For The Byron Echo, February, 2006

In Palestine, a terrorist government, democratically elected. In Britain, consternation over a videotape of 'our boys' beating Iraqis. In Israel, the 'Lion of Judah' comatose and sinking. In Washington, Rumsfeld proclaiming 'We are losing the propaganda war'. In New York, the UN demanding Guantanamo be closed down. In Iran, an anti-Semite building nuclear weapons. In Virginia a Cheney hunting buddy falling, his hand clutching his chest.

In a list of detainees let out of Guantanamo, Osama bin Laden's bodyguard. In several countries Danish embassies burning because of a cartoon. All over the world, duly elected advocates of 'freedom' damning those who reproduce the cartoon. Vows by all governments to 'speak out' against 'irresponsible cartoonists'. In Melbourne, Leunig pilloried as an anti-Semite because of a cartoon. In Baghdad, Saddam's trial once more adjourned lest it look to the world unfair. In Samara, the Golden Mosque burning. Is 'freedom', then, winning the War on Terror? No. Are we, at last, negotiating with terrorists? Oh yes. You bet. By blaming Denmark's cartoonists and admonishing our own, we're negotiating: we don't make jokes any more, you don't burn down embassies any more. That's negotiation.

But we always negotiated with terrorists. Israel, Ireland, Algeria, Mandela's South Africa, Rabuka's Fiji, were born of such negotiations. The US broke from England by terrorist action followed by negotiation. The Catalonians last week gained a federalised independence by terrorist action, and then negotiation. Every suburban siege of a gun-wielding kidnapper is a negotiation with a terrorist. Every suburban hostage-taker asked to come out with his hands up is a terror-monger being reasoned with. Every police department has an officer trained to reason, threaten, soothe, negotiate in this way, with hostage-takers who are what else but terrorists.

What lies we secular Westerners tell. What lying swine the Islamic world must think us. There is no torture in Guantanamo. 'A few bad apples,' not Bush-Rumsfeld policy, caused Abu Ghraib. Colonel Ghadaffi, once a mad beast worth target-bombing (the raid killed two of his children), is now a good man, worth doing business with, negotiating with. And though we personally bombed him, that wasn't terrorism, oh no. That was 'pre-emptive action'. 'Shock and Awe' was not terrorism. That was 'pre-emptive action'. Saddam's WMDs exist, I show you here certain proof, my name is Colin Powell. What lies, damned lies and statistics. Now 'Condi' is threatening Iran with a war she can't deliver, and has ceased to threaten North Korea with a war she can't deliver, and still expects to be henceforth believed. She too swore the WMDs were there, and the uranium yellow cake, and she expects to be henceforth believed.

What Big Lies we tell and how stupid we must seem to the four billion people harmed by the West before now. No, no, Vaile and Howard knew nothing of bribes to foreign governments, though the Department of Trade is there for no other purpose. No, no, it's clear from the polls, no Australian cares if the biggest known bribe in world history, our three hundred million to Saddam, bought bullets to fire at Australians, or family trusts for suicide bombers who blew up Israelis. No Australian cares about such things, so long as the economy ticks over, and the stupid rich can buy university degrees the smart poor can only dream of, and bosses can grope their female employees and sack them if they resist, and high school kids can dream of jobs in call centres. With advantages like these why would we Australians care about the odd hundred million slung at Saddam Hussein, torturer of Shi'ites and gasser of Kurds? Why would we care if the Iraq we helped free from tyranny thinks we helped keep that tyrant in place and won't buy our wheat any more because of it? Why should we care if lies like these are told, and harm us as they do? We're getting used to it, surely.

Well, if we don't care any more, the two elections of March 18, when the Liberal lose on average a third of their vote in all the seats they stand for in Tasmania and South Australia will thereafter need to be skilfully explained. The true explanation is that the word 'Liberal' is now on the nose, the way the word 'democrat' came to be. And 'One Nation'. And 'Communist' and 'Ruddock' and 'Kernot' and 'Reith' and 'Latham'. The word 'Howard' is too now. Because it no longer occurs in any headline. The initials PM occur instead. Because the word 'Howard' no longer has the concept 'honesty' wrapped up in it. The concept 'habitual dissembling' has replaced it. And for him and most world leaders, the now impotent Blair, the now visibly drunken Bush, the now transparent second-rater 'Condi' (compare her with Colin Powell), the language-challenged serial killer Rumsfeld and the friendly-firing Fudd Dick Cheyney among them, the lies, the Big Lies, are coming home to roost.

So is the weird idea that killing tens of thousands of people helps things, an early Cro-Magnon concept that still animates Americans' thinking and powers their economy. Though killing on this scale did once help in wars between nations and pitched battles of ignorant armies in uniform, those wars and battles no longer occur. Nor does the need for Star Wars rockets built to knock down other Star Wars rockets in a time when atomic bombs arrive in suitcases carried by moonlight unchallenged across the Rio Grande by young men whose relatives, probably, were killed by Americans in Iraq. Killing tens of thousands of people makes hundreds of thousands of enemies, and it always did. But what is different now is that the opportunity to kill everybody doesn't exist any more. Now your enemies fly to Mexico, and walk with suitcase bombs across the Rio Grande.

I wonder which side of the enflamed religious war that is coming for sure to Iraq with burning mosques and slaughtered journalists the baffled Americans now will be on? The Shi'ites allied with the anti-Semitic nuclear bomb-builder up the road? Or the Sunnis allied with Saddam Hussein? When faced in the 1980s with a similar choice they favoured, correctly, Saddam as the secular progressive pro-feminist albeit authoritarian thug they preferred, correctly, to raving loonies.

Perhaps this great statesman could be sprung Mandela-like from his prison cell, appointed Ambassador for Internal Pacification and asked to sort out, as he has done before, a turbulent region in need of a firming guiding hand.
Do not imagine I am joking.