verging_on_random

The War On Terror

Q. Do you have a concern that if this ‘us and them’ continues that we stand the possibility of a clash of civilisations?

A. My great worry is that um eh people will not have the commitment and the resilience to keep going. We have to keep going otherwise ah we will ah run the risk of ah dropping our guard and ah paying ah very heavily for that ah failure.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1738199.htm

That was our revered Prime Minister talking on Four Corners, in a Liz Jackson interview. In which he demonstrated how well he has perfected the art of not answering the question that he’s asked (he refused five times to say if he believed there was a link between Iraq and September 11 …. sheesh even George W has admitted there wasn’t).

But my question is: what did he mean by “keep going”? Going on doing what exactly? What do we have to keep doing to avoid “dropping our guard”, that will presumably allow the Terrurists to do …. ummm …. what exactly? Let suicide bombers loose at the Melbourne Cup? Blow up Town Hall railway station? Fly planes into Australia Square?

Well I suppose there’s a small risk that loonies somewhere would like to do all those things. I’m just not sure what Howard means we have to do to “keep going” to prevent them. The things that I listed are crimes, and we rely on intelligence and police resources to protect us from crime. I haven’t heard many people suggesting that we should stop that.

But what I think our Prime Minister is on about is the War On Terror that requires us to engage in unprovoked aggression on countries on the other side of the world ….. lock up asylum seekers on god-forsaken Pacific islands …. engage in endless denigration of Muslims …. bray in shrill tones about the need to protect our “values” ….. buy tens of billions of dollars worth of tanks and ships and planes because gosh you need that kind of hardware to stop a suicide bomber …..

Yeah I think that’s what Howard means by “keep going” ….. maintain this bullshit line that we’re “at war” so anybody who criticises the government’s “war plan” is soft on terror and pretty much a damn traitor.

We’re lucky to have such a strong, far-sighted leader in these troubled times (yes that was sarcasm).