Skip to main content

Howard's shameful position on the Vietnam War

Matt Price, writing in The Australian on John Howard's position on the Vietnam War articulated whilst he was in Vietnam the other day :

"While the teeth-curling Karl Rove moment earned Kim Beazley much opprobrium and ridicule, John Howard's Ho Chi Minh City hokum - just as silly and a lot more dangerous - threatens to escape under the radar.

Asked, not unreasonably, to reflect on the Vietnam War during his visit to the country, the Prime Minister displayed the sort of knee-jerk defensiveness not often seen since Geoffrey Boycott's retirement from international cricket.

"I supported our involvement at the time and I don't intend to recant," was how the PM opened. "In public life you are accountable for the decisions that you take."

Had Howard stopped there he might have sounded half sensible - declaring his stance and resisting the temptation to rewrite history.

But the PM rattled on: "I mean, I didn't hold any position of authority then but I supported the reasons for Australia's involvement and nothing has altered my view that at the time on the assessments that were made then I took that view and I took that view properly and I don't intend to indulge this preoccupation that many have in recanting everything that they supported when they were in positions of authority."

Meanwhile, Gerard Henderson - the scribbler in Sydney who sprouts forth on everything without the breadth of intelligence to bring anything worthwhile to the discussion - on ABC Radio National's Breakfast program this morning accused US Defence Secretary McNamara and former PM Malcolm Fraser as being "self -indulgent" in apologising for the mistakes of going into the Vietnam War. According to Henderson, they can be apologetic in private but not publicly. What drivel! - and what does it say about Henderson's integrity and moral position on anything?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...
Post a Comment
Read more