Its been a while (even the whole interface's changed!).
Might blog a bit after exams, or more likely, during procrastination period prior to exams.
Anyway, thought I'd share this opinion piece since I quite agree with it (I don't think its political propaganda).
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Alone, a peaceful Iraq is just wishful thinking
LABOR must think the Government is politically vulnerable on Iraq, otherwise Kim Beazley would not be making such a fuss about it in Parliament. Still, for someone so proud of his defence background, there is little reason to think he has judged Iraq any better than Mark Latham or that he has better national security credentials.
The problem with Beazley's "troops out now" policy is that it would almost certainly make a difficult situation worse. It would give a worldwide boost to Islamic fundamentalism. It would inflame tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. It would put Israel's security at much greater risk. It would send a message to everyone that terrorism works.
Withdrawing Australian troops would say "you're on your own" to the Americans and the British. Withdrawing all foreign troops would say "you're on your own" to the Iraqis fighting for democratic pluralism in the part of the world where that struggle is hardest and most necessary.
Today's problems don't necessarily mean it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 or that it is right to withdraw Australian troops now. Saddam was "seriously evil", as Kevin Rudd said in 2002.
As Beazley declared then, Saddam "unquestionably" had the capacity to do serious harm with the chemical weapons he had used against Iran and his own people. The only way it can be maintained that Iraq should have been left under Saddam is to maintain that keeping order in such a country required a genocidal monster.
In any event, there has to be a limit to recriminations over a past that cannot be undone. It might have been better if the UN had backed the allied invasion. It might have been better if the Iraqi army and public service had not been largely disbanded. Even so, the key question is not what might more usefully have been done then but what can most usefully be done now.
Does anyone really believe that al-Qaeda would convert to peaceful co-existence or that extremists would stop suicide-bombing fellow Muslims if only Anglo-American forces left Iraq? No one claims a troop pullout would help in Afghanistan, a country no less racked by religious and tribal tensions and beset with Islamic terrorism. How can military engagement be so right in Afghanistan but so wrong in Iraq?
Strategists and security experts should certainly consider better ways to defeat the insurgency, including more effective use of Iraqi forces. Still, no one should pretend (as Beazley seems to think) that aid workers could reasonably substitute for soldiers in Iraq's life-or-death struggle.
It is impossible not to be dismayed by the carnage in Baghdad. That's why the West's enemies are so determined to create it. It is important not to give the Islamist warlords any more grounds for thinking that democracies have no stomach for a fight that involves casualties. Otherwise, they will try to kill as many people as they can in the hope that voters in the US and its allies conclude that nothing is worth such pain.
Perhaps the most telling contribution to last week's parliamentary debate was Alexander Downer's quotation from Orwell that "the quickest way to end a war is to lose it". It would be unfair to accuse Beazley and Rudd of being indifferent to the outcome of this war. Instead, they seem to think it is possible to win a war without waging one.
This is another example of Beazley's addiction to wishful thinking and willing the end but rejecting the means to bring it about. Wilful blindness on this scale is unlikely to make Australians safer or to persuade them that Labor can ever be trusted with national defence.
Beazley's notion that leaving Iraq to its own devices will lead warring factions to settle their differences peacefully is just not plausible. A more likely scenario is an explosion of violence in the short term with the ultimate possibility of a Taliban-style government even more effective than the former Afghan regime at exporting Islamic fundamentalism.
"Staying the course" does not mean that nothing should change. Certainly, any expectation that Iraqi democrats can easily meet the challenges of terrorism and sectarianism is wrong. Building a stable and pluralist Iraq will be demanding, dangerous and full of false dawns but no one has come up with a respectable alternative policy.
No one wants Australian forces to stay longer than the security situation requires. Bringing them home any sooner would be a betrayal of the Iraqi people and an abandonment of our own best principles.
Tony Abbott is the federal Minister for Health.
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From the SMH, Oct 25.
