Debate between American and Australian about the War against Fanatical Islam

I'm republishing this debate as a result of Obama's cravenly and strategically foolish action to withdraw from Afghanistan without securing the country from future attacks by the Taliban and preventing its fall into the net of radical Islam.

American says,

For those who think we need to redouble our efforts to "win" the war in Afghanistan, I take it they mean we need to do whatever it takes, militarily and financially, to build a stable Afghan state run headed by a secure and US-friendly government. I have two problems with this idea. First, I tend to doubt that the US has the wherewithal to accomplish such a goal in such a rugged, decentralized and forbidding country - no matter how much our surge surges. The whole idea seems fantastical.

Second, I don't see how even achieving this fantastical aim would really help with the Al Qaeda issue, since I find it hard to believe that any Afghan government that we can realistically imagine taking shape will have the capacity to prevent Al Qaeda elements from gathering in remote locations and forming bases. As a basis for comparison, can we realistically imagine an Afghan government with even half the capacity of a state like Pakistan? Hardly. And yet Pakistan itself is not in control of large swaths of its country. Pursuing the quixotic state-building plans of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is a distraction from the methods that actually work.

My understanding is that we have been engaged in a global campaign against jihadist terrorism for several years now, and the main practical method is to rely on intelligence to stay one step ahead of the folks who actually pose a threat, and then disrupt their efforts, kill their leaders and interdict their operations. We're probably going to have to keep doing that sort of thing for quite some time, just as the effort against organized crime in the US never really ends. If Al Qaeda cadres build some kind of training base in Afghanistan, we go in and blow it up. If they build another one, we blow that one up too. We use predators and covert methods. The same is true of al Qaeda redoubts in Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen, right? We are going to have to do this no matter what kind of government we get in Kabul.

I can't believe that at this late date American political leaders and opinion leaders are still deluded by the theory that the chief enabling cause of terrorism is "state sponsorship", and so that our aim is to manufacture strong states where none exist now. This seems wrong-headed to me. I've used this analogy before, but the militant jihadist movement seems something like the anarchist movement of a century ago. Parts of that movement were violent. Was the solution some sort of state-building process in Europe and the United States? No. There were already strong states in Europe and the US. But it is of the nature of terrorist groups to slip between the cracks in the sovereign power of states.

Anarchist terrorism was basically a law and order problem. The idea was just to stay ahead of the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, and outlast the movement as its ideological fervor gradually dissipated and it burned itself out.

We should never have gotten involved in state building in Afghanistan. Now we have a generation of American leaders who are invested in that project, and see their personal honor and the national honor as riding on its very unlikely success. They need to get real.

Australian says,

Ben Katcher’s intellectually malodorous, and disingenuous, argument has reached the other shores of the Pacific. While he claims that “pouring more troops...into Afghanistan means fewer resources to pursue our other national security objectives across the globe,” he does not mention any of them by name other than the economic crisis mentioned by Dennis Blair. Hence his statement that “strategy is about priorities and trade-offs,” while true in general, is a contrived fiction when he applies it to international terrorism since these other priorities remain nameless. The reason why he does not name them is that if he had identified these priorities and contrasted them with the priority of global terror he would embarrass himself for being ludicrous.

Dan Kervick’s paragraph that contains “we use predators and covert methods,” which incidentally is an idea that I suggested myself too eight years ago, is very interesting although he contradicts himself further down on his post when he contrasts present terror with anarchist terror in the past and says for the latter that it “was basically a law and order problem,” which he first ventilated in a riposte to me on TWN three years ago. Surely, Kervick, who has learnt his logic by sitting in the spacious intellectual laps of Hume and Russel, could not cogently argue that “predators and covert methods” fall in the ambience of “law and order.”

American says,

Kotzabasis says:

"Surely, Kervick, who has learnt his logic by sitting in the spacious intellectual laps of Hume and Russel, could not cogently argue that “predators and covert methods” fall within the ambience of “law and order.”"

