This piece, which I co-wrote with Tom Switzer, appears in The Spectator Australia.
And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
It’s 45 years since Country Joe McDonald penned his classic anti-Vietnam war protest song ‘I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die’. It’s high time the record was reissued and a copy got sent to Julia Gillard, who thinks Australia should spend another decade fighting a war that makes even less sense than the one which so enraged Country Joe and his fellow peaceniks back in the Sixties.
For while US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron are looking for the quickest way out of the Afghan quagmire, Australia’s former secretary of the Socialist Forum can only promise us yet another decade of bloodshed. When you have an Australian Labor Prime Minister who’s more keen on a certain war than the leaders of Britain and the US, you know you’re living in very strange times.
You can read the whole article here.
7 comments:
Country Joe and the Fish's song was called ' (Fish Cheer and) Fixin' to Die Rag', sort of referencing an old Blind Lemon Jefferson song called 'I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die. The Fish Cheer was of course that " Give me and F... " bit. Just had to set you straight on that.
Julia Gillard just shows again that if you sing from the company sing sheet you can get the top job no matter who wins the election.
Sorry, I forgot that there was more to that article. I've read the rest now.
Yes, but only if you take the politicians' pronouncements seriously, or believe that their opinions matter any more. Obama has been giving pull-out dates, while senior military officers have been giving press briefs about programs that will go on long beyond the stated dates; and all the while the assault on Pakistan is being stepped up. I've read some serious commenters opine that there is now an objective to destabilise Pakistan so that the US will have an excuse to try and seize Pakistan's nuclear armoury. You can imagine one powerful Western political constituency that would be rather keen on that.
Julia Gillard just shows again that if you sing from the company sing sheet you can get the top job no matter who wins the election.
Sorry, I forgot that there was more to that article. I've read the rest now.
Yes, but only if you take the politicians' pronouncements seriously, or believe that their opinions matter any more. Obama has been giving pull-out dates, while senior military officers have been giving press briefs about programs that will go on long beyond the stated dates; and all the while the assault on Pakistan is being stepped up. I've read some serious commenters opine that there is now an objective to destabilise Pakistan so that the US will have an excuse to try and seize Pakistan's nuclear armoury. You can imagine one powerful Western political constituency that would be rather keen on that.
Mind you, the ALBUM it came from was called ' I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die'. Excuse the 60s pedantry.
As someone has added to "The Spectator" comments section:
'"... in what even leading American neocon Fouad Ajami concedes is ‘a hopeless undertaking in an impossible land’."
'What Fouad Ajami, of whom these authors appear to know little, in fact wrote in the Wall Street Journal, 20 March 2009, was (emphasis added): "On its sixth anniversary, the Iraq war has been vindicated, while the war in Afghanistan LOOKS LIKE a hopeless undertaking in an impossible land."
'He is not stating his own view: he is referring to public perceptions of these two wars, and remarking on how America's military fortunes in Iraq had been turned round, whereas in Afghanistan initial success has been dissipated. His argument is that President Obama needs to prosecute the Afghanisation war, not abandon it: "This Afghan war can't be waged in stealth, and in silence. Half-measures will not do."
'Call me an old-fashioned journo, but I consider Switzer and Clark's misrepresentation of source material to be unethical and unprofessional.'
A very skilled analysis of the ghastly Gillard, whose cacophonous speaking voice is not the least of her crimes. I don't know which writer wrote which parts of the article, or whether every sentence was written by both writers jointly, but the overall impact of the piece is most effective.
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