Howard vs Obama
Australian PM John Howard’s legendary political survival skills has faltered once again in the lead up to his 5th election. Consistently presenting himself as the stronger proponent of the US alliance for national security compared to his successive Labor contenders, he has tripped up badly this time with his criticism of the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
In a television interview, John Howard said that:
“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”
John Howard has let his close friendship with the present US President George W. Bush, to cloud his views on the US-Australia alliance. By uttering those remarks, he has shown his single tracked starry-eyed admiration of the inept president, because of his so-called ‘decisiveness’ and Texan cowboy international diplomacy. However, it has also invited grave doubts as to whether Howard can work with a more liberal US president should he continue to win his 5th election, and Obama the Presidency.
Being the savvy contender that he is, Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has seized on this blunder by Howard and turned the tables on Liberal by accusing them of recklessly endangering the US-Oz alliance. Lol! 
Good one Rudd
And not to forget Obama in all this. He has also returned a zinger to Howard. He replied that:
“I think it’s flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced.
“I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is Mr Howard has deployed 1,400, so if he is (ready) to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq.”
“Otherwise it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric,”
How true! Not many Australians have seen it in that way before. Thanks Obama for highlighting the fact that despite all of Howard’s bravado and rhetorics about being in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and fighting the good fight against the evil dudes in the world with his sheriff Bush, Howard has only sent 1400, mostly non-combat troops to Iraq. Howard replied that given Australia’s small population, that was already significant.
Not true. The USA, with a population of 300 million, has sent 160,000 troops into combat. That is 0.053% of its population. And Australia? 1400 out of 20 million is 0.007% of its population. That’s still much less than the US’s deployment, relative to both country’s respective populations.
Unlike both Bush and the UK’s Tony Blair, John Howard has not been hurt so far, politically, by the Iraqi War. This was because of Australia’s relatively tiny deployment and his great luck that none of them has died in combat yet. Hence the reason why he still plays up his war alliance with Bush to up his political support.
Obama: 1
Rudd: 1
Howard: 0
I wouldn’t say Howard necessarily jeopardized US-Australia relationships: Obama’s victory is far from certain. In fact, the main charm of his candidacy is that he’s above politics. And that’s being eroded on a daily basis - that this for example: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama19dec12,1,3949467.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
As it gets closer to the 2008 elections, surely more stories like this would come to the fore.
Furthermore, the Democratic party has a certain tendency more often than not in not choosing an early front-runner as its candidate (take John Kerry for example, who was clearly behind Howard Dean in 2003).
But still, even if Obama’s presidency is a given - wouldn’t aping whatever the American President says and does necessarily make Howard’s Australia truly America’s lapdog? If anything, Howard ought to be praised for supporting America on a principled basis, not because they’re big, bad and powerful.
While I agree with Bush being inept, it doesn’t make the withdrawal a good thing (that line of argument, BTW, is a logical fallacy).
Obama’s answer back to Howard was downright pathetic - instead of defending the policy of withdrawal, he engaged in a tu quoque fallacy - as if Howard’s attack on the policy of withdrawal was meritless considering Australia, by proportion, doesn’t contribute much in Iraq.
When Australia committed troops to Iraq, Howard didn’t have control over the Senate. Today, the war is even more unpopular than in 2003 - it would be political suicide to commit more troops especially when America, at least a few months ago, didn’t have much of a plan to victory.
But still, while withdrawal may be the flavour of the day, it is principally wrong. While it is reasonable to oppose the War on Iraq in the first place, it is completely unreasonable to see withdrawal as part and parcel of the same debate (as it is done with Democrats).
If America withdraws from Iraq a little more than a year from now, quite simply, the terrorist would win. In 1998, Osama bin Laden defended his goal to attack America directly by showing how weak it is - using American withdrawal from Lebanon and Somalia as examples.
More than that, the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government, with its new police force and army, would be completely unable to handling a simmering sectarian conflict or prevent it on becoming a full-fledge civil war. Millions more Iraqis would be killed in such a likely scenario - what for, so that less professional, American troops would die?
And that’s not discounting Iran. Quite the opposite from containing Iran geographically, a weak Iraq with an ineffectual, new Iraqi government is fresh, expansion ground for the Shi’ite theocracy.
All in all, to remove 132,000 professional troops, millions of civilian lives would be at stake - that’s hardly defensible on a moral level.
I’m not saying status quo is good, its just a helluva better than the alternative proposed.
Comment by Rajan R — February 20, 2007 @ 5:08 pm
I wouldn’t say Howard necessarily jeopardized US-Australia relationships: Obama’s victory is far from certain. In fact, the main charm of his candidacy is that he’s above politics. And that’s being eroded on a daily basis - that this for example: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama19dec12,1,3949467.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
As it gets closer to the 2008 elections, surely more stories like this would come to the fore.
Furthermore, the Democratic party has a certain tendency more often than not in not choosing an early front-runner as its candidate (take John Kerry for example, who was clearly behind Howard Dean in 2003).
But still, even if Obama’s presidency is a given - wouldn’t aping whatever the American President says and does necessarily make Howard’s Australia truly America’s lapdog? If anything, Howard ought to be praised for supporting America on a principled basis, not because they’re big, bad and powerful.
While I agree with Bush being inept, it doesn’t make the withdrawal a good thing (that line of argument, BTW, is a logical fallacy).
Obama’s answer back to Howard was downright pathetic - instead of defending the policy of withdrawal, he engaged in a tu quoque fallacy - as if Howard’s attack on the policy of withdrawal was meritless considering Australia, by proportion, doesn’t contribute much in Iraq.
When Australia committed troops to Iraq, Howard didn’t have control over the Senate. Today, the war is even more unpopular than in 2003 - it would be political suicide to commit more troops especially when America, at least a few months ago, didn’t have much of a plan to victory.
But still, while withdrawal may be the flavour of the day, it is principally wrong. While it is reasonable to oppose the War on Iraq in the first place, it is completely unreasonable to see withdrawal as part and parcel of the same debate (as it is done with Democrats).
If America withdraws from Iraq a little more than a year from now, quite simply, the terrorist would win. In 1998, Osama bin Laden defended his goal to attack America directly by showing how weak it is - using American withdrawal from Lebanon and Somalia as examples.
More than that, the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government, with its new police force and army, would be completely unable to handling a simmering sectarian conflict or prevent it on becoming a full-fledge civil war. Millions more Iraqis would be killed in such a likely scenario - what for, so that less professional, American troops would die?
And that’s not discounting Iran. Quite the opposite from containing Iran geographically, a weak Iraq with an ineffectual, new Iraqi government is fresh, expansion ground for the Shi’ite theocracy.
All in all, to remove 132,000 professional troops, millions of civilian lives would be at stake - that’s hardly defensible on a moral level.
I’m not saying status quo is good, its just a helluva better than the alternative proposed.
Comment by Rajan R — February 20, 2007 @ 5:43 pm