Australians may not realise quite what bad press John Howard receives in overseas newspapers. He is typically referred to as either “right-wing Prime Minister John Howard”, or “Bush-ally John Howard” (which in most countries is a fairly open insult).
Johnny’s latest attempt to weigh in on international affairs, by attacking the Democratic party that seems so likely to be governing America by March next year, has added another fine clipping to his glittering international scrap book.
Following Barack Obama’s (wildly popular) campaign launch, Little Johnny told the Australian press:
“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”
No journalist seems to have noted how stupid Johnny’s argument is: in fact, it is the continuing presence of American imperial armies in the Middle East that is the best thing that ever happened to al-Qaeda. Anyone who can think for themself realises that without American military aggression, and American support for Israeli military aggression, al-Qaeda would still be nothing more than a local splinter group demanding regime change in Saudi Arabia.
The journalists have not noted this, because they are too distracted by the sheer diplomatic finesse of Little Johnny’s remarks. As today’s BBC news puts it:
“John Howard is the type of politician who will happily cross a road for a fight. But now he has taken the less familiar step of crossing an entire continent, our correspondent says.”
In the United States, meanwhile, Johnny has managed to spark open animosity with the Democrats. It is hard to tell if he actually wanted the international attention, or if he might be unpleasantly surprised to find that he has stimulated a response. While Obama did not seem to be able to remember the name of the funny little man who had started criticising him, or quite which country he was from, he did manage to accurately pinpoint his international media identity, describing his attacker simply as: “one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world”.
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