Crikey’s Hugo Kelly reflects on the demise of NSW Liberal leader John Brogden.
Frum was on ABC Lateline a few nights ago and it was a sight to behold. Along with strategic analyst Harlan Ullman – the ABC website called the debate, “Experts discuss Iraq’s political situation” – they analysed the current quagmire in Iraq, the political process and constitution and increasing influence of Iran. Ullman is a pragmatist – he coined the military term, “Shock and Awe” – and sees issues in purely strategic terms. He’s long called for a greater US troop commitment in Iraq.
Frum, on the other hand, was flailing. Some “highlights” of his expertise:
“I know Ahmed Chalabi not well but reasonably well. He is not a perfect man. But in a country full of very, very imperfect people, I think he is and always has been our best hope as somebody who shares democratic ideals, has political effectiveness, understands the system, is committed to a united and democratic Iraq.”
“I don’t think getting out of the mess should be America’s top priority. I think fixing the mess should be our top priority. I think what everyone would agree or almost everyone, at least in this country and in this city, would be regardless of what your opinion was about the beginning of the Iraq war, Iraq is a major prize in the Middle East. The possibilities of success are very great and the danger from failure is very great. This is as close as you can get to the heart of the strategic interests of the Western World. It is essential to succeed.”
“The United States using all of the arsenal of power at its disposal, not just military means but not excluding military means, needs to begin by saying this is a regional conflict and regional players who intervene in Iraq will face consequences, there should be diplomatic pressure on the Saudis and the Jordanians, very clear warnings to the Iranians and hot pursuit across the Syrian border and air strikes in Syria if the Syrians continue to let their land be used as a base.”
So, he advocates bombing Syria, holding Iraq as the Western “major prize” – the people of Iraq are not his concern – and bringing back fraudster Chalabi as the country’s saviour.
It’s a damning indictment that one of the “experts” on Iraq is so open about his country’s imperial ambitions (though perhaps we should be grateful that they no longer hide it.) The Iraq war is lost but people like Frum are clutching onto anything that may even vaguely resemble success.
Pro-war supporters, Frum is your man. Stand proud.
UPDATE: Leading American analysts claim that the Iraq constitution falls far short of American goals. George Monbiot, meanwhile, offers some possible solutions.
UPDATE 2: Thanks to a perceptive reader for pointing out this “new” reason for invading and occupying Iraq:
“Standing against a backdrop of the imposing USS Ronald Reagan at a naval air station near San Diego, the president gave a fresh reason for American troops to continue fighting: protection of the Iraq’s vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorists.
“Bush said the Iraqi oil industry, already suffering from sabotage and lost revenues, must not fall under the control of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida forces led in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
“If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,” Bush said. “They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition.”
“A one-time oilman, Bush has rejected charges that the war in Iraq is a struggle to control the nation’s vast oil wealth. The president has avoided making links between the war and Iraq’s oil reserves, but the soaring cost of gasoline has focused attention on global petroleum sources.”
The Washington Post initially agreed to co-sponsor the event but pulled out after protests from within the paper and by anti-war groups. “As it appears that this event could become politicised, The Post has decided to honour the Washington area victims of 9/11 by making a contribution directly to the Pentagon Memorial Fund,” said Eric Grant, a Post spokesman, at the time of the paper’s pullout. “It is The Post’s practice to avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of The Post’s news coverage.” The Post’s true colours were revealed, however. Independence between the Bush administration and the media, already far-too-cosy, was shown to be worth less than displaying appropriate patriotism.
The Washington Times has now stepped in. “We offered to help with free advertising,” said Dick Amberg, general manager and vice president of the Times. “It seems like a very reasonable thing to do in terms of public service.”
No conflict of interest there at all.
Perhaps Kerry Packer’s Bulletin could buy rounds of armour-piercing ammunition for the Australian military. Or Rupert Murdoch’s Australian could fund the welcome home parade for troops returning from active duty in Iraq. How about the Sydney Morning Herald agreeing to publish free ads to recruit more cannon fodder for imperial wars?
