Gillard and Rudd competing for top lackey award

Vanguard July 2011 p. 5
Nick G.

Just as American as Mom and apple pie are the short-skirted, baton-twirling cheerleaders at US football games.

They perform before the real show, inciting the crowd and urging on the heavily padded super stars of grid iron.

To the great embarrassment of everyone in Australia, Rudd and Gillard are acting as front-line cheerleaders for the current wave of US aggression sweeping the world.

Each vies with the other for the most outlandish display of theatrical support for US imperialism. One kicks his legs in one direction, the other kicks hers in the opposite, but it’s all to the same orchestrated and mind-numbing martial music.

Remember the enthusiasm with which Gillard welcomed Hillary Clinton’s desire for more combined military exercises, greater access for U.S. ships and planes, and increased use of U.S. military bases in Australia. That was last November, when Clinton was here for the AUSMIN (Australia-United States Ministerial) meeting.

Then in December, it was revealed by Wikileaks that Rudd had urged Clinton, in 2009, to be “brutally real” in her dealings with China, encouraging it to submit to US dictate (‘‘integrating … effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility”) while also preparing to deploy force “if everything goes wrong''. Imagine the outcry if China had used language like this about Australia in secret talks with North Korea?

On March 7 this year, while she was in the US, Gillard said she was "all ears" about the possibility of the US placing more military forces on Australian soil if it believes this is necessary in the light of the growing might of China and India.

A few days later, Rudd stole a march on Gillard by declaring that NATO should impose a no-fly zone over Libya.

''He's out of control,'' a Gillard adviser said. ''He puts out one press release after another, and none of it is run through the PM's office.”

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the loudest cheerleader of them all?

Towards the end of April, Gillard clamoured for sanctions against Syria. Not to be outdone, Rudd called on the United Nations to consider referring Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to the International Criminal Court for human rights abuses. All of this incites the US imperialists to further interfere with developments in the Middle East.

Both Rudd and Gillard take a hard line on North Korea, effectively urging the US to step up its aggressive attitude towards that nation. When US imperialism and its South Korean henchmen provoked tension on the Korean peninsula in November 2010 by deliberately firing into a disputed zone claimed by both the North and the South, Rudd described a subsequent North Korean counter-strike as “beyond imagination” and criticised China for taking a neutral stance in the matter.

It didn’t occur to Rudd to wonder how the US might respond if the North Koreans decided to hold massive war games with Mexico along the border with Texas – presumably any response by the US to stray shots across the border would also be “beyond imagination”!

Gillard trumped Rudd by visiting South Korea on Anzac Day this year. Having admitted she had little flair for diplomacy, she bought into a delicate moment in talks between the North and American and European diplomats looking at options to resolve the impasse on the peninsula.

She provocatively and dishonestly insulted the North by invoking memories of the so-called Korean War, describing it as a “war to defend the young republic against North Korean aggression”, pledging to “continue to stand alongside Korea in condemning North Korean aggression.” She had earlier been photographed at the Demilitarized Zone glaring at a North Korean soldier on the other side of a window.

None of this goes down well with the Australian people who simply desire to see their political leaders exercising a capacity for independent judgement in matters of foreign policy.

It certainly hasn’t helped Gillard’s popularity, which is at an all-time low.