We Say - 1
We Say
'...Mr Howard is jumping into the Solomon Islands with a ringing "we'll be beside you, mate" battle cry and with 2000 troops, helicopters, armoured cars and a couple of hundred police and public service administrators. This is massive overkill for handling violence perpetrated by a small number of bandits centred essentially in the capital, Honiara'
Credibility is a quality that not a few Pacific Islands leaders, if some should be truly so classed, sadly lack. Some are plain liars, some are liars and rascals, and some are merely naive, gullible and foolish. All the world's other regions are, in this respect, no less well endowed. Australia, Britain and the United States have their share of tainted leadership. What a liar the last United States president was shown to be after being caught with his pants down. All three of those countries are currently suffering from a touch of eroded credibility.
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In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair and in the United States George W. Bush are embarrassed by their lack of success in finding weapons of mass destruction nuclear, chemical and biological weapons the alleged manufacture of which by Iraq was the foundation of their excuse for invading that country. They are dogged by tales, credible tales, of forged evidence, misleading "intelligence", and plain good old lies concocted apparently by their backroom advisers and intelligence services. Both swallowed this fare, doubtless in good faith, because it was what they wanted to believe since it was their excuse for an invasion motivated, well, really by what?
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, is still dogged by aspects of the Tampa refugee boat affair; by stories of refugee children chucked into the sea that were not true. The refugee affair was ruthlessly exploited by Mr Howard, to his great advantage at the time, in winning a subsequent election. Pacific Islanders should no longer hesitate to sharply question and rebut the credibility and motives of the authors of the now steady attacks on the Pacific's credibility from external sources, diplomatic, political and academic. Are Pacific Islands states quite the hotbeds of international crime, drug running, terrorism and money laundering they are being portrayed to be?
Nauru has been assailed, intimidated and threatened by the United States and so forced to close its offshore finance centre. Vanuatu, Samoa, Niue, the Cook Islands and the Marshall Islands have been similarly treated, on account also of their little financial centres, by a hypocritical self-serving doubled-standard array of exploiter nations acting as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). So, some drugs are being run through the islands. So some laundry business has been transacted. But the victims targetted by the OECD, or the United States, complain that they've not seen any substantial evidence in support of the calumny against them.
If the British and Americans fabricated evidence against Iraq, isn't Nauru entitled to suspect the authenticity of United States assertions that it became a financial stronghold for the Russian mafia? The little foibles of Pacific Islands governments and leaders are acknowledged. The causes of crises that have enveloped the Solomon Islands and Nauru, and the possibility that some other Pacific states may land themselves in morasses that sympathetic outsides will have to extract them from, are generally plain to see.
Being, as he is, obedient at the heel of Mr Bush, Mr Howard now present attitudes that Pacific Islanders should respond to with caution. He too has credibility problems having been infected by American security paranoia. It wasn't until two years ago that the Australian Prime Minister gave any sign of genuine concern about the Pacific Islands. Indonesia, the United States and South East Asia filled his horizon. He was finally prodded into doing so by advisers aware of the weakening frames of some islands states.
Australia is the dominant economic power in the Solomon Islands, and some other Pacific Islands countries, as a supplier of goods and services, investment and exploiter of local resources. Its intervention there now is motivated less by altruism and more by warranted anxiety to secure the country as a stable and prosperous neighbour located strategically close to its eastern flank. But Mr Howard is jumping into the Solomon Islands with a ringing "we'll be beside you, mate" battle cry and with 2000 troops, helicopters, armoured cars and a couple of hundred police and public service administrators.
This is massive overkill for handling violence perpetrated by a small number of bandits centred essentially in the capital, Honiara. The Solomon Islands is not beset by widespread national violent anarchy, as suggested by imaginative Australian and New Zealand journalists ignorant of the country. Nor is it in the thrall of any warlord. Lawrence of Arabia? Next came Bush of Iraq and now, Howard of Honiara?