- The Chicago Reader documents Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s desperate attempts to dump Norman Finkelstein from his academic institution. Upon the release of Finkelstein’s new book this month, Beyond Chutzpah, he’s released a statement that outlines the charges against Dershowitz, the so-called human rights defender’s slander against his Holocaust surviving mother and attempts to get his book banned. Now we know where his Australian sidekick gets all his brilliant ideas. Of course, Dershowitz failed miserably in his efforts. Finkelstein has been endorsed by Raul Hilberg, dean of the Holocaust historians.
- Today is World Blog Day, a time for bloggers to recommend blogs other readers may never have heard of. My suggestion are blogs from Bangladesh, a part of the world rarely examined in the West.
- The Scotsman reports: “A former Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. The retired officer – of assistant chief constable rank or higher – has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.”
Watch this space for more developments in the coming weeks/months.
Last Friday Crikey ran a story about a letter Federal Labor MP Michael Danby wrote to the Australian Jewish News calling on the Jewish community to boycott a book by journalist Antony Loewenstein. Today Danby responds:
Your story is headed “Danby’s silly attempt at censorship.” This is very misleading. I have made no attempt to censor Mr Antony Loewenstein, or anyone else. Mr Loewenstein is entitled to his opinions, and to publish them.
What I have done is to exercise my right to criticise his views, which I find abhorrent, and to urge people not to reward those views by buying his book. Readers are free to reject my advice.
I don’t need to read Mr Loewenstein’s book to know what he thinks. He has described himself as “a Jew who doesn’t believe in the concept of a Jewish state,” which he calls “a fundamentally undemocratic and colonialist idea from a bygone era.” He has described the Australian Jewish community as “vitriolic, bigoted, racist and downright pathetic” and as “incapable of hearing the true reality of their beloved homeland and its barbaric actions.” (These quotes appear at Mr Loewenstein’s own website.)
As a representative of mainstream, moderate Jewish opinion, who supports both Israel’s right to exist and defend itself and the right of the Palestinian people to a viable state, I find such opinions disgusting, and I did no more in my letter to the Jewish News than express that disgust. The response from the Jewish community to my comments has been overwhelmingly positive.
Finally, I am curious to know why Melbourne University Press thinks it is appropriate to be publishing two anti-Israel books at a time when Israel is making such a painful withdrawal from Gaza, when we have a new and more moderate Palestinian leadership and when the prospects for peace are improving. I can only conclude that someone at MUP has an axe to grind on this subject.
UPDATE: Phil Gomes offers insights into the latest Danby letter:
“How does Danby know how many books about Israel MUP has in development? Why is it inappropriate for a publisher to have them in the pipeline? And what do Israel’s moves in Gaza have to do with when a book is or is not published?
“Danby still has not really given us any answers or insights on any of this or the supposedly offensive questions Loewenstein originally posed to him, and continues to attack the publishers with a veiled reference of “an axe to grind” at MUP, which, in this fight, is a seriously coded term that might be interpreted as an accusation of anti-Semitism.”
Dewinter has transformed his party into a political force and reflects the increasing dislocation between the Muslim and non-Muslim population across Europe. Other parties in the country shun the group, citing racist material. Dewinter hopes the Jewish community will embrace and introduce him to the business world and legitimise his position. Is this a friend the Jewish people really want?
You be the judge:
“I’m interested in visiting Israel,” Dewinter tells Haaretz. “First of all, from a geopolitical point of view. We in Western Europe should realize that our allies are not in the Arab or Muslim world, but rather in Israel. This is not just because we have a common civilization and values, but also to balance out the Islamic forces in the Middle East that are getting stronger. The State of Israel is a sort of outpost for our Western society, an outpost of democracy, of freedom of speech, of protecting common values within a hostile environment. You are surrounded by Islamic states, some of them fundamentalist, which are interested in only one thing: to throw the Jews into the sea.
