Kevin Rudd is one of the better operators on the Federal front bench. He is schooled in the black arts of foreign service speak but he is generally not given to the insipid lines of least resistance that Foreign office operatives mouth as a matter of course. Until he got to the Iraq question. On Iraq Rudd has been insipid On Insiders today he was politically dishonest.
An extract:
BARRIE CASSIDY: What would be the consequences if the United States and Britain immediately withdrew from Iraq?
KEVIN RUDD: When it comes to the situation on the ground in Iraq, of course the decisions taken by the Americans and the British are ultimately up to them. When it comes to how they are currently fighting the war in Iraq we know that that strategy is not working. It’s not just in the last 12 months that we’ve seen statements about the impact of a current military strategy in Iraq on the rise of terrorism, it goes back to at least early 2005 that this current strategy has now been deemed to be adding to the overall jihadist threat within the country and outside the strategy. That’s why we’ve been calling for some time and Kim’s been very strong on this, for a revision of the US military strategy in Iraq and in the case of Australia, our belief that we can actually provide a different form of security policy assistance.
An insipid line pushed by Phillip Adams, the ABC , Fisk and those who have had a bent against the war from the start
BARRIE CASSIDY: But that doesn’t answer the question. What would be the consequences if they immediately withdrew?
Good point and good interviewing.
KEVIN RUDD: Well the whole question comes down to the essence of a political solution here in Iraq. You see, right now, as I think Paul Kelly was explaining before, you have Shia versus Sunni, Sunni versus Shia, this is a civil war and the problem in that whole strategy right now is the absence of any effective political dimension.
What the hell does that mean. Utter drivel writ large.
BARRY CASSIDY: So you would just let them go at it, you would let them go at it in a civil war?
Barry Cassidy in good form. He gives Laurie Oakes a good run.
KEVIN RUDD: Right now, Barrie, when it comes to what decisions the United States takes about its future military presence, that’s a matter which will be determined by the Americans in Washington. What we’re concerned about is about what Australia does.
What a morally insipid view.
But right now you have a full-blown civil war and in terms of some honesty in the debate here, Mr Howard can’t even bring himself to admit the fact that there is a full- blown civil war on right now.
How does that relate to the question. Is he saying that
That is the dynamics of the politics of what’s occurring, that’s why we have in part some 50,000 Iraqi civilians lying dead, that’s why we have 100 Iraqi civilians being killed each day. So our critique is this, that when it comes to the overall strategy in Iraq, there is an absence to an effective political dimension to it and that’s where it’s horribly reminiscent of what went radically wrong in Vietnam. Even the President of the United States admitted those parallels himself in his remarks during the course of the last week.
Drivel
BARRIE CASSIDY: But Kim Beazley is saying that he would go off to the United States and tell the US Administration that this is all a folly. Doesn’t that suggest to you saying they, like Australia, ought to get out and what, leave a civil war rage on its own?
Good point.
KEVIN RUDD: What Kim Beazley is saying is that the Americans need to radically revise their strategy. That’s a view, I think, if you were listening to what Paul was saying before, is a view taking hold in Washington of late as well. There must be a radical revision of the strategy which effectively combines both a political dimension to it as well as an effective security policy dimension. But right now three-and-a-half years into the war, any credible person analysing events is calling for a fundamental re-evaluation of the strategy and a re-determination of a future course of action. You cannot simply stand back and as Mr Howard does, chant the slogan of “We’ll stay the course.” It is a slogan which Mr Howard has, not a strategy. When he talks about staying the course or cutting and running, that’s a piece of political market research given to him by Mark Texta, it’s not a strategy for the future and our point in Parliament this week is Mr Howard, define the signposts, define the goalposts, define the benchmarks against which a future withdrawal strategy should be measured. What should be the political structure of Iraq? Should it be a unified state? Should it be a functioning democracy? What level of security transfer did the Iraqi security forces should occur. On each of those question Mr Howard said “I don’t really know, oh, and by the way Iraq could divide into three conflicting political entities or I’m not sure anymore whether it should be a democracy.”
