Poor Janet Albrechtsen still suffers from repressed memories of hideous mistreatment, as if she'd been locked in a cage in Gitmo and routinely abused on a 24/7 basis.
Fortunately she wasn't - all that happened was her hero John Howard was abused by arrogant lefties without any regard for the way the world works, never mind if the world actually works that way.
And how do we arrive at this tragedy? All because Obama is again requesting Australia settle 17 (or is it 6?) Gitmo prionsers: Uighurs from China: Wanted: A home for Gitmo detainees No takers?
It was cheap symbolism that never even pretended to understand the importance of alliances or the nature of real-politik. To the chagrin of those who prefer to taint everything that Bush did as wrong, Howard understood the importance of the US alliance and no doubt some of his decisions, though unpopular, were taken to secure a longer term pragmatic path that reinforces Australia’s alliance with the US. Had Howard taken detainees from Guantanamo after a request from Bush, we would have heard plenty about Howard, once again, playing deputy sheriff to Bush.
Oh the shame, the indignity, and little John, brave Robin Hood of his times, or man of steel if you will (even if it's a tad defamatory of the real man of steel, which is to say Superman, who mebbe is not real, but at least iconic) was just doing it all for Australians, and for that precious United States alliance.
And seeing as to how it's such an important, vital alliance, then we should fall into line with the current Obama administration request to house Muslim Uighurs from China and help the Americans shut down Gitmo. After all, it's the best way to proceed, keeping the current administration as our friends, and the right won't behave like the craven, cowardly left , and abuse Comrade Rudd for acquiescing like a John Howard lick spittle lackey.
Ah no, actually, at no point does Albrechtsen actually say that these Gitmo prisoners should be accepted into Australia by the Rudd government. For that matter, at no point does she say that they should be turned away. In fact, in the true style of an ideologue wanting a debating point, she doesn't actually put forward any coherent proposal or policy as to what to do with the request, which after all involves a simple yes or no.
No, she keeps her powder dry, and coyly says she awaits the Prime Minister's decision, as breathtaking and hypocritical an avoidance of the real politik issues involved as you could wish for.
But wait a second, what that allows Dame Slap to do is berate and admonish everyone else for hypocrisy, as a kind of payback for the way these heinous chappies maltreated Howard and Bush. She wants to measure the hypocrisy of calculated inconsistency on a scale of one to ten, in which case we will in due course have to rate her.
But first let's rate the lefties - because it seems the US don't want to ship the Uighurs back to China, as they fear they'll be tortured or executed by the Chinese authorities, who regard the men as terrorists. You'd have thought that that'd bring some shrieks from the left about Australia kowtowing to China, a country with little respect for human rights. "Right? Wrong. Only silence."
Err, but these fiendish men have been locked up in Gitmo, where only the worst of the worst have been sent, the most despicable terrorists and enemies of the west. Are these men guilty as hell, or just innocent bystanders caught up in the right wing hysteria of the times? If guilty as hell, then you'd have to think that Albrechtsen would be calling out for them to be sent home to China where they can be punished for their grievous misdeeds. Right? Wrong. Only silence.
And if they were innocent, you'd think that Albrechtsen would be demanding that they be brought to Australia forthwith, so they can be saved from the inhuman Chinese government. Right? Wrong. Only silence.
And if we don't actually know whether they're guilty or innocent, you might wonder why they spent so long in prison, without ever being brought to trial or their case resolved, as if they were trapped in a Kafka novel. And we wouldn't want them to be trapped in a Kafka novel, like Joseph K. So Albrechtsen would be howling at the injustices done by Gitmo. Right? Wrong. Pass me their files again, so we can reconsider the issue at length.
And of course it wouldn't do when discussing Gitmo not to mention the hypocrisy of US Democrats, who carried on about shutting down the prison, and then don't want to offer up their home states as refuges for the detainees. Thank the lord this has nothing to do with the demonization of towel heads and Gitmo prisoners by Republicans, the worst of the worst, fully responsible for the twin towers, the Oklahoma building bombing, and anything and everything else wrong with America at this moment.
It would truly be inexplicable and a totally hypocritical act to invite pedophiles to teach in a primary school, given the publicity surrounding their vile deeds, and these people are snowflakes of the heavens compared to the vile Gitmo terrorists. So I guess the Catholic church and Democrats are on a level.
And then there are the Europeans, the irascible Germans and the cheese eating French, the biggest blowhards about Gitomo. And what do they do? Wash their hands of a solution, just like Janet Albrechtsen.
But how to round out this so that you end up with a first class, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of gotcha?
Now comes an even trickier question. How do we measure the hypocrisy of those countries, such as Australia, that said no to a request from Republican George W. Bush to take detainees and are now considering how to respond to a similar request from Democrat President Obama. If they say yes to Obama, having said no to Bush, they surely rise to the top of the hypocrisy class. If they say no to Obama, they at least get marks for being consistently hypocritical by demanding Gitmo’s closure but refusing to take any of the inmates. We await the Prime Minister’s decision.
Beauty. A real humdinger of a gotcha.
Well I guess we know what kind of hypocrite Malcolm Turnbull is. He's urging the Rudd government to reject the request for six (not seventeen) Uighurs to be settled in Australia, and be damned to that precious US alliance so assiduously cultivated by John Howard, and celebrated by the likes of Albrechtsen. Yep, there's a decent humanism at work.
And of course back in December the craven Rudd government refused to take the men following a request by Bush, given the certain convenient and hypocritical protests of the Liberal party and even louder shrieks from the loony right that would have followed. So we already know they're hypocrites.
Oh and what have these Uighur detainees been found guilty of, justifying their six long years in Gitmo prison? Apparently absolutely nothing. Yep, six long years in a hellhole, simply for breathing and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
How inconvenient of them. How difficult they make the world.
No doubt Dame Slap will get lots of comments, for being snide, snarky, sarcastic and sour, flailing about at everybody, muddying the waters in fine style, and not once addressing the questions about Gitmo that its erection and maintenance involved.
So she can rabbit on about hypocrisy all she likes, but by avoiding that one basic, salient fact - innocent people locked up without trial or recourse - when discussing Gitmo and the American paranoia that led to it, she can go to top of the hypocrisy class.
Ten out of ten for Dame Slap, where real politik is actually real snidery, and people are just pawns in the game. And when will she come clean, and endorse Turnbull's devious position? Or propose that the Rudd government should allow them in? Instead of chortling about the difficulty of getting rid of a prison that should never have been built and operated in defiance of her own ostensible regard for law and democracy ...
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