Posted on 10/08/2004 9:18:01 AM PDT by Quicksilver
Friday, October 08, 2004
COUNT ON US TODAY, BUT THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW?
The last half of that title is of course the name of the most recent Roland Emmerich film, in which the vehemently anti-American German director is able to again annihilate large sections of the United States.
But it is also the great question that is currently on the lips of every Australian man and woman. This is what I am writing about, in order to try to make some sense of what it is that we are really facing over the next 48 hours.
By training I am a political scientist and a historian, and as such, I feel that I have a fairly good grasp of both the short and long term ramifications of a Labor Party victory in Saturday's National Elections. One thing is for certain, neither is likely to be palatable should their leader, Mark Latham, assume the Prime Ministership.
Australia has a long and distinguished history of supporting our allies -- most significantly the United States and the United Kingdom -- over the last 100 years. There has always been an unspoken covenant between both the Australian Conservative Party (ironically named "The Liberal Party", in coalition with "The National Party") and the main party of the Left; the Australian Labor Party (ALP), that these alliance commitments, especially the tripartite alliance with the United States (ANZUS) would always be honoured, regardless of partisan differences.
The elections of the past have been comparatively calm, even apathetic affairs, with the choice between Liberal or Labor treated with the usual national indifference that is the hallmark of Australian Parliamentary Democracy (for example, more Australians preferred to tune in to watch "Australian Idol" than the first televised debate between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition). Voting in Australia is compulsory, but not normally a matter of passionate debate. Australians have, over the past few decades, been happy to re-elect the same incumbent in a repetitive fashion. Provided that the candidate doesn't do anything to severely displease the electorate (Francophile Former Prime Minster Paul Keating's description of Australia as the "ass-end of the world", comes to mind) or have to face a deputy-led party coup in mid-term (again, Mr Keating) newly-elected Prime Ministers can normally look forward to two terms in office, or as has been the case recently, as many as three or even four (a record previously held by only one conservative Prime Minister, now being threatened by Prime Minister John Howard).
Australians are aided in this sense of electoral lethargy by the two national broadcasters (The ABC & SBS), whose staffs are entirely drawn from the ranks of the activist left. I cannot, even if pressed and offered large sums of money, think of a single political commentator or even regular journalist on either network that is possessed of even a mildly conservative opinion. These networks have also served as leaders of the leftist media's never-ending war against the Governing Coalition Party. Not that the other free-to-air commercial television stations or the broadsheet newspapers have proven much better. Their bias is toward the populist left, and is broken only by rare guest appearances by stalwarts of the Australian right such as Tim Blair, Miranda Devine and Janet Albrechtsen. A fortunate percentage subscribe to cable television, and are thus able to access Fox News, but it is too small a number, and Fox News's focus is (understandably) American news, and news impacting primarily on America.
The hysteria that the Australian press has been whipped into, most significantly over Iraq, has radically altered the shape of the coming election. The left is always ludicrously vehement, about everything, but for the first time in Australian history, we have seen conservative "Protest Warriors" take to the streets of Sydney, openly opposing the goose-stepping minions of the trade unions, communists and various other perpetually discontented lunatic-left entities. I don't think this signals a strong new trend of the "silent majority" towards open activism, but in a country as laid-back politically as Australia, it is a shift worth continued observation.
The real importance of tomorrow's election lies in the foreign policy changes that would be instituted under the Labor Government of Mark Latham. The man who once broke a taxi-driver's arm, and ran Liverpool's (a suburb of southern Sydney) municipal council into historic levels of debt and political chaos now has an opportunity to shape Australia's place in the world. The shape it would take can be speculated upon by the remarks Mr Latham has, in the past, made about the President of the United States. "The most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory" he declared about the American President who overthrew two tyrannical regimes in a single term. Latham then went on to label his Australian conservative opponents as a "conga-line of suckholes" for having originally supported the United States in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Like Senator John Kerry, Mr Latham has prevaricated and occasionally made complete reversals of policy on what Labor would do in Government. "All the troops home by Christmas" was the original clarion call. Then it became some of the troops. Their position hasn't been clarified for some weeks, and thanks to Labor's compliant fifth columnists -- the media -- it isn't likely to be placed under any scrutiny, any time soon. But the fetid stench of appeasement wafts through the air, and it is unmistakable.
What a terrible blow to Australia this would be historically. I once sent Thomas Friedman of the New York Times an indignant email, after he had published a column claiming that America had no true ally it could count on. I pointed out to him that America has no more staunch ally than Australia; that we had willingly endured every major world conflict -- including the ones those intrepid Brits sat out -- together, and had repeatedly sent a higher percentage of our male population than even the United States itself. We have earned a reputation as a fierce and proud fighting nation, one that wars in the cause of righteousness and freedom, and has been partly responsible for the liberation of many nations, and almost entirely responsible for the recent liberation of East Timor from Indonesian oppression. To his credit Mr Friedman wrote back to me and apologised for the oversight. Recently, I was heartened to see this theme echoed by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post (who it must be said, has the advantage of an Australian wife) who wrote:
"Of all our allies in the world, which is the only one to have joined the United States in the foxhole in every war in the past 100 years? Not Britain, not Canada, certainly not France. The answer is Australia."
This is the real risk that we run as a nation. This is what we took a hundred years to earn, and in a single day, we might lose it forever. Big governments can be tolerated, tax increases endured, and all the attendant nanny-state interference coped with. But the single most important factor of this election -- Australia's conduct of foreign affairs in the War on Terrorism -- could signal the end of our place of relevance in the world. With Latham in power, we would become a closed, protectionist sneering nation, an international leftist pariah state like New Zealand, and as irrelevant on the global stage as Canada is swiftly becoming. That is by far the most serious peril that we face.
We cannot allow this to happen. The 88 Australians that died in the Bali Bombing, and the ten Australians that forever vanished amid the rubble of the World Trade Center cry out to us, and plead with us not to abandon them, to not forget them, or the lesson their deaths impart. The war on the murderers that killed a hundred children in Beslan, and thousands of our American cousins on September 11 cannot be simply walked away from. This is our fight, as much as anyone else's.
So it is with a heavy heart that I say to all our American, British, Polish and Italian friends, if Mark Latham and his party of isolationism should win tomorrow, bid us farewell, and try not to resent us our folly. Remember us for how we were, and not for how we've allowed ourselves to become.
For there are old Australians amid the new, and I swear to you, our time shall come again.
Bump.
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