July 22, 2005
You Tell 'em, John
by JeremyCara and I were watching Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard's press conference earlier and we both spontaneously applauded one of Howard's responses. A reporter asked the usual shit-for-brains question, which I can summarize as: Mr. Blair, don't you feel the bombings of July 7th were your fault?
Blair's reaction -- understandable though disappointing -- was to pretend he hadn't just been asked a question by a moron and to pretend the question had meant something else.
Howard was not going to let it pass, however. He calmly responded as follows (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds):
PRIME MIN. HOWARD: Could I start by saying the prime minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it. My first reaction was to get some more information. And I really don't want to add to what the prime minister has said. It's a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here.Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.
Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.
And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.
Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?
When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?
When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.
Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.
PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)
That last line is a "what he said" more typically associated with Bush in reference to Blair.
UPDATE: In some blog discussions I've read there are people who seem to think some of us are exaggerating the appallingly plain idiocy of the question put to Blair and Howard. Part of the confusion is that it wasn't just one question. There were two really stupid questions and then one faux-nuanced question (this last one being the one that finally prompted Howard to remind those present that there were two adults in the room).
Here, from a full online transcript, are the questions I refer to (Though I believe each question was asked by a different reporter, the reporters quoted below were all of one mind -- by which I mean, of course, that they had, when you put them together, only one brain):
1) "Prime Minister, you have appealed for people to stay calm, but do you feel any sense of responsibility at all for the fact that ordinary people here in London now seem to be in the frontline in the war against terror?"[...]
2) "Do you feel in any sense that you have put people in this position, do you feel that in a sense your policies may have put people in this position?"
[...]
3) "To both Prime Ministers, what was your immediate reaction on hearing that some incidents had occurred, was it here we go again? And do incidents like this, coming just 14 days after the horrific attacks, suggest that the war against terror is being lost on the streets? And yesterday an Australian bomb victim of July 7 linked the bombings to Iraq. Does that suggest that the propaganda war against terrorists is also being lost?"
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