I do. When I say that terrorism is a law and order problem, I don't mean that the only tools to be used are the methods of the criminal justice system. Those latter tools have proven effective in many cases, including operations interdicted in the UK and Canada. But given the limits of applying these tools across borders and inside rugged countries, sometimes more aggressive means must be employed. What I mean is that terrorism is fundamentally a problem of a limited number of militant "outlaws", and that the strategy for addressing it should focus on that fact, rather than be distracted by extravagant projects for state improvement and state overhaul.

What I am most skeptical of is the idea that the problem of terrorism is a conventional military problem that calls for the use of conventional military operations - in the form of armies, invasions and occupations - against either states or sub-national "armies". And I am especially skeptical of the idea that the way to address the problem of terrorism is to launch massive - and generally very unrealistic - state-building operations in the hope that some day the dangerous backward parts of the world will be filled with well-functioning and capable states that will be able to suppress all of the militants operating inside their territories.

There are other means that need to be used as well, including denying the terrorists the ideological foothold that multiplies their influence and capability. That means not doing so many things that provide evidence of the very charges the terrorists make. To counter jihadist charges that the United States is hostile to the interests of Arabs and Muslims across the world the United States should stop behaving as if it is indeed universally hostile to the interests of Arabs and Muslims.

Australian says,

Kervick says:

"When I say that terrorism is a law and order problem, I don't mean that the only tools to be used are the methods of the criminal justice system."

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

American says,

C-G Kotzabasis,

I'm talking about the hearts and minds issue. There is a hard core of dyed-in-the-wool militant jihadists with an uncompromising Salafist ideology. They are not going to be swayed by US public diplomacy, or by forseeable changes in US policy. They can only be dealt with forcibly. They must either be captured or killed, and their plans must be disrupted.

But the hard core is surrounded by concentric circles of people who are associated with the hard core by various degrees of fellow-travelling or sympathizing or onlooking. The extent to which the jihadists are able to expand their movement to get material or moral assistance from people in the out rings depends on how well their message resonates.

In my view, the jihadists have been the beneficiaries in recent years of a number of wrong-headed US policies that help their message resonate strongly. If hundreds of innocent people in Gaza have their lives snuffed out in an over-the-top Israeli attack, some as a result of deliberate crimes, with nary a peep from the US Congress, then when your friendly neighborhood jihadist says, "Muslims lives mean nothing to the Americans," that message is going to get much more play on the street than it would if the US Congress had stepped up and condemned the excessive use of force.

Australian says,

Dan Kervick,

Certainly the “hearts and minds issue” is a core issue. But the “concentric circles of people,” will not be influenced by US Congress pronouncements and condemnations, in this case of Israeli actions, if they perceive, which they will, that this change of American policy arises from the weakness of the latter and from the strength of the “hard core” “militant jihadists” in their war with the US. The concentric circles of support for the militants will only disappear by depriving the latter of the ‘aura’ of being seen as the victors (The ethos of Arab pride trumps all.) against the American hegemon. And that entails the imminent and decisive defeat of the militants in the field of battle, as it happened in Iraq to the Sadrist militias and al Qaeda.

Furthermore, your concentrated reasoning loses its force if your policy contains these two incongruous parts: The first one will destroy by predators and covert operations (Which will be seen in the Muslim world as American excesses) the incubators of “Salafist ideology”, which are the madrassas, while the second, will denounce American and Israeli excesses. Do you seriously believe that such denunciation will have greater influence upon fellow-travellers and sympathisers, than the destruction of the madrassas in which many civilians will be killed, and will win their hearts and minds?

Join the debate

War on Terror not a Crusade but an Existential Necessity

Reply to New York Times Editorial and to Washington Note

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The Times contention is fatuous: That the President and his advisers ‘knew or should have known [the intelligence] to be faulty’. But if this should be so, it should also apply to all the other leaders of the West who also believed this faulty intelligence.

‘Quick points’ are bound to be thoughtless.

