Alexander Downer on Iraq
A democracy in the middle of the shit-hole that is the Middle East would give birth to hope and all the Mullahs and Kings and Princes would be feeling uneasy
More here Today in the Age Alexander Downer, Foreign Affairs minister when adults were playing the game has a piece in The Age We played a worthy role in Saddam’s demiseLet me be blunt: I think we were right to play our own small part in the destruction of the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a far from perfect operation, mistakes were made and the sectarian violence that followed was appalling. But there are three reasons why the Iraqis, the Middle East and the world are better off for the demise of the Saddam regime.
The first is simple humanity. Sadam is dead! That’s a very big plus for the world and particularly Iraqis Secondly, there is the issue of chemical and biological weapons. He had ’em, he used ’em and now he can’t nor can any other aspiring despot Downer continues;But if the threshold question is, should we have played a part in getting rid of Saddam a decade ago, my answer is an unequivocal yes.
I’m glad we did. We played a small part in evicting the world’s most brutal dictator who made President Assad of Syria look moderate. We played a tiny part in starting to change theologies of the Middle East from dictatorship to democracy. And we helped spare the region and the world from a dictator who aspired to dominate the Arab world and threaten Israel.
That was the thing about the Howard government: we stood for something. And one of the things we stood for was freedom.
As different from the Gillard government who stand for themselves and the less than 20% of the population who are unionists.