Me-too Rudd Labor re-commits Australia to US War Crimes

The Australian Labor Party under right-wing Kevin Rudd has achieved a huge Federal Election victory  over the war criminal, extreme right-wing  Bush-ite Coalition under John Howard (who have lost his own seat in the Federal Parliament).

Kevin Rudd is earnest, articulate, polite and an ideas-man. However he has also had to be an astute politician to have brought off this huge election victory (dubbed by wits as a Rudd-slide) with a substantially very selfish, mercenary and xenophobic electorate subject to a lifetime of neo-con brainwashing by the egregiously racist and dishonest Mainstream media (70% of city daily newspapers are owned by ex-Australian US citizen Rupert Murdoch aka the Dirty Digger, the king-maker who effectively “owns” this Antipodean ”Murdochracy”).

Kevin Rudd has been called “Me-too” Rudd because of his acceptance of so many of the conservative positions of his Bush-ite Coalition opponents. Nevertheless there were apparent differences – the Bush-ite Coalition would not sign Kyoto (Rudd will), was committed to an environmentally-damaging pulp mill in beautiful but increasingly despoiled Tasmania (Rudd ditto) and was “all the way” with war criminal Bush in continued Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (“Me-too” Rudd was only committed to the latter theatre but will retain SOME troops in Occupied Iraq).

After an election there is a week’s delay while the last votes are being counted but on Monday 3 December, 9 days after the 24 November 2007 election, Rudd’s Government will be sworn in. Rudd has gotten off the mark very quickly beforehand, declaring that his Government will have  “measurement-based” and “evidence-based” policies and that he will demand Report Cards (like at school) from his Ministers, indicating how policy is being implemented. 

I have been writing to Kevin Rudd and his colleagues for 4 years, giving them facts and figures and pleading for exactly that -  “measurement-based” and “evidence-based” policy. I am going to send Progress Report Cards to these same people in the newly-elected  Rudd Government – but with renewed enthusiasm given their ostensible preparedness (not hitherto terribly evident) to respond to facts and figures in the national interest.

Normally there is a Honeymoon Period for an incoming Government, especially after such an emphatic victory. However while neither of the Major Parties would talk about it during the Election Campaign, the Bush Wars in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan represent the greatest moral challenge to Australia for decent, anti-racist humanitarians such as myself.  However both “me-too” Labor and the Bush-ite Coalition adopted the policy made famous by British comedy actor John Clease as Basil Fawlty: “don’t mention the war”.

Like Kevin Rudd, I am an economic conservative and I imagine that Kevin Rudd also embraces, like me,  the American Declaration of Independence assertion that “All Men are created equal and have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. However as the son of a Jewish refugee from Nazism and married to a Black Australian I take “All Men are created equal” very much to heart and necessarily have an attitude of zero tolerance to the racism, invasions, wars, occupations, and genocide by the Racist Bush-ites and Racist Zionists in the Middle East. However the American Alliance is the #1 Article of Faith in Australian politics and Mr Rudd is heavily politically constrained – no matter what this no doubt decent fellow may think in his heart.

Indeed his predecessor, former right-wing Labor Leader of the Opposition Mark Latham, was roundly defeated in the 2004 Federal Election when he declared  that he would “bring the boys home from Iraq by Christmas” . The then US Ambassador Schieffer (“Schieffer-brains” to Latham in his post-politics “The Latham Diaries”) immediately intervened in the Australian election, Latham was doomed and the rest was history. “Me-too” Rudd trod the mine-field very carefully and has triumphed. But for those who believe that “All Men are created Equal”, Rudd’s post-election Honeymoon is over before it Began.

The UK Guardian has just reported that  Rudd  will pull most but not all of Australia’s  troops out of Iraq by mid-2008, leaving some hundreds behind; Rudd will soon meet  Robert McCallum, the US ambassador to Australia, to discuss the precise timing of the withdrawal; Rudd admits that the presence of troops in Iraq has made Australia more of a target for terrorism; and he will keep Australia’s 1,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Of course it is notable that the new Australian PM Rudd is going to consult with the American Ambassador to Australia McCallum rather than with the Puppet Iraqi Government or the Iraqi People (of whom over 90% want the Occupiers to go according to recent polls). So much for Australia’s ostensible  desire for "Iraqi democracy".  Rudd has unwittingly exposed the reality of Occupied Iraq as a US colony under the war criminal Bush Administration.

As an antiracist, humanitarian  Australian I don't like our new government being tarnished with continued complicity in the continued criminal occupation of Iraq,  evidently for another 3 years.

Check with UNICEF and you will discover that 122,000  under-5 year old Iraqi infants die each year, 90% avoidably and due to US Coalition war crimes in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War ):