Clemons, of The Washington Note, as often he does on this issue, revises the facts to make his own tailor made argument. The war in Iraq did not aim in “removing a bad leader” but in preventing a future coupling of Saddam’s regime with terrorists. The war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11 was not a “crusade” but an existential necessity. And for Clemons to countervail Bush’s “emotional war” with his “emotional peace”, shows him to be strategically and historically irrelevant.

And he still refuses to acknowledge Iraq’s great potential of becoming a Democratic state in the region. It’s a perfect example of personal weakness trumping reality.

Romantics on Politics and War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Just one example, was it “hate and anger’ that drove the war against the Nazi axis? To place all wars under the rubric of “hate and anger,” and to misinterpret Clausewitz like you do, is doltishly foolish. But in the end for leftists and centre left inclined like Steve Clemons, empirical reality is spurned by pure, noumenal politics. The heart stands in moral judgment over the intellect. Facts do not stand in cognitive judgment over romantic ideas.

Afghanistan has Become Harder to Win but not Impossible

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Pessimism comes from the passions, optimism from the will”. Taro Aso, Prime Minister of Japan.

The author is right to excavate the wisdom of Thucydides from the ruins of the Peloponnesian war. But the profound insights and political fecundity of Thucydides can be used in variable ways and historical contexts. For example, on the issue of preemptive strike he said, “It was... praiseworthy to get one’s blow in first against someone who was going to do wrong.” Thus Afghanistan, as one could consider its military ‘denizens’ as a great threat to the West that must be prevented.

Moreover, the quote from Thucydides is incongruous to his own assessment of the war in Afghanistan as his estimation clearly was at the time not that the Taliban could not be defeated and “kept under”, but the failure of the defeat laid in political and military mistakes. He states that “the time for pacifying Afghanistan was when the Taliban fled into the hills or went to ground after our 2001 invasion...and broken the feudal warlords with the full force of the world behind us.”

Hence the author clearly places the blame for not accomplishing the defeat of the Taliban on the political and military errors of the Bush administration and not that on a new “Petraeus template”--although he himself at least in the past believed otherwise--applied in Afghanistan victory will continue to be elusive and unachievable. If the Petraeus new strategy In Afghanistan involves the correction of past political and military mistakes, as it was done in Iraq, and some sort of unity among the provincial warlords based on common interests against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then victory against the latter is more than possible.

Sentimentalist Wailing of an Australian Barrister about Preemptive War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Adherence to the international rule of law,” to quote Tynan who studied international law, when one has fanatic enemies who are continuously in blatant breach of these laws and are determined to destroy them? What kind of sentimentalism is Daniel Tynan a votary of?

Obama’s conspicuous silence and quibbling about “pre-emptive self-defence,” as his above quote shows ( He stated when asked about Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war that “we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other people and other countries.”), might be the result that he too believes , or at least his closest military advisers, but it’s impolitic for him to admit it, that Bush’s doctrine is the most pragmatic one against the kind of enemy one is encountering.

NO HALF MEASURES: PLAN TO WIN THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
By Con George-Kotzabasis

Unlike the evolution of species from an imperfect state to a more advanced one the evolution of war, as a result of the huge increase in the fire-power of armaments and lethal military techniques, in reverse, is a development for the worst. Throughout history the lessons of military confrontations have pellucidly shown that when a state decides to don the panoply of war against irreconcilable and implacable enemies, it’s by the worst means and methods that one can defeat such foes. The military forces and the armaments that a state has at its disposal have to be used disproportionately and relentlessly against the “strength” of its enemy and defeat the latter by nipping him in-the-bud and hence preventing him from becoming stronger. In the few instances when force was not used disproportionally against a “budding” foe--an exemplary late demonstration of this was the Vietnam War when U.S. strategists instead of using a force de frappe against the Vietcong and destroying them while they were still weak they used the fallacious strategy of escalation to their doom—the war, if it was won, was waged at an astronomical cost in military personnel and materiel as well as at an enormous number of civilian casualties and refugees.

