Battle for Australia Day?
Australian issues, Uncategorized - - Posted on September, 4 at 1:16 pm by Ken L
Our prime minister apparently wants to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and do everything he can to make Australia a more militaristic society, modelled perhaps on that outstanding global citizen the US of A. Why else would he be pushing this ridiculous effort to make 3 September ‘Battle for Australia Day’?
Australia’s pollies all seem to be overcome with this desire to be part of the big boys’ club. They thrust their way onto the global stage, yapping about how Australia too knows what it’s like to play at the big table. To hear some of them talk now you’d think Australia was pretty much single-handedly responsible for defeating Germany on the Western Front in WW1.
Did the USA suffer a terrorist attack in September 2001? Well dudes we can empathise because BALI WAS AUSTRALIA’S 9/11, OK? And now, Kevin’s reaching back in time to argue that the Brits might have had a Battle of Britain but WE HAD ONE TOO, OK? We had the ‘Battle for Australia’.
What a load of tripe. We know now that Australia was never under threat of invasion in WW2. What possible purpose is served by fabricating an ahistorical existential threat from 65 years ago except to encourage a generalised climate of fear in the population accompanied by a willingness to trust the government and the military to look after us?
Rudd talks about:
We commemorate a time when our nation itself was under attack.
We commemorate a time when a young nation found its very survival at risk.
This is pure boloney and Rudd must know it. Much as it pains the militarists to admit it, Australia’s role in the Pacific war was trivial. The conflict in New Guinea was a sideshow and the much-touted ‘Battle of Milne Bay’ was a skirmish in which only a handful of troops were engaged from either side. Australia’s main strategic concern - quite correctly - was to ensure the defence of the Australian continent by assembling an army at home with enough resources to support it. This was a unique and challenging task but it was not a ‘Battle for Australia’. Pretending that it was just invites derision from countries like the UK and Russia and China that really did have to fight for their national survival.
Rudd even goes on to say:
We know that some question whether there was indeed a Battle for Australia.
And yes, there’s fertile ground for historical debate on the views of Curtin and Churchill, the plans of the Japanese Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy, and what might have happened had the Japanese advance not been stopped at Milne Bay and Imita Ridge.
Kevin this is nonsense and if you sincerely believe it, you need new advisers. There is no ‘fertile ground for debate’ - the facts are well-known and uncontroversial. The Japanese couldn’t even invade Fiji for god’s sake, what chance did they have of occupying Australia? In the words of Tojo:
We never had enough troops to do so [invade Australia]. We had already far out-stretched our lines of communication. We did not have the armed strength or the supply facilities to mount such a terrific extension of our already over-strained and too thinly spread forces. We expected to occupy all New Guinea, to maintain Rabaul as a holding base, and to raid Northern Australia by air. But actual physical invasion—no, at no time.
Perhaps a key to Rudd’s motivation can be found in his reference to ‘The day when we together with our American ally began to turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.’ Perhaps this is all a bit of theatre to try to restore faith in the American alliance because, you know, they came to our rescue in ‘42.
If the people who lived through the Second World War had felt the circumstances warranted a special commemorative ‘Battle for Australia Day’, I’m sure they would have done something about it. Such days only have intrinsic value if they reflect the spontaneous feelings of those directly affected; for example, Anzac Day was officially named in 1916 just 12 months after the events it commemorates and Battle of Britain Day was formally proclaimed in 1943. Creating a special day 66 years after the events which it allegedly commemorates self-evidently has no connection with those events and instead, is a blatant attempt to get present-day political advantage from a confected narrative.
One of Howard’s many disagreeable qualities was the way he deliberately co-opted Gallipoli and the Anzacs into a manufactured political persona that used noble aspects of our history for tawdry political ends. If Rudd is setting out to do the same thing with World War 2 he is no better than Howard.
Posted in Australian issues, Uncategorized |
September 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
… with the emphasis on “now”, Ken. and what do we “know”? That some documents were found indicating invading Australia might be too hard. Other documents have been found saying the exact opposite.
You’ve been reading too much Peter Stanley.
Try telling the people who were bombed in Darwin in February 1942 (and many times after that) - by the same fleet that did over Pearl Harbour - or the people killed on the Kuttabul by torpedos from midget subs. Or perhaps the soldiers killed at Milne Bay, or of course those who were slaughtered (and in some cases cannibalized and tortured) on the Kokoda Track.
Put yourself in Curtin’s position in 1942 the day after after Darwin was bombed. Are you seriously saying he should have told the Australian people, “I bet, in three years when the atom bomb is developed, y’know, after we’ve won the war (which at the moment we’re losing by a large margin) we find some obscure documents in the ruins of Japanese High Command that say, ‘We’re only playing footsie with those Aussies. We’re never going to invade.’”… and then used that as his excuse to do nothing.
I suppose the 13,000 Japanese soldiers who died on the Kokoda Track and at Buna and Gona, and the thousands more who died at Lae, Hollandia and places in-between, realised it was all a charade too. That’s why they went easy on the Diggers. They were only pussy-footing around. We should have twigged then.
