Uncle Sam's the ideal mate

IN a hole in the ground skulked a terrorist, to update Tolkien. A hole in the ground . . . even if you call it a bunker, New York is a much nicer place to be. Or Chicago. Or Santa Fe.

Australia has behaved wisely in linking arms with the US, the world's most open, non-skulking society, in the daily journey through a suddenly more perilous world. This is less because of what the US does to subdue international terrorism than because of what America is.

It is sophisticated and dynamic, always learning and changing. Only desert yokels such as Osama bin Laden could imagine the US striking out violently and indiscriminately after the terrorist attacks on September 11.

Only yokels would believe Afghanistan impregnable because the Soviet Union found it so – when the US aided the defenders. What have the Americans learned from the Russian experience? Everything, I'd guess.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld epitomised American sophistication when he spoke this week of his Government's objective: to create worldwide, over time, through a variety of means – intelligence, diplomacy, money-tracking and measured military assault – "a climate inhospitable to terrorism". President George W. Bush expected this to be achieved through "the patient accumulation of successes".

William Safire of The New York Times reflected the sophisticated level of current public discourse in the US when he wrote that the war on terrorism may prove in the long run also to be "a war of Islamic liberation", freeing Muslims from fear of extremists oppressing them.

The US's record of cool pragmatism with former enemies – Japan, for notable instance – makes this plausible.

America is brave. It rebounded against Japan after Pearl Harbor, stood firm during 40 years of the Cold War. I lived in New York during the Cuban missile crisis. No panic showed in a city up for nuclear annihilation. "Flee! Flee! The Cubans are coming!" was an ironic graffiti of the time.

The US is phenomenally rich. Critics claim it bought the support of some Islamic regimes. If so, lucky the US could afford it.

American wealth will do most to provide for millions of Afghan refugees, internal and external, in the coming winter.

Congress has voted $US50 billion for the war on terrorism. How much more will it cost? As much as American workers choose to put up.

In easy times, their supervision of public spending was as lax as airport security. But customary tolerance of waste and thievery will have ended on September 11. New stringency will make affordable whatever it takes.

Bin Laden betrayed more of his hole-in-the-ground yokelism when he boasted on video about the destruction of America's "greatest buildings".

Attempting to break the US by destroying buildings is basically unsound strategy. Rebuilding even wrecked cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, is a tradition.

Anyway, Americans never considered the two nondescript skyscrapers in the New York financial district national institutions. Unlike bin Laden, I can think of a dozen they value more.

The institution to which Americans are most devoted is the constitution that specifies their freedoms. I have heard speculation here that the terrorist hit on New York may have had its strongest effect – ahead even of the economic impact – on personal liberty. Won't Americans have to accept authoritarianism in order to preserve their security?

Nobody tuning into American debate could believe this. Bob Novak, a genial syndicated needler, even reproved Bush for letting his protectors close off too many streets around the White House too often.

Maureen Dowd stirringly declared: "Especially when we are a target, we should not suppress the very thing that makes our foul enemies crazed with twisted envy – our heady . . . clash of ideas."

The US is the ultimate clever country, not only because of the incessant intellectual combat to which Dowd refers but because of an education system structured to escort the truly talented, from all backgrounds, through to the treasuries of learning at its great universities.

The system has given the US, with much else, dynamic technological progress. This includes armaments, communications and surveillance systems. One can take for granted that Gulf War gadgetry is obsolete.

The US, above all, is a society that treats each life as precious. It mourns as a nation a single soldier perishing. Not the collapsing New York skyscrapers but the individuals dying in the ruins stirred American emotions.

Only once in its history did the US advance ideology over the individual. Succumbing to the heresy of white supremacy was painful and costly, and America's retreat from it has been dynamic.

For the best part of the past century, the US has maintained reverence for the individual while Marxism and fascism, warped eugenics and distorted religious belief consigned millions to the furnace.

Theirs is a philosophy – which, happily, we share – that is worth fighting for. The only one, really.

More than friends, more than allies, the US and Australia are family. Australia may not be the most powerful or richest ally America could have in this war, but along with the UK, you will be hard pressed to find a better one.

Together, we've got a huge task ahead of us.

Let's roll!

Are you kidding? I would stand with an Aussie at my back any day. Those are tough, loyal, hard fighting folks.

Sure glad they're on our side.

Great post.

Great to have our southern cousins standing by us.

What an uplifting piece of writing! Yup, the UK and Australia are indeed family, as is Canada (despite occasionally screwy politics).

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