It’s for this reason that a compellingly victorious strategy against the Taliban dictates that the US and its NATO allies deployed in Afghanistan must use their powerful armaments up to the hilt, as well as all the techniques of covert and clandestine operations of their Special Forces. The only powerful armaments they should keep in reserve are tactical nuclear weapons, which would only be used as a last resort, if conventional weapons are found to be wanting in destroying a fanatical unyielding enemy who considers himself of implementing the agenda of God.

Moreover, since the contour of the war against the Taliban is not separated by Maginot lines and is by its nature a borderless war which the enemy by crossing the border of a neighbourly country uses it as a safe haven and replenishment ground for its forces, it would be doltishly foolish and strategically illogical and contradictory for the US forces and its allies to stop the chase of the Taliban at the border, in our case, of Pakistan, all in the name of respecting the national sovereignty of the latter when the Taliban already flagrantly and brazenly violated. In such war it would be the ultimate inanity and an abiding tragedy for one party in a deadly conflict to “piously” abide to international conventions and treaties while the opposing party “sacrilegiously” violates. It would be like Don Quixote fighting Genghis Khan. And an abiding tragedy as an outcome of an unnecessarily prolonged war which so voraciously feeds itself on civilian casualties from the fact that the Taliban and al-Qaeda use civilians, and indeed, relatives and their own families, as human shields. When the war could potentially have been shortened and the tragic circumstances of its people involved as bystanders ended if the US military combined with its Pakistani counterpart could attack and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their safe havens and replenishing and recruiting grounds.

US strategists are of course aware that to allow “Cambodian Sanctuaries” on the soil of Pakistan for al-Qaeda and the Taliban would be militarily the penultimate foolishness. And the ultimate foolishness would be not to destroy these sanctuaries either by overt or covert operations. Fortunately we have already seen that the Americans are desisting from making the strategic mistakes of Vietnam and a shift in their strategy as pilotless drones and Special Forces units are bombing and making incursions into Pakistan in search and destroy operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.

Inevitably this has engendered nationalistic anger and ire among sections of the Pakistan government and many of its people against the incursion of US forces in their country which they consider to be a violation of the sovereignty of their nation. One however can argue that this “violation” on the part of the US would not have occurred if the primary violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty had not already being perpetrated by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Further, the inability of Pakistan, either due to a political unwillingness or military incapacity, to stop these initial violators of its sovereignty made it perforce a task for its allies against terror, i.e., the Americans, to perform. The leadership in Islamabad must be reminded of these facts and their inevitable flow into a “strategic dam’ that first will stem the current of the Taliban into Pakistan in violation of its borders, and secondly, will lead to the defeat of its enemies by depriving the latter their sanctuaries and thus achieving the goal of the Pakistan-American alliance against terror. Further allies in a war cannot logically violate each other’s sovereignty as their mutual aim is to destroy their enemy wherever the latter deploys his forces. And this is exactly what the Americans are doing by chasing the Taliban across the border of Afghanistan.

Once the Taliban and al-Qaeda are deprived of their sanctuary in Pakistan and the Americans and their allies block this strategically deadly exit-and-entry of their enemy from and into the soil of Afghanistan that will ease the defeat of the Taliban and their sundry jihadists. And the ‘beheading’ of the latter will be executed mainly by the Afghans themselves if the American strategists and their allies adopt the following strategy that is to be formulated below.

To Clausewitz, the master in matters of war the following was axiomatic: That the success of a war depends on the unison of the natural resources of a nation with the existence of its people. It’s this coupling that engenders the determination of a people to protect this vital natural wealth of a country from being appropriated by their enemies. In Afghanistan opium is the primary natural resource of the country. Ninety-three percent of opiates on the world market originate in Afghanistan at a value of $4 billion. It’s well known that the drug industry has major linkages with local administration as well as high levels of the national government. Also, the Taliban controls substantial parts of its production with which it funds its war against the Karzai government and its American, Australian and European allies.