BARRIE CASSIDY: But there’s a lot of work to be done before you even get to that stage and you’re not suggesting that the United States and Britain ought to pull out at this stage?
KEVIN RUDD: The decisions to be taken by the British and the Americans are decisions taken in London and Washington. Our job in the Australian parliament is to hold this Government accountable on its three-and-half-year long strategy in Iraq.
What a load of dishonest doublespeak.
BARRIE CASSIDY: No, but more than that, you’re constantly telling John Howard that he ought to give advice to George Bush, he ought to be a good friend and tell it to him straight and up front. What would be the Labor Party’s advice? What would be the advice of a Labor Government to George Bush? Do they stay or do they go?
KEVIN RUDD: Exactly as I said before, Barrie, which is that on the question of an effective political dimension to the Iraq solution, you have to bring about a set of arrangements within Iraq whereby you have a compact between Sunni and Shia. This is what is driving the entire political insecurity –
Foreign policy goobledegook
BARRIE CASSIDY: So they stay until that’s put in place?
KEVIN RUDD: These two things have to be brought together effectively.
Simple question, utterly evasive response.
At present you have a political strategy in Iraq heading in one direction and a military strategy over here. The two have never been effectively meshed and the place is falling apart. We’ve been saying this, I’ve got to say, for more than a year. When it comes to Mr Howard’s alternative, he can’t simply sit back, as he’s done now comfortably from his armchair at Kirribilli and say “We’ll stay the course.” That’s a slogan, not a strategy.
And he should know.
He committed us to this war, we opposed this war. We were right to oppose this war. He has a fundamental responsibility to tell the Australian people what are his benchmarks for success and from him, we get sloganeering, no strategy.
BARRIE CASSIDY: I think we’ve established that at least they need to stay there for a little longer to organise an Iraq in the way you suggest. How then would you justify morally that Australia, given that Australia was there right at the beginning, how is it that Australia departs but the United States and Britain stay behind?
KEVIN RUDD: The question that we have put is how do we best provide different forms of assistance to the Iraqi people and let’s put all this into some context. You’ve got now in Iraq on the security front some 340,000 members of the Iraqi security forces who have been trained by coalition forces. You have 140,000 Americans and you have some several hundred Australians actually in country. Now what we’re saying is that we can provide different forms of security policy assistance and I’ve outlined some of those before. And on the question of impact on an American decision to stay or to go, what happened with the Japanese decision and the Italian decision? These are strong allies of the United States. When they withdrew did Mr Howard accuse them of cutting and running? Did Mr Howard accuse them of somehow compromising America’s long-term strategy in Iraq? No, he didn’t and that underlines further the politically opportunistic nature of his entire strategy which is that of a clever politician, not of a national security leader of this country. For security in Iraq, we’ve said before, we would try to provide assistance by way of providing effective training programs for their border security police in Amman in Jordan, to bolster their ability to manage their boarders properly because jihadists are flowing into that country from every direction.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You talk about Australia going in and training the Iraqis and putting aid workers in place, but that would depend, wouldn’t it, on Britain and the United States staying there to guarantee security for the aid workers?
Very good point.
KEVIN RUDD: No, that’s Mr Downer’s verballing of the policy we’ve put forward. What we have said is we would provide funding and resources on the humanitarian front to construct things as an oncology hospital in downtown Baghdad because that’s part of the battle for winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people., something which I think has been sorely lacking. Do you physically send in aid workers to deliver that in an uncertain security environment? Of course not. You take your advice according to the security circumstances at the time but you could use local Iraqi contractors for that purpose. Other forms of economic assistance and reconstruction assistance are also necessary and on the security front, that training can be provided through Amman in Jordan. All I’m saying, Barrie, is that there are other forms of security policy assistance which can be delivered to the Iraqi people but to sit back and simply say that John Howard’s strategy in Iraq three-and-a-half years on when he said our troops would be in Iraq for months not years, is in need of radical and fundamental revision and because John Howard on Iraq policy has always been a follower and never a leader, events in Washington have simply gone from underneath him which is why his policy on Iraq right is in such total disarray.
