Terry Lane, Age columnist and ABC radio talking head, may be a fuddy duddy of an old fogey in many respects, but when it comes to justice or cutting through the political bullshit he is mostly spot on. Here is his astute summation of the America Kevin Rudd called "a noble force for good since World War II."

Think beyond force of habit, Mr Rudd
by Terry Lane, The Sunday Age, 14 January 2007

George the Smaller and his little Man of Steel don't seem to have got the hang of this liberation business. Sending in another 20,000 soldiers to search and destroy is not the way to do it.

Liberation goes like this. You see a country under occupation or ruled by a tyrant; you send in the army to drive the occupiers out or to depose the tyrant; then you bow to the natives' grateful applause and go home. Simple.

It worked in Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France and other places. It went down well in the countries formerly occupied by the Japanese. So why didn't it work in Iraq?

We know the answer to that. Because President George Bush had no intention of leaving Iraq until it had been colonised. This is not a war of liberation. It is a war of occupation.

To state the obvious: "If the chief export of Iraq had been broccoli rather than oil, the US would never have invaded." I don't know who said that, but it sums up the tragedy in a single aphorism.

And the most worrying reaction to the President's decision to send more people to their deaths is that our Opposition Leader, Mr Kevin Rudd, can still say he has always been a strong supporter of the US alliance because America has been a noble force for good in the world since World War II. ( AM, ABC Radio January 12.)

Really? In Vietnam? In Nicaragua? Punishing Cubans for having the temerity to kick out their Mafia landlords? Overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran and installing the megalomaniacal Shah? Backing the mujahideen in Afghanistan on the "enemy of mine enemy is my friend" principle? Arming the death squads in El Salvador? The murderous Pinochet in Chile? Uncritically backing Israel in its colonial expansion and thereby exacerbating the single greatest cause of anti-Western hostility in the Middle East? Backing right-wing thugs and tyrants wherever their rule is congenial to Coca-Cola and Halliburton?

That American force for good? The same America that forces unequal treaties on nations in no position to resist or on nations, such as this, that are too stupid to see they are being dudded with one-sided defence and trade treaties?

Does Mr Rudd mean the American force for good that holds an Australian citizen in captivity and tortures him for five years without charges?

Where was Mr Rudd when American ambassadors and under-deputy secretaries of state were presuming to instruct the Labor opposition in what it is permitted to say or do?

There is a good America. A great America. But it is not Bush's America. Or his father's. Or the America of Reagan, Nixon and Kissinger.

Here's an amusing example of the divide between good and bad America. A recent press release from the organisation Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility draws attention to the fact that rangers in the Grand Canyon National Park are forbidden to answer visitors' questions about the age of the canyon because the truth will upset Bush's fundamentalist supporters. However, Bush's National Parks Service refuses to withdraw from sale in the park bookshop a book that explains how the canyon was formed by Noah's flood.

Mr Rudd might care to explain how it is in our national interest to have an alliance with a government that is a self-evident force for stupidity as well as cruelty.

As Lane says, "There is a good America. A great America. But it is not Bush's America." Most worldwide anti-American sentiment is directed at Bush's desecration, not Americans themselves. In the end, they are no wiser or dumber than the people of any country. Australia included.

-- Tara R. Bümdier