One down.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/24/howard/index.html?source=rssGood riddance to John Howard Glenn Greenwald
Saturday November 24, 2007 06:28 EST
There's a tendency in the U.S. to view the elections in other countries based on the self-centered perspective that the result is always some sort of referendum on the U.S. Hence, all sorts of unwarranted conclusions are typically drawn whenever a pro-Bush foreign leader is defeated or re-elected.
Like most foreign elections, the humiliating defeat of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was driven largely by their own domestic concerns, and it had little (though not nothing) to do with the U.S. Still, it is worth celebrating Howard's defeat in light of how pernicious a presence he was, as one of the very few remaining world leaders who loyally supported the worst and most war-loving aspects of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.
Back in Febraury of this year, Howard inserted himself into U.S. domestic politics by spouting this Bill Kristol-like smear:
If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.
***
But nothing captures the core corruption and dishonesty of John Howard -- and that of other blind supporters of the war in Iraq generally -- quite as vividly as
a May, 2003 speech he delivered to the Australian parliament, in which Howard hailed the Greatness of George W. Bush and praised Bush's "Strength and Determination" for having led the "American-led coalition" to "Decisive Victory" in Iraq. In doing so, Howard gloated about how wrong war opponents were, specifically condemning:
the way in which speaker after speaker impugned integrity, assaulted his judgment, and called into question his ability to lead the U.S. in this very, very difficult conflict. History has proved them wrong.
Howard mocked the "infantile" objections of war opponents and "all of the doomsday predictions," which -- he boasted -- were "not realized." After all, Howard roared: "there were not millions of refugees" and "there was no long-drawn-out, bloody, Stalingrad-style, street-to-street fighting in Baghdad":
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