“I also think that Islam is now the No. 1 enemy not only of Europe, but of the entire free world. After communism, the greatest threat to the West is radical fundamentalist Islam. There are already 25-30 million Muslims on Europe’s soil and this becomes a threat. It’s a real Trojan horse. Thus, I think that an alliance is needed between Western Europe and the State of Israel. I think we in Western Europe are too critical of Israel and we should support Israel in its struggle to survive. I think we should support Israel more than we do because its struggle is also very important for us.”
He dismisses the far right’s association with neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism. “No, we want good relations with the Jews’”, he says. “We should distance ourselves from all of those individuals and groups with anti-Semitic tendencies and from Holocaust deniers. I have no connection with these things.”
Dewinter associates with anti-Semites, however, and the roots of the Flemish nationalist movement lie in collaboration with the Nazis.
The flag of Israel sits in his office. “You should know, the real enemies of Israel today are not on the right, but rather on the left: the socialists and the Greens,” he says. This sounds as ludicrous as Liberal Senator George Brandis who compared the Greens to the Nazis in late 2003.
Dewinter is opposed to Muslim women wearing headscarves in public – not worlds away from recent comments by local politicians – and finds multiculturalism offensive. “Multiculturalism is destroying the immune system of Europe,” he argues. “Multiculturalism and political correctness lead to extreme tolerance for everyone and everything. It destroys our ability to mount a counterattack.”
Such comments may seem like worlds away from Australia. Yet John Stone, former treasury secretary and National Party senator, was given open slather in Murdoch’s Australian in late July to call for an immediate halt to the “Muslim immigrant inflow”, the abolition of multicultural broadcaster SBS and “official multiculturalism policies [to] be abandoned outright.”
How far are Stone’s views from Dewinter? Not that far, I suspect. Our current political environment allows hard-won achievements to be questioned. Open and free debate is essential in a true democracy but criticism of Stone was muted. What kind of Australia was he imagining? If it’s anything like the “good old days”, presumably he’ll want men to only wear suits in public, abortion to be illegal and the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Australia has entered a dangerous phase in its history.
Er, no. Try a Christian state in America (and yes, the country is already very far from a secular nation).
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff’s offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.”
Brogden should resign immediately.
This is not the first time Brodgen has displayed racist tendencies. In 2004, during the Orange Grove controversy, he said this in relation to Frank Lowy: “Bob Carr is a Judas to the people of Western Sydney. He has taken his 30 pieces of silver from Westfield and they get a good deal.”
The Australian Jewish News rightly condemned the comments as alluding to anti-Jewish stereotypes.
It is amazing, however, that Brogden comes under heavy fire – deservedly, to be sure – and yet any number of Federal Liberal MPs rave on about “Australian values” and banning Muslims headscarves and it’s considered an acceptable part of civilised debate.
UPDATE: Good riddance, John.
“Sir: Let me see if I’ve got this right. I admit straight out that my grasp of the history of both Iran and Iraq is shaky, but I am relying on what I have learned this week.
“In 1953 in Iran the Brits and Yanks conspired to oust through a coup, in favour of the Shah, the secular and democratic government of Dr Moussadeq because he was going to nationalise what is now BP. (He took the odd view that it was their oil, not ours). Since the Shah imprisoned or killed off all his other opponents, by 1979 the only forces capable of organising the Iranian revolution were Ayatollah Khomeini and his mates. Result: Islamic state.
“In 2003 in Iraq, the Brits and Yanks conspired to invade in order to remove the secular though vile and tyrannical government of Saddam Hussein. The justification was that he was either dangerous or horrible; the latter was certainly true, the former has proved untrue. The objective was, in the words of George W Bush, to make Iraq “a beacon of democracy”. But it transpires that Iraqi women and probably men will be losing freedoms, not gaining them. The draft constitution hammered out, with a great deal of help from US draughtsmen, not only establishes Islam as the religion of the state but Sharia law as “a fundamental source for legislation”. Result: pre-Islamic state.