BARRIE CASSIDY: How important is it though for the United States to be able to leave Iraq and say quite convincingly they had a victory?
KEVIN RUDD: Well in terms of – this is a point Kim has often made about the importance of America’s global foreign policy prestige. See I come from a view of the world where America, minus this Iraq debacle, has been in the post war world an overwhelming force for good in the world. This has been such a radical and negative departure from the normal pattern of America’s foreign policy engagement. So we as friends and allies of the United States are enormously disturbed by the impact which this has on America’s global prestige and therefore its ability to act in other theatres. Therefore we want to see a good outcome for the Iraqi people themselves and a good outcome for American foreign policy.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Doesn’t that mean they must be able to convincingly declare victory otherwise their prestige goes down even further?
KEVIN RUDD: Declaring victory, Barrie, would be assisted enormously both in Washington and in Canberra if we had a clear cut statement from both governments as to what the benchmarks of victory are. What are the political benchmarks? The great unremarked upon development in Canberra this week is that John Howard, for the first time, I believe, even compared with events in London and Washington, said that he would be prepared to accept the breaking of the Iraqi state into three parts – a Kurdish part, a Sunni part, a Shia part. Is that now a benchmark for success for Mr Howard? If it is, is that shared in Washington and London? Nobody knows. That’s because general strategy on Iraq is in disarray and our job as a responsible Opposition is to cause this government to answer these hard questions, something they’ve ducked and weaved around now for three-and-a-half years.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Even if Australia was to withdraw from Iraq, we have troops in Afghanistan. Now if the United States, if Britain were to pull out of Iraq, surely the jihadists then would simply move to Afghanistan and confront the coalition forces there and that in turn would put the Australian forces in more danger?
KEVIN RUDD: You assume, Barrie, this is some sort of zero sum gain, it’s not. The CIA have been reporting since the beginning of 2005 that jihadists are under current strategy, the last strategy for the last 18 months or so, been trained in Iraq but also for deployment to the rest of the world. Let’s not construct some castle in the air which suggests that would occur only on the basis of some future version of the policy including a draw down of foreign forces in Iraq. When it comes to Afghanistan, the key challenge is this – how do we actually succeed in eliminating the moral basis of the entire Al Qaeda jihadist cause? Osama bin Laden, based on our most recent reports, is still alive and well and that overall headquarters of the global terrorism franchise still needs to be taken out. We’ve had a commitment in Afghanistan on a bipartisan basis from day one because that was a logical extension of the September 11 attacks. Iraq was always a complete diversion.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Do you think Iraq has strengthened Kim Beazley’s grip on the leadership?
KEVIN RUDD: Our position on Iraq hasn’t changed, you know, since we opposed the war, Kim, myself, Simon Crean, who was leader at the time, back in March of 2003. If you actually look at the statements made by all of us back then, the great thing about Labor’s position on this war is that we have argued the correct position from day one, we voted against this war in the parliament. The Government voted for this war. Had they any brains they would have actually listened to the arguments we put forward at the time. So we have had a united position, all groups within our party have had a united position when it comes to how we should approach this major event in foreign policy and that’s been the case for 3.5 years.
BARRY CASSIDY: But in the past week or so it was very much the focus in the parliament. Kim Beazley is not always John Howard’s equal in the parliament, he certainly appeared to be at times this week, do you think it’s strengthened his grip on the leadership?
