Howard Government gets it right on East Timor
Monday May 29th 2006, 12:00 pm

Little Johnny gets it right for onceJohn Howard and DFAT deserve praise, exceedingly rare from me at least, for prepositioning the ADF in northern Australia, even before the official request for military aid was submitted by the East Timor government. Australian forces were there in hours after the formal request instead of days. Nice work.

The speed at which horrific militia violence spread during and shortly after independence elections in 1999 was a hard-learnt lesson to the UN and Australia.

It’s OK to be smooth as a cue ball if you can cover your bald spot with laurels.

Good onya, John.

-weez


6 Comments so far
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U’ve rendered me speechless…

Comment by ab 05.30.06 @ 10:47 pm

Don’t get used to it.

Howard gives precious little cause for praise, but fair’s fair.

Comment by weez 05.30.06 @ 11:06 pm

I agree, weez: it’s nice to feel that our miliatry is being used for a right reason this time.

Comment by tigtog 06.02.06 @ 1:15 pm

John has certainly done good in this case, for which he has my full appreciation. However, I still find him a wretched, deplorable little man. A pity his responses to other human right issues were not as quick, efficient and respectful of human rights. The MV Tampa and and a leaking boat called Palapa is just one incident that springs to mind. I was going to list some more but there were so many it was too difficult to prioritise.

Comment by Kate Gibbons 06.07.06 @ 12:19 pm

Weez,
You might be interested in reading this. This might be a useful analysis regarding political tumult in Timor and Australia.

http://nautilus.org/~rmit/forum-reports/0618a-tanter.html

cheers
citu

Comment by citu 06.15.06 @ 8:46 pm

Thanks for that, citu. Reading now.

My praise for Howard was limited to the forethought applied to putting the troops in position; I certainly don’t think Howard has the answers for the in East Timor. Gusmao and Ramos Horta are the go-to guys for sorting this one out.

Comment by weez 06.15.06 @ 9:31 pm



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