“Apart from all the usual reactions one could have – anger, despair, hysterical laughter, I told you so – I think my main conclusion is to support even more fervently the need for alternative fuels to oil. Not only for the sake of the planet, but for the sake of our moral honour.”
BARONESS SARAH LUDFORD MEP
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT EUROPEAN JUSTICE SPOKESWOMAN, LONDON N1
Spencer Ackerman, The American Prospect, September 2005, reviewing Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War by Anthony Shadid
While the Iraq quagmire continues to be routinely ignored in Australia, today’s UK Observer leads with a sadly predictable tale:
“The Foreign Office’s top official warned Downing Street that the Iraq war was fuelling Muslim extremism in Britain a year before the 7 July bombings.”
Any mention of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Iraq war were removed from “‘core scripts’ – briefing papers given to ministers to defend the government’s position on Iraq and terror.” Furthermore, many Muslims saw Britain, like America, as a “crusader state.”
The Age’s Michelle Grattan explained the local context last week:
“But until the Government acknowledges that policy heightens both resentment and the terrorism risk, it will be operating in an unreal world.”
To suggest, as does the Howard government and pro-war supporters, that hatred of the West and its foreign policy is motivated by nothing more than irrational disdain for Western “values” is delusional and dangerous.
But who actually wants to seriously examine themselves and the actions our government commits in our name?
UPDATE: In place of any kind of serious political debate on Iraq, today’s Fairfax press publishes an article about…Tony Blair’s summer holiday. Clearly an event to stop the nation.
General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991.
Let’s not forget that Powell, far from being a moderate, as many claimed during his time in the Bush administration, is in fact a man, in the words of Normon Solomon and Robert Parry, who has “learned that a military bureaucrat succeeds best by sidestepping controversy and keeping quiet when superiors screw up.” Examples include his role in the army’s cover-up of the infamous My Lai massacre, his involvement in Reagan-era war games such as the Iran/Contra affair and the covert U.S. policy in the 1980s to supply Saddam Hussein with military equipment.
UPDATE: John Pilger, December 2003:
“During the 1991 Gulf war, BBC audiences were told incessantly about “surgical strikes” so precise that war had become almost a bloodless science. [Journalist] David Dimbleby asked the US ambassador: “Isn’t it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we’ve seen, is the only potential world policeman?”
“Dimbleby, like his news colleagues, had been conned; most of the weapons had missed their military targets and killed civilians.
“In 1991, according to the Guardian, the BBC told its broadcasters to be “circumspect” about pictures of civilian death and injury. This may explain why the BBC offered us only glimpses of the horrific truth – that the Americans were systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and conducting a one-sided slaughter. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children had died in the “surgical” assault and its immediate aftermath.”
Reporters Without Borders said the arrests do “not reflect well on the United States, which nonetheless does not hesitate to give the rest of the world lessons on freedom of expression and democracy”.
A Washington Post article this week revealed that more than 40,000 people had been arrested since the March 2003 invasion.
“The population today at the three U.S.-run prisons – Bucca, Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper near the Baghdad airport, where former President Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants are being held – is 10,600, double the number of a year ago. The average incarceration at Bucca is a year. The military attributes the surge in detentions to an increase in combat operations and the inability of the nascent Iraqi justice system to handle the crushing caseload.
“Many of the freed detainees express bewilderment at why they were held; even the U.S. commander who oversees Bucca, Col. Austin Schmidt, 55, of Fairfax, estimated that one in four prisoners “perhaps were just snagged in a dragnet-type operation” or were victims of personal vendettas.
“This is like Chicago in the ’30s: You don’t like somebody, you drop a dime on them,” Schmidt said. “And by the time the Iraqi court system figures it out, they go home. But it takes a while.”