KEVIN RUDD: What I was saying before is that you were assuming or I was taking a premise from your question there has somehow been a change in our position. We have always been robust in opposition of the war. Kim took the argument up against John Howard full throttle from day one right through to the end of the week and John Howard was nowhere to be found. Mr Howard and Mr Downer couldn’t wait to escape from the Parliament this week and the reason was our questions focused on Mr Howard, what is your strategy for the future of this war in Iraq? How do you propose to win the war? How do you propose to win the occupation? How do you propose to win the peace and what are the benchmarks and every time Kim posed a question to John Howard along those lines, he had nowhere to go other to cut and run to his own rhetoric and sloganeering of staying the course. That’s why Kim prevailed over Howard during this week in Parliament, that’s why Labor has prevailed over the Government on Iraq back to the events of March 2003.
BARRY CASSIDY: We’ll move on now to the South Pacific forum, do you wish the Australian delegation well as they try and improve governance in the region?
KEVIN RUDD: Well, Mr Howard has got a big challenge on his hands. There’s been a general sort of meltdown in Australia’s overall political relationships in the South Pacific and leaving the details to one side of one issue or the other, what I’m concerned about overall is a total strategic drift whereby Australia’s overall strategic position in the South Pacific has been weakened over the last 10 years and I’m concerned that over time other countries may move in to fill that void. On the governance question though, that’s a really important one because that’s the core of what Mr Downer’s been saying about the Solomons and elsewhere. Very significant couple of reports have come out in the last week by the Auditor-General’s office in Canberra and by the Auditor-General’s office in Honiara and these relate to a major Australian financial engagement with the Solomon Island’s government. Air Services Australia has been providing air services coverage for the Solomon Islands for some years now but what these audit reports point to is that $2.2 million has been paid to third parties which have been in the Australian Auditor-General’s report imprudent, non-transparent and possibly contributing to the misuse of those funds. The Solomon Island’s audit report is much harsher and speaks about the potential application of these funds for improper uses by Solomon Islands officials.
BARRY CASSIDY: But there’s no suggestion though, is there, that Australians ought to be charged in any of those audit reports?
KEVIN RUDD: No, no, to be fair to the Auditor-General report from Australia, the AFP, it seems, have looked at part of this and not recommended any criminal charges. But the key thing is this, Mr Downer or Mr Howard now goes off to the Pacific Islands Forum on the question of governance and at the same time as he’s providing public lectures on governance, we have these audit reports from two governments which now go out and say that we have this $2.2 million which has been spent, by the way, on third parties to private bank accounts, also on the question of cash advances, of credit cards and funds going for the purchase of private motor vehicles. Mr Downer has a question to answer here because he got a cable from our high commission in the Solomons on this in June of 2001, two years before this was brought under control, providing a warning that this was going on. Mr Downer’s challenge is what, Mr Downer, did you do about that warning cable and were you any more assiduous in doing your job than you were when it came to the 21 cables you got on the wheat for weapons scandal.
BARRY CASSIDY: But what you’re doing here you’re giving Prime Minister Sogavare a feather to fly with here given at the very time that demonstrably the Australian Government ought to be cracking down on them?
KEVIN RUDD: Well, the truth of the matter is, Barrie, these report documents are public documents, they’re out there. The audit report was released, I think, on Wednesday or Thursday, the Solomon Islands one in the last couple of days as well. They’re out there, they’re in the public debate. The challenge for Mr Downer is to develop a public response as to how this occurred as well. You see, we have a combined bipartisan interest in improving our overall political relationships with the South Pacific, to improve the quality of our aid program. But instead of Mr Downer simply being hairy chested and taking the megaphone to our relationships in the South Pacific, if you’re concerned about outcomes and not just feeling better about it, then the key questions to make sure that your rhetoric matches the reality and fixing up part of the mess identified by this audit report, this $2.2 million which has somehow gone astray, would be a step in the right direction.
BARRY CASSIDY: Kevin Rudd, thanks for your time this morning.
KEVIN RUDD: Thanks for having me on the program, Barrie.
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