President Barack Obama has announced that the United States will lead a “broad coalition” of countries to roll back and “ultimately destroy” the Islamic State.
In a televised address that interrupted prime-time TV in the US, Obama announced further airstrikes against IS in Iraq and potentially Syria, more armed forces personnel to train and equip fighters on the ground, heightened intelligence efforts and more humanitarian support to the communities displaced by IS across the Middle East.
Australia is not only part of that broad coalition (hitherto, a “core coalition”) but an enthusiastic participant. Speaking to reporters in Launceston prior to Obama’s address, Tony Abbott said he had spoken to the president on Tuesday, and while there have been no further military requests from the US yet, warned that “a specific request in the form of air capability and military advisers could come”. Abbott also said he was not playing “politics” in warning that the terror threat in Australia looked likely to rise.
“I don’t want anyone to think that this is done on the basis of politics,” he said. “It’s done on the basis of expert assessment.”
This is how the build-up to war works in 2014 — in a series of strategically timed announcements played out live on our TV screens, and in constant reminders of an ever-increasing threat to our personal safety.
But while Obama explained that America had “not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland”, Abbott was not so circumspect, reiterating several times that IS posed a domestic threat to Australians: “This is at least as much a domestic issue for us as it is an international security issue. This is not a conflict which is remote to us.”
Abbott’s insistence that there was nothing political in his hyping of the terrorist threat, and his ostentatious name-checking of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten as a supporter of the government’s decisions, seems to indicate that the Coalition has detected a certain voter cynicism about the government’s sudden focus on security issues at a time when it has been struggling domestically.
Oh, and did we mention it’s September 11 today? Be alert, but not alarmed — surely that’s just a coincidence.
Lets not mention how the Americans trained, armed and financed al Qaeda in Pakistan during the 1980s for insertion into Afghanistan after the Russian occupation. Lets not mention Seymour Hersh’s 1997 New Yorker article on US foreign policy in the Middle east being aimed at promoting, inter alia, sectarian warfare (which just happened to coincide with the Israeli Yinon plan). Lets not mention the fact that since WW2 the US has violently sought to overthrow more than 70 governments, and succeeded in many cases.
Heaven forbid that we should mention that the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq by Australia and others (for whom not one person has been held accountable) is a major source of Islamic militancy. Lets not mention that IS got a head start in the Jordanian training camps armed and trained by the US and financed by Saudi Arabia (70 beheadings in the past two years) and the GCC states.
And lets continue to raise the 9/11 bogeyman without once ever discussing what the real evidence shows. So much more convenient to blame unspecified “terrorists” and keep the wheels of the military-industrial-intelligence bandwagon rolling.
j.oneill: can’t argue with your observations. Spot on!
A certain voter cynicism about the government’s sudden focus on security issues …never! Not this scheming and conniving government, not the sort of thing rAbbott would do would he?
External “threats” will always be trundled out when domestic conversation turns hostile to those in office.
As one of the Boomers who grew up under the looming mushroom cloud, the generation of the Naughties have never known owt but the War of Terror.
Makes those gumboil decades, the 80/90s, seem Arcadian.
“This is at least as much a domestic issue for us as it is an international security issue. This is not a conflict which is remote to us.” So says Abbott as he does his level best to ensure the conflict will not escape our shores. What a fool and it’s sad to say that Shorten is on the same page as him. I hope Labor Senator Sue Lines does not buckle under pressure by her leader to toe the line – the wrong “line”.
Let’s just keep running around in circles ’til we get it Right?