Such behaviour is perfect to instil a sense of trust in the occupation.
The delusion continued this week when Major General Douglas Lute, director of operations at US Central Command, announced that a drastic reduction in troop numbers was likely in the coming 12 months.
“You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq”, he said. “It’s very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country.”
Iraqis will no doubt be pleased to read the occupation is merely a “perception”. Furthermore, when the US does eventually withdraw some of its troops, though still maintains forces on the ground within heavily-fortified bunkers, Iraqis will feel much more comfortable in the knowledge that it’s only a “mini” occupation, rather than a full-scale one.
Allow me to include Australia’s media in discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict. The Age today treats us to an editorial about the Gaza withdrawal. Note the “logic” of this:
“Israel also announced plans to build a new police station in the West Bank and expropriate another 60 hectares to extend its anti-terrorist barrier around a large settlement, cutting the territory in half. Even a staunch friend such as the US sees this as provocative. But the suspected involvement of the dead Palestinians in a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis also highlights Palestinian responsibility for regular, murderous provocations.”
Let me get this straight. Israel brazenly flouts international law, continues settlement expansion and makes a Palestinian state all but impossible, but it’s somehow justified because of Palestinian “provocations.”
“We understand when the international media fall into the trap of the Jewish settlers and run live coverage of the evacuation,” said Mr Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Al-Qods Al-Arabi newspaper.
If the media coverage was anything like Australia – showing settlers in a great state of distress and conveniently forgetting that they had been living there illegally – Israeli propaganda did indeed win the day.
When the Sydney Morning Herald placed a crying man and his settler daughter on its front page, I wondered when a Palestinian’s grief had been equally displayed. And I knew the answer.
4. Loewenstein v Danby — Australia’s debate over Israel
By Crikey reporter Sophie Vorrath
There’s an ugly fight brewing in Australia’s Jewish community over a controversial new book by Sydney-based journalist Antony Loewenstein. Due for publication by Melbourne University Press next May, Loewenstein’s as yet unfinished, untitled book is already attracting feverish criticism for its take on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Leading the attack on the book is the federal member for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby. In a scathing letter published in Australian Jewish News this week, Danby says he wants no part in Loewenstein and MUP’s Louise Adler’s “propaganda tract,” which he said was an attack on the mainstream Australian Jewish community.
Danby said he had taken this stance after questions he got from Loewenstein made his views on the issue “blatantly obvious.”
“MUP should drop this whole disgusting project. If they proceed, I urge the Australian Jewish community, and particularly the Australian Jewish News, to treat it with dignified silence. That is our best response. If, God forbid, it is published, don’t give them a dollar. Don’t buy the book.”
So why has a book by a relatively little-known journalist that’s not even finished got Danby so fired up? And is calling for it to be boycotted appropriate behaviour for a parliamentarian?
Loewenstein told Crikey this morning it was “incredibly disappointing” that Danby would try to “dictate policy” to a publisher. It’s a matter of free speech, he said: “It should be acceptable for a Jew or anyone else to criticise Israel or any other country.”
“The attitude is ‘there’s one line and one perspective (on the Israel/Palestine conflict) and if you dare to question it then look out’,” said Loewenstein, “it’s like ‘this is a war and there’s no room for dissent’.”
MUP’s Louise Adler, who graduated from Melbourne school Mount Scopus the same year as Danby and was given “faint praise” in his letter, told Crikey the political views Michael Danby ascribed to her in the letter were “palpable nonsense and pure invention.”
Adler said she was proud of MUP’s 80-year history of independent publishing and its mandate to publish books of public interest, and “dismayed” that a publisher like AJN “gives space to proposals to boycott ideas.” Danby’s proposal, she said, was “inimical to the central Jewish values of tolerance and open debate.”
Crikey called Michael Danby for a response, but we’re still waiting for him to get back to us.
