The closing of Sydney Harbour Bridge traffic to allow safe passage for US vice president, Dick Cheney, to visit John Howard for lunch at Kirribilli House was a low point in our history. Closing of Sydney streets to allow safe passage for current vice president Mike Pence recently added to our shame.
Our supposed greatest ally’s representatives need protection here while the premier of our supposed potential enemy China, Li Keqiang, was allowed, and happy, to walk through open Sydney streets. There is a message here that Canberra’s neo-conservatives apparently don’t understand.
Cheney, John McCain (Sarah Palin’s Presidential running mate) and Pence are part of the US Republican Party’s Tea Party, (Pence’s curriculum vitae makes Trump’s look like that of an angel). They are all for waging war on anyone to feed their huge munitions industry.
The US is the greatest rogue state in history. The US has begun more than 20 conflicts since World War II and has regularly interfered in foreign elections – twice in Australia, opposing Gough Whitlam and Pauline Hanson. President Barack Obama was a rare exception in his term.
They have ignored the proven guilt of Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 attack on New York. The US Senate inquiry findings about the attack were a terrible embarrassment. Instead of hitting the culprit they attacked Iraq and Afghanistan.
This has fuelled the understandable hatred of the Muslim world, as their kin are incessantly bombed by “The West”, which appears set on genocide. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and the lives of millions have become a nightmare. Australia was, and is, mad to be involved.
The ramifications are frightening as Saudi Arabia pours billions of dollars into schools and mosques in neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines to teach Sharia law. Meanwhile the US is selling Saudi Arabia huge quantities of munitions.
Robert Hill, one of our more intelligent former cabinet members, has recently stated that he can see no end to the conflict and questions our involvement in sectarian Muslim wars.
The ANZUS Treaty is only an agreement to consult in the event of an attack upon one of three signatories. There is no firm commitment.
The US has more investment in Indonesia than in Australia or New Zealand. Malcolm Fraser saw reality in his last years and wrote “Dangerous Allies”. Canberra bureaucrats and their cabinet puppets would do well to read it before it is too late.
Australia learned a terrible lesson in 1942 when our supposed protector, Britain, abandoned us to the Japanese invaders at Singapore. The US will do the same. A country looks to self interest.
The Germans helped save Britain from France’s Napoleon at Waterloo. Russia and the US saved France and Britain from the Germans in World War II. There is no permanent friend when a country’s survival is at stake.
- JOHN CARTER