It’s imperative therefore that the Afghanistan government turns off the faucet of opium and dry up the thirst of the Taliban to continue the war. More importantly, to use opium as a strategic weapon that will deal the Taliban a coup d’eclat from which it will never recover. To accomplish the complete defeat of the Taliban the Karzai government should as soon as it’s possible nationalize the production of opium and promptly make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan equity holders of the national consortium of opium production. As the tribal chiefs have been for aeons the shepherds of their people the profits that will be allocated to them will spread among their tribes. Hence every Afghan will have a vested interest to protect this economic benefit from being stolen by the Taliban bandits or any foreigners. Further, it will enhance the status of the tribal chiefs among their people and solidify their political and social power which has been for years their goal.

Hence with this stratagem the central government in Kabul will mobilize all Afghans through their tribal elders in a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda that will lead to the total defeat of the latter. And it will build the foundations of a federal democratic structure in Afghanistan without impinging on the historically proud status of the tribal leaders’ independence that has been for hundreds of years the apple of discord and has fomented internecine warfare between the tribes. It’s for the Americans and their allies to persuade the Karzai government to nationalize the production of opium and turn it into the utmost political and military weapon that will decisively decimate the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

The Positive Turnaround of Iraq is a Negative to Liberals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s mind “doodling” to see people with apparently political nous and historical imagination to make Iraq into a negative in this argument. A lost cause prior to the Surge that was “miraculously” turned into victory is considered to be a negative?

The strength of a nation, as of a person, lies not in being immune from making mistakes but in promptly correcting these mistakes and replacing them with correct policies. And this is exactly what the Bush administration did with the new strategy of the Surge in Iraq. What kind of alchemy, what intellectual legerdemain could turn this positive fact into a negative one?

The Lamentations of Leftist Liberals on the Turn Around of the War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s hardly surprising, that people like Sameer Lalwani, Juan Cole, and so many others from the liberal unimaginative intelligentsia who have been so abysmally wrong about their prognostications of the war in Iraq, now that the war is being won are petulant and sulky and manufacture shoddy and specious arguments by invoking the indisputable evidence of the sufferings of the war such as civilians killed and refugees, to trump the real triumph of the war after the surge and the new political configuration that is dawning in Iraq auguring a bright future for all Iraqis, that could serve, moreover, as a possible model for the whole Middle East. One would have expected after the dismal military situation that U.S. troops were facing in Iraq before the surge that every American would be proud of what their forces accomplished post-surge under the capable and savant leadership of General Petraeus.

Lalwani attempts to overturn this great event with what: With the art of a conjurer. He turns the retreat of al Sadr’s militia facing decimation by American-Iraqi forces into consolidation of his forces; the attack on Iraqi recruits killing thirty-three of them by a suicide bomber is considered to be to him a show of the continued VIGOR of the insurgency; and the tragic misery and agony of the refugees is a proof to him that the war has accomplished nothing.

Lalwani, Cole, and the aureole liberal intelligentsia, have suffered their intellectual Waterloo in the argument about the war. A Waterloo in whose battle, unlike Napoleon, they were neither by disposition, mettle, and strategic sagacity ever qualified to be in.

Your opinion...

SHOOTING DOWN LATHAM'S FLIGHTS OF FOLLY

The following essay was written on December, 2003, in the midst of the electoral campaign when Mark Latham was close to dislodging John Howard from the Canberra Lodge. The essay was first published in my book titled, Unveiling the War against Terror: Fight Right War or Lose the Right to Exist, on May 9, 2004, in Melbourne.

By Con George-Kotzabasis


Mark Latham is reputed to be a man of ideas. But his ideas on the war against global terror and on Iraq, as described in his article titled, 'Reversing Australia's March of Folly,' Published in the summer issue of Defender, the journal of the Australian Defense Association, are not flying with the solid balanced wings of an eagle, but with the undulating flaps of a kite threatening to take a dangerous dive.

He fires his grapeshot against America's foreign policy, not as a result of a thoughtful strategy that would replace the presumed flawed strategy of the Americans, but as a result of the reception President Bush was given in Britain, that is, by the fervent mass demonstrations against him. Hence, the cool man of ideas deduces the flawed strategy of Bush, from this emotional heap of burning hate against America, fuelled by a politically variegated throng of old and born again socialists, communists, and anarchists, followed by the ever present caravanserai of fellow-travelers.

