Rudd's war advice furphy

With the Government increasingly desperate in the lead up to the next federal election, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has tried to neutralise Kevin Rudd's opposition to the unpopular Iraq war, pointing to a letter of advice he wrote to the Government.

Leaked letter shows Rudd approved of Iraq war
By Lincoln Wright
August 12, 2007 12:00am

A LEAKED letter from Kevin Rudd to Prime Minister John Howard shows the Opposition Leader backed Australia's involvement in Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.

The November 2003 letter is at odds with Mr Rudd's more recent position, which is that Iraq is "the greatest failure of national security policy since Vietnam".

In the letter, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Rudd told Mr Howard how to win in Iraq.

"Now that regime change has occurred in Baghdad, it is the Opposition's view that it is now the responsibility of all people of goodwill, both in this country and beyond, to put their shoulder to the wheel in an effort to build a new Iraq," Mr Rudd said in the letter.

Even though the Howard Government adopted the policies Mr Rudd recommended, the Opposition Leader now claims Australia's involvement in Iraq is a disaster.

Mr Rudd, then Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, recommended five new policies to Mr Howard.

But he made no mention of troop withdrawal, even though three months later, in March 2004, then Labor leader Mark Latham announced he would have the troops home by Christmas.

Mr Rudd's recommendations included:
• An immediate review of protective security arrangements for all Australian staff in Iraq.

• Deploying an appropriate number of trainers for capacity enhancement of the New Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police Force.

• Public employment measures to soak up the idleness of young men from joining terrorist groups.

• Using the Australian Electoral Commission to help Iraq stage elections.

• A smooth transition of the Oil For Food program to ensure Iraqis had proper food and medical supplies.
All of these measures were eventually adopted by the Howard Government.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22227378-2,00.html

News Ltd has jumped on the opportunity to taint Rudd's anti-war respectability, with the Courier Mail parroting the false gotcha under the headline "Rudd tripped up on Iraq letter." The article parses Downer's allegation of flip flopping, claiming the letter shows Mr Rudd supported the war before his current opposition.

But of course, the letter shows no such thing. Accepting some degree of collective responsibility for the consequences of a venture our forces helped initiate, and offering policy advice on how to achieve peace, is completely different from supporting the original invasion.

What makes the false dichotomy at the heart of the allegation particularly feeble, however, is it is evidently contradictory to previous arguments made by their corner. Indeed, where the public record is concerned, both the Government and News Ltd papers have not only clearly acknowledged that dissent is compatible with feeling moved by responsibility, they have actively argued war critics are morally obligated to separate their original objections to war from the exigencies of events on the ground, and in particular, the dangers of civil war. I am sure we are all familiar with the refrain. We must, they have frequently chastised, put aside our differences over the initiation of the war and move forward with the venture for the sake of the Iraqi people. Their own arguments, therefore, require the very distinction they seek to deny Rudd. So, it is completely disingenuous for them to turn around now, and try to set the bar for consistent dissent at precipitous withdrawal and total non-cooperation.

One can only speculate as to the brazenness of it all. However, I will say the fact that they're running with such a blatantly contradictory attack suggests neither the Government, nor News, has a high opinion of the public's intelligence.

For the sake of completeness, it is worth establishing the obvious fact that Rudd's situation is hardly unique. The war has no shortage of critics who've advocated policies other than a full and immediate withdrawal. There are many hundreds of senior policy wonks and academics in the foreign policy establishment who've opposed the war from the beginning, and yet offered policy proposals to fix it. The Baker-Hamilton group, Brzezinski and Scowcroft provide just a few prominent examples. If we follow the view under discussion here, no matter the deeply held convictions of these people against the premise of the war, the mere fact that they have worked on post-war Iraq policy makes them "war supporters."

That News has echoed this nonsense should be no surprise. When almost every political article you read in The Australian lately tries to attribute Rudd's success to his supposed conservatism, it betrays a certain insecurity in the Murdoch world about the potential traction of beliefs and virtues which are outside their ideological purview. Here, Rudd's anti-war respectability and pragmatic small 'l' liberalism cannot be credited for the shift in political winds. When you ground your political narrative in populism, this is doubly important because the fiction of "Middle Australia" would be exposed. With the Opposition on the cusp of taking power, and the creeping inevitability of history stacked against them, they must realise that tolerance of the Howard orthodoxy on Iraq and the War on Terror will soon be displaced by a more sceptical narrative, which is a lot closer to Rudd's position in substance. When that happens, even very skilful use of the stabbed in the back myth will not deflect or distract from their folly.