verging_on_random

Making war an election issue

October 25, 2007 on 3:38 pm | In Uncategorized |

At last, somebody has asked John Howard how he feels about starting World War 3 by attacking Iran. And although one can never take anything he says at face value, his response appears to be reasonably unequivocal:

“We in Australia believe that Iran’s challenges and Iran’s transgressions should be dealt with diplomatically,” he said.

“We’re not looking at pre-emptive strikes, we’re not encouraging pre-emptive strikes, we’re against them and we want diplomacy to continue.”

It’s extremely pleasing to read that, given that a few weeks ago Brendan Nelson was doing his best to whip up anti-Iranian feeling by adopting the same dishonest tactics that the Bush Administration has been using.

This is, however, only the first step. Howard is quite capable of arguing in future that Australia should support the USA if it decides to attack Iran even though he personally would not have done it. He’s made it clear that he regards the maintenance of American global prestige as being central to Australian interests and has a proven track record of changing his position to accommodate the endless inept shifts in US foreign policy. So I hope journalists continue to press him on the issues, asking questions such as:

• Will he guarantee that no Australian military or intelligence assistance will be given to a US attack on Iran?
• Is his government making strong representations to the Bush Administration urging it to cease its bellicose posturing and make serious efforts to work co-operatively with Iran in developing an exit strategy of occupying forces from Iraq?

Questions like these are more important than interest rates or pensioners’ utility allowances or any of the other matters that are pre-occupying the media. When the US President openly talks about the possibility of World War 3, it’s time to take foreign policy very seriously indeed. Iran didn’t even rate a mention during the tedious debate last Sunday night but there’s a month of election campaign still to go. Is it too much to ask that at least one media outlet turn attention to the potential deaths of millions more people in another misguided exercise in American imperialism, and the role that Australia should play in it?