Howard's reason for going to war with Iraq was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That reason looks thinner and thinner these days. In fact it looks downright misleading as the US finds it ever more difficult to find evidence of stockpiled Iraq WMD.

We now hear that Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, arguing that Iraq may very well have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion.. The logic gets ever more bizarre. There is a discussion here

Howard realised that the WMD argument for war was pretty thin around May, and so he shifted his justification for going to war. Liberation of an oppressed people from a brutal dictator then became the reason. All the war bloggers and journalists dutifully followed suit, swallowed the retrospective rationale without gulping, and started obediently attacking the Left for supporting a brutal dictatorship.

According to these media platoons only the right stood for freedom. The left now stood for totalitarianism. It was a very old line pulled from the Cold War archives and recycled without shame or embarrasment. All the arguments about Australia's national interest were avoided.

Remember all that? It was just before, and around the time, that the troops returned safely and everybody rejoiced in the great victory. Howard was vindicated, yet again. The master politician with the deft touch.

So the legal basis for war is now one in which a sovereign country can be invaded by Australia to save an oppressed people.

So lets invade Indonesia and set the people of Aceh and West Papua free. They are oppressed.

I'm only joking. I know that Canberra won't even put pressure on Jarkata. It wil pretend that nothing much is happening. Canberra will return to accepting the national sovereignty argument.

Don't ya just love the spin? Its all about power: keeping Howard in power.

Comments

Posted by: robv | May 29, 2003 1:42 PM

Posted by: Niall | May 30, 2003 12:13 PM

Posted by: Norman | June 1, 2003 7:09 PM