist China likes us.

Enough of these traitors!