Could it be conceivable that Latham, the driest of economists in Labor's ranks, and an unflappable supporter of the free market and free trade, would get his afflatus, divine inspiration, for his stand against the Bush administration, from this politically and historically witless throng of anti-war protestors? Or is this a gig of a consummate dissembler, with the aim to ingratiate himself with this populist bouleversement against the U.S., and with the purpose of augmenting the value of his political stocks?

It is shown pellucidly by his own actions, although this time by the volte face of his former position, since his elevation as leader, that the latter is the leitmotif of all his outrageous and politically senseless statements, such as Bush being 'the most incompetent and dangerous President in living memory' ( If he is consistent with his own logic, then Tony Blair would also be included in this category. ), or that he would not share Australian intelligence with the U.S. Administration, - with whom would he share it, with al Qaeda? More "seriously", with the "Rainbow warriors" of the French But this poseur as keeper of the high principles of the Labor Party and of Curtin, from whom Latham proudly claims to have derived his ideological heritage, is already exposing the great fraud he is, as well as the treachery of his nature. And it will be revealed by his own actions in the near future, if not already, that the leader of the Opposition is not a man of unshakeable principles, but a political chameleon. In his insatiable greed and grab for power, he will abandon and cut adrift all his principal stands, as he is doing already, in the area of foreign policy and in his relations with the U.S. and the war in Iraq, hence proving himself to be a Shylock opportunist. He will do anything to get his pound of flesh in the leadership stakes, this time backstabbing his own principles, unlike when as mayor of Liverpool he was stabbing his colleagues' backs - but he will no longer need to do the latter, since he already rode on the obtuse-donkey backs of those who voted him in as leader.

The above is confirmed by at least two people who knew him well. The first one is a former colleague who was close to him during Latham's tenure as mayor of Liverpool. He said of him, after he called him a bastard that it's all very well for Latham to talk about climbing ladders, but he doesn't say anything about the number of backs he stabbed during his climbing. The second one is his former wife, who stated that Latham would use anyone, including his children, if this would 'enhance his public image'. And Latham himself revealed this sinister trait of using anything that would advantage his position, in his first and dramatic press conference. And in the latter I would aver, symbolically uncovered an even more sordid trait, that of the "political pimp". Flanked on his right by Kevin Rudd, another vehement and populist critic of American foreign policy, although presently with less hardened edges than his criticism had been in the past, and on his "left", by the backdrop of the stars and stripes - which only a few months before when he wrote the above- named article criticizing America, had considered "politically" to be the clothes and colors of a 'skanky ho' , to use his term for a filthy whore from another context ( This is no hyperbole. If he can describe a female journalist who criticized him as a skanky ho, why can't he describe likewise, the U.S. government which is killing women and children, as an administration of ill-repute? ). Nonetheless, he promoted his new self as a supporter of the U.S. alliance "huddled" in these clothes and colors. And with the sangfroid of a political shyster, he gave his reasons for his apostasy from his former principal stand against U.S. foreign policy, whose goal, to quote him, ‘of regime change was killing women and children in Iraq'. The magnitude of this treachery can only be explained not in his stars but in himself...

But let us revert to his article in Defender ‘...March of Folly’, which he also repudiated since his elevation as leader, claiming that when he wrote it he was not fully informed. Such admission however, has profound implications to the leadership of the nation, if he happened to be elected as the next prime minister. That on such a vital issue as national security, he launched his attack against the U.S. and criticized the Howard government, from a state of ignorance. And this ignorance is deeper and more extensive. While he was still fulminating against Bush's war on Iraq, the prestigious American magazine Weekly Standard had published a leaked memorandum written by the third in command of the Pentagon, Undersecretary Douglas Feith, which was presented to Congress, identifying 51 cases of contact between Iraqi intelligence and key and top figures of al Qaeda. Iraq not only had trained terrorists of bin Laden, but also in some cases financed his operations. The editors of the magazine designated the evidence of the memorandum as 'case closed', in regard to the links of Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda.