And I suppose if we’d not defended New Guinea the Japanese would have just turned around and gone home, or just sat there in Port Moresby eating rice. They wouldn’t have reinforced their position and started thinking, “Let’s go for Australia next. They don’t want to fight.”
In your zeal to attack the government at almost any and every opportunity, you really do say some stupid things.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Thanks for your usual measured comment AB.
Do you have anything to say that’s relevant to the post? And more information about the ‘Other documents [that] have been found saying the exact opposite’ would be instructive.
BTW I haven’t a clue who Peter Stanley is, and as a veteran commenter you should surely know that imputing non-existent motives to a blogger is a sure sign that your argument lacks intrinsic merit. In your zeal to attack bald academics at almost any and every opportunity you really do say some stupid things.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Oh, I see it’s “measured” comments now is it? I suppose “What a lot of tripe” is measured?
As to your never having heard of Peter Stanley, I’m disappointed. But it does illuminate the knee-jerk nature of your post whenever you think you can slip in a free kick against the government.
Peter Stanley is merely the foremost historian touting this “No Battle Of Australia” tripe (and I use the word “tripe” with clear conscience since it seems to come within the definition of “measured” around here).
I note you presented a Wikipedia article as “proof” of your thesis. One thing you should always do with notoriously unreliable Wikipedia articles is check the references listed at the bottom of the page. This is especially essential if you’re going to set yourself up as a historical revisionist based on that Wikipedia article.
At the bottom of that Wikipedia page you will find two references to works by Peter Stanley: one to a book written by him and one to an article. That you have never heard of Stanley clearly shows you didn’t bother to check those references.
Basing your thesis on a Wikipedia article doesn’t sound too “measured” to me, certainly not measured enough to say that anyone who thinks different is peddling tripe.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Bit of advice for you AB: if you want people to engage with you seriously, you should stop being such a single-minded Rottweiler for the ALP (I still remember your ferocious attacks on anyone who suggested we should not re-elect the Iemma Government).
Relentless hyperbole and misrepresentation of my arguments are all good fun no doubt but I have better things to do with my time than respond to them.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
“Anzac Day was officially named in 1916 just 12 months after the events it commemorates…”
My understanding is that, in the beginning, politic1ans were not allowed to speak at these events. Good times.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Thanks for the Big Brotherly advice, Ken. I find it touching to be described as a Rottweiler by the resident Pit Bull Terrier.
Admit it. You read a half-baked Wikipedia article, didn’t check the references, didn’t check the facts, haven’t heard of the main proponent of the argument and yet are still prepared to tout his argument in order to belittle the efforts of the government to commemorate our soldiers who fought - and died in their thousands fighting - the Japanese in the Pacific by calling the government’s position “tripe”.
Not “a bit misguided” or “on balance, perhaps a little overdone”, or maybe even, “unnecessary due to the plethora of other commemorative days” (which you should have known is Stanley’s gob-smacking justification for his point of view), but “tripe”.
Pseudo nobility of the “I have better things to do with my time…” variety is no excuse for being plain wrong and, worse, insulting to the efforts in the Pacific of the Australian services of 1942-1945.
In fact, it’s as clear an indication as could be you went off half-cocked, thought you’d get away with an easy slag-off against something or other, and were called on it. You’re too used to the nodding heads of your exceedingly small fan club. You need to toughen up a bit, Ken.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
“…in order to belittle the efforts of the government to commemorate our soldiers who fought - and died in their thousands fighting - the Japanese..”
Oh man! That comes so bloody close to the contrived “support the troops” bullshit we hear from America. Low blow, AB.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Two points AB: one is that some of us have acquired our knowledge of history over a lifetime’s study consisting mainly of things called books. We don’t need to read Wikipedia. And before you hasten to sneer “Oh yeah then how come you cited it?” the answer is that those long tedious history books aren’t actually susceptible to internet referencing but the Wikipedia entry sums the essential points up adequately.
Two, are you suggesting in all seriousness that there has been insufficient public recognition in this country over the last 60 years of the service of Australians in World War 2? If so, I disagree.
I’ll leave you to wallow in your confected outrage, from which you love to launch your cowardly personal attacks from the security of anonymity.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
KL, the point I was making about Wikipedia was that, whether you did your research over a lifetime of study or not, you saw fit to present a Wikipedia article as proof of your thesis, which was that commemorating the Battle For Australia was “tripe”.
I think if you’re going to belittle the commemoration of the deaths of 5,999 soldiers, 1,094 sailors and 3,342 airmen - a total of 10,435 Australians - plus thousands of wounded as “tripe”, you owe their sacrifice a little more than a Wikipedia article to support the word “tripe”.
If you had done any serious reading of the literature, you’d have at least heard of Peter Stanley, who was one of the chief historians at the Australian War Memorial until recently and is the chief, the No. 1 proponent of the “He’s Not Coming South” view of the Pacific Theatre of war, as it relates to Australia.
