Friday, July 01, 2005

Tony Jones, I covet thy job

So, last night, I'm watching Lateline, as is my want.

Big Kim and his rabble are having a go over our lack of troops in Afghanistan. They were withdrawn sometime ago, it seems. Now, this, in the same week as Mark Latham is spraying his spleen all across the nation, reminding every columnist in the country of his "Troops out by Christmas" call. There is hardly a columnist around who hasn't labelled that call daft, usually because they think that, despite the majority of this country opposing an unprovoked invasion of a distant, sovereign nation, the Australian public believe that once we're doing something, we want to stay "until the job is done" whatever that means, weasel-man. Basically it means not admitting your mistakes, as far as I am concerned. The line ran that the Australian public is too 'nuanced' (fuck off) to go for a simple line like "Troops out by Christmas"—you know, give us some respec' here—but not 'nuanced' (fuck off) enough to be able to untangle Johnny's lies, and instead kinda shrug and say, well, we're there now, Georgie-Boy needs us, so we'd better stay, because he will give us special yankee treats (read: scraps from the G8 table, like dodgy trade liberalisation pacts).

Anyway, on one side we've got Latho's "Troops out by Christmas" and on the other side we have Beaze's "More troops for Afghanistan", which, as Dolly Downer said last night, doesn't make any sense. No matter how much they try to deny it, it's a fuck up of a foreign policy, whatever their policy actually is. And I don't blame the Ol' Ruddmeister for it.

So here's the line that I think is 'nuanced' (fuck off) enough to make sense to any old bastard in the street, without dazzling them with conditional Howardisms, or offending Big Brother: Australia will support and contribute to operations conducted under the UN umbrella, no matter who is the commander—US, Australia, France, Russia, whoever. But will not contribute toor support private "coalition" missions à la GWB's latest fancies. Now that's not too hard to understand is it?

Tony Jones, I covet thy job.

As a post script: on AM this morning, I hear that some ex-servicemen have fingered the new Iranian President, one Mahdi Ahmadinejad, as a ringleader in the 1979 US embassy siege in Tehran. It has all begun again.

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