In view that this information was available, how is it possible that the latter was not in the pending tray of Latham's desk? And if it was, why did it not influence by a modicum his thoughts on the subject of the war? How such an insouciant, heedless and flippant attitude on his part, on such a most important issue, can vouch his credentials to be the next prime minister of this country? Latham has an imprudent tendency to brush off and dismiss events of the past, as water under the bridge, and is wont to talk about the future. He is apparently unaware, that what has happened in the past, especially for politicians, can irreversibly compromise one's future. And this unawareness reveals the caliber of his thinking.

As far as the gist of his argument about global terror, he is depressingly uninspiring and backward in his strategic thinking of how to fight terrorism and whom to have as major and steadfast allies against this great threat to the nation and to the world. He opines that Australia should fight terrorists and not states. The war on Iraq, seems to him to be a serious diversion from fighting terrorists, and weakens a country's ability of fighting them effectively. He believes and argues, that Australia should redirect its strategy and concentrate its forces in the region, 'cleaning out terrorist networks in South-East Asia' and protecting the home front from attacks. But Muslim fanatic terrorism has global dimensions, and you cannot confine it and compartmentalize it in regional ones. By definition it's a global war and one must fight it on a global terrain.

The terrorist’s attacks in Bali, Nairobi, Riyadh, and Istanbul, may have been perpetrated by local terrorists, but they were sired, fomented, and financed from outside these countries, from the global networks of al Qaeda or its affiliate bodies. That is why it's a stupendous strategic folly to believe, as Latham does, that Australia should deploy its forces only in the region. If the protection of Australia is to be genuine and effective and not a dud, then Australia must deploy its forces not only in the region, but deploy them as well, in combination with the forces of its allies, against the mobile centers of terrorism, wherever they are, as well as against the states that support them. It's a war on two fronts, as I've been arguing for two years now. The U.S. attack on Iraq was a quintessential part of this strategy. Moreover, one has to realize, that the only country in the world that can fight and defeat global terror, is America. Countries, such as Australia, therefore, those that are targeted by this lethal foe and are serious in protecting themselves from this mortal enemy, have no other option but to ally themselves to the U.S. with the unbreakable chains of destiny.

It's the ultimate mindlessness, to denigrate and downgrade this alliance, in these most critical times, as Latham did by his intemperate and politically stolid and banal statements against the Bush administration. But such thoughtless statements reveal that Latham's tongue is on a faster track than his mental processes. It's the typical characteristic of intellectual pretenders, and of people who crave to be impressionistic. Statesmen measure their words and they're never loose cannons. It's obvious however, that with the ascension of Latham as leader of the Opposition, verbal glibness and mental flippancy will be the occupants of the leadership of the ALP. Furthermore, it's most unwise to denounce the stand of the U.S. and its war against Iraq, because mistakes and errors have been made by the planners of its strategy. In all wars errors have been made and one must not cover them up, but on the contrary, one must criticize them constructively. No less a figure than Churchill, who was the major strategic planner of the failed Gallipoli campaign, made an error, not to mention others in the First World War. But can one reasonably rebuke the alliance and its war against Germany because of these mistakes?

Tony Blair as a statesman, identified with wisdom and historical insight that the greatest threat of the twenty-first century is this 'emerging nexus of terrorists and rogue states’. That is why with acumen and courage he took a head-dive against the current of public opinion against the war. His Labor leadership caricatures here in Australia, of Crean, Rudd, and Latham, had neither the wisdom nor the courage to do the same and cowardly refused to swim against the tide of populist opinion. But they are fated to be the subject of political cartoonists and not the subject of historians on statesmanship.

History will aver and judge, Bush's, Blair's, and Howard's stand as an historic stand against this necrophilous rush of fanatic barbarians at the gate of universal freedom. Latham, as a fugitive from this historic stand, is totally unfit to lead the nation at these critical times. The Australian public must not allow themselves to be conned and be used by this treacherous political chameleon.



I rest on my oars: Your turn now