Australia and Abu Ghraib

by Kieran Healy on June 1, 2004

John Howard’s government “gets sucked further in”:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/31/1085855502334.html to the Iraqi torture scandal. The Defence Department is found to have been aware of the Red Cross’s documenting of torture “much earlier”:http://southerlybuster.blogspot.com/2004/06/defence-chiefs-come-clean-on-abuse.html than previously believed. “Howard insists”:http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9714293%255E28102,00.html that he only learned about the abuses in April and claims to have been “misinformed by the defence department”:http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1120503.htm. Senior civil servants at the Defence department seems to be taking the flak. “Tim Dunlop”:http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/002400.php has more.

So does Howard bear any responsibility or is it just that no-one tells him anything? Though they wouldn’t like to admit it, in many respects Australians have a self-image very similar to that of Americans — they take the same pride in being down-to-earth, straight-talking types. It’s the legacy of a frontier country. A No-BS image is prone to its own distinctive kind of bullshit, but Australian politics does have more of a social-democratic conscience than America and less religiously-inspired self-righteousness. So we’ll see whether they put up with this.

{ 12 comments }

1

derrida derider 06.01.04 at 12:57 pm

No doubt these are the same senior people who forgot to tell him that the children overboard photos were fake. Mr Howard’s civil servants seem to have a bad case of selective negligence.

Why would anyone give this PM the benefit of any doubt?

2

Dan 06.01.04 at 1:06 pm

Australian politics does have more of a social-democratic conscience than America and less religiously-inspired self-righteousness

I’ll give you the second point, but I’m not sure about the first … I’m struggling at the moment to identify any conscience, social-democratic or otherwise, in Australian politics.

3

Alan 06.01.04 at 1:58 pm

The current Australian Government got away with the murder of hundreds of women and children on SIEV-X.

Why wouldn’t they get away with the relatively minor infraction of remaining silent when they knew some Americans were up to no good in Abu Ghraib?

4

Robert Lyman 06.01.04 at 2:58 pm

Australian politics does have more of a social-democratic conscience than America and less religiously-inspired self-righteousness

I’m delighted to see that there is no shortage of lefty-ideology-inspired self-righteousness! One would hate to see the bloody God-bothering Yanks corner the market :)

5

abb1 06.01.04 at 5:40 pm

I’m struggling at the moment to identify any conscience, social-democratic or otherwise, in Australian politics.

She’ll be right, mate.

6

NeoDude 06.01.04 at 5:56 pm

Hey, we (the U.S) invented democracy!
By the sweat of our brow, by God!

7

sennoma 06.01.04 at 6:12 pm

Australian politics does have more of a social-democratic conscience than America and less religiously-inspired self-righteousness. So we’ll see whether they put up with this.

Having moved here (Portland OR) a couple of years ago, after thirty-mumble years in Aus, I agree with dan above: I’ll grant you the lower degree of Invisible Friend Foolishness in Aus, but I don’t see a lot of social-democrat anything, much less conscience, in Australia. As for whether they’ll put up with it: they will. There will be barely a peep, and it will do zero political damage to Howard. The same maladjusted majority that elected him on the strength of his race politics will see to that.

8

Giles 06.01.04 at 7:10 pm

Given that the US army had detailed the abuses abck in January, I cant see what relevance a Red Cross report in April has?

Maybe you could let us know.

9

John Quiggin 06.01.04 at 9:44 pm

The Red Cross report was October 03, but thanks to precedents mentioned above, those in the Defence Department who received it did not pass it on to their superiors, thereby preserving Howard’s plausible deniability on the matter. As usual, this is “who knew what, and when did they know it” story.

It appears likely that all these lies will finally catch up with Howard at the next election, but I can’t say I’m as confident as I’d like to be.

10

Giles 06.01.04 at 11:10 pm

“this is “who knew what, and when did they know it” story”

But I still can’t see what is the point of this story – even if Howard was told about this – why should this have been any serious concern of his?

11

mab 06.03.04 at 4:19 am

Last night’s news here in Australia reported Howard’s approval ratings had just shot up. Go figure.

12

ChrisPer 06.03.04 at 4:34 am

This is SO silly. Australian politics is like the Idaho league of the lib-con gotcha game. Australia’s chattering classes, left and right, are captive to the same bullshit that much of the educated western world is. Our religiously-inspired self-righteous bullshit is basically the anti-racist, anti-conservative, green religious ideas that we think ‘nice people ought to hold’.

Howard is a real twister, taking no responsibility time and again because ‘he wasn’t told’ at the time. Deniability is his watchword.

BUT it seems to me that this is a result of the decades of abuse poured over him by the self-righteous ‘socially conscienced’ left and media. He doesn’t give a F*** what they think, he plays it as he sees it.

I would LOVE to see him taken down by a massive landslide.

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