The wizards of Oz have got it right

Coming from Britain to Canberra to interview members of the Australian government is like leaving a fetid malarial swamp to be douched with fresh cold water from a mountain spring. These guys are so onside in the great fight for civilisation against barbarism that they make ‘Bush’s poodle’ Tony Blair sound like a Harold Pinter wannabe on a bad day in Basra.

As Britain impatiently awaits the disappearance of the Prime Minister it has impaled on the turnpike of Iraq, as it pulls troops out and as both Gordon Brown and David Cameron delicately signal that they will distance themselves from US foreign policy, John Howard’s government is increasing the number of Australian soldiers in Iraq and its ministers remain passionately committed to the battle for democracy in the Arab and Muslim world.

Their scorn for the current British mood of defeatism and appeasement is palpable. What, for example, does the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, think about those in Britain who claim that the Iraq war has made the world a more dangerous place?

‘Their proposition that we should let the extremists win in Iraq and that will reduce terrorism is like saying, let Hitler take France and that will secure things a bit more. Or that if only we hadn’t taken on Hitler he wouldn’t have bombed the East End. It’s a completely fatuous proposition. For the extremists, it’s fantastic that people are saying this — because the logical conclusion is to surrender.’

What does the attorney-general, Philip Ruddock, think of the British government’s long-standing opposition to what it sees as America’s indefinite detention of terror suspects without a proper trial in Guantánamo Bay?

‘This shows an ignorance of the rules of war, which recognise you are entitled to hold those who engage in hostilities against you until the end of that war.