Mars, I’m disappointed in you. Whatever it may sound like to you, the deaths of over 10,000 Australians between 1942-1945 fighting the Japanese, as well as thousands more in the POW camps really did happen. What do you think they died for? So that you could call referring to their sacrifice as “contrived”? You should be ashamed of yourself for using that word.
Get your contexts straight, mate. I’m not talking about modern day American hoopla about Iraq or Viet Nam. I’m talking about real people, real Australians - any one of whom could have been your grandfather, father or mother, or mine - who died defending their country (a quaint notion, I know) without the option of sitting back and wondering whether in the future some blogger would call the commemoration of their efforts “contrived”, a “low blow” or “tripe”.
Most of this revisionism was started around 2004-2005 when Alexander Downer tried to open a new chapter in the history wars to justify the Iraq disaster he and his mates had gotten us into.
Downer’s thesis centered on the proposition that Labor was the party of cowardice, appeasement and disloyalty to our allies.
In order to prop it up he had to show that Curtin, from the 1930s dealing with Mussolini in Abyssinia, right through to when he withdrew the Australians from Africa in 1942, and on to 1945 with the fighting in New Guinea and Borneo, had done so for misguided, indeed cynical political purposes. Downer argued that this was detrimental to the greater aim of WW2: that of defeating Hitler.
According to Downer, conversely Menzies, Earl Page, and a bunch of other Australian conservative politicians had been right to urge Curtin to keep the troops in Africa and to eventually send them to Europe if and when that became necessary.
In order to set up this alleged betrayal of the greater purpose of the War, New Guinea and the SW Pacific theatres had to be revised into sideshows, meaningless gestures, tilting at windmills…. any excuse as long as Curtin could be verballed into fulfilling Labor’s sinister policy of not allowing Australia to pull its weight in world military affairs.
Fighting the Japanese at our front door (they got to within a few miles of Port Moresby before they were turned back) was, believe it or not, unfavourably contrasted by Downer - supported by Peter Stanley at the War Memorial and well-known right wing hack Christopher Pearson at The Australian in articles and speeches he ghosted for Downer - with Gallipoli. Apparently Gallipoli, 8,000 miles from our shores, fighting Turks, had been more vital to Australia’s territorial integrity than Kokoda, Lae and Milne Bay 27 years later.
We all know how much Howard adored Gallipoli, don’t we? We were fighting Muslims, in the Middle East (or close to it) for a foreign protector nation, Great Britain. A pretty good analogy to Iraq in 2005. Just change the dates and some of the names and we have more Coalition courage and more Labor cowardice and short-sightedness.
The plain facts are that it was universally appreciated at the time that Australia was under attack. One or two (or three if you include Ken Lovell) now say that commemorating this existential fight is “tripe”. Actually, when I think about it, even Stanley doesn’t go that far, so maybe it’s just Ken who thinks it’s tripe. All of this is based on a few documents which turned up in Tokyo after the war, indicating the Japanese may have been equivocal about invading the Australian continent.
Despite the evidence of 10,000 Australian deaths and tens of thousands of Japanese deaths, plus hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths on our doorstep, in our territory of Papua and nearby, including Darwin and even Sydney, a few pieces of paper are regarded as sufficient to make Stanley’s pathetic reputation for him, provide ammunition for Downer to ridicule any other political party that’s not Liberal as cowardly, disloyal and isolationist - as part of the “Culture Wars” so beloved of Howard - and to denigrate the commemoration of the efforts and deaths of these people as “tripe”.
If we had not defended New Guinea then, whatever the Japanese might have written in despatches to each other, they would have taken Moresby and rethouight any disinclination to invade the mainland. At the very least a rock solid Japanese hold on New Guinea would have changed the course of the Pacific War in ways that would not have been helpful to the allies in that theatre.
It’s inconceivable that if Ken has spent “a lifetime” researching Australian history that he has not even heard of Peter Stanley, or is unaware of the Downer connection and the greater relevance of this issue to the phoney Culture Wars, designed to make the Iraq debacle look noble and the Liberal Party “strong on National Security”.
He just wanted to have a big slag-off at Rudd, in a continuance of his own private culture war against the ALP. Maybe Ken and Lexy Downer really are closer to fellow travellers than I thought they were?
God knows, Rudd’s got his faults, but he doesn’t deserve this kind of cheap Wiki analysis.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Aussie Bob, Ken is up front about who he is and does not call himself say, Aussie Ken.
You have a grasp of history(war) that if examined and shown to be correct is to be admired, however that remains to be seen. You have shown on here today an attitude that I find repellent by attacking the authors of remarks,when you could have put your knowledge to instructive use and left the venom out of it.
As an old fellow who has actually been subjected to parts of your content by association, I detest when Politicians of any colour use for gain the blood of others. Part of your energy could be well directed into the care of returned service men and women, they need a passion as you present on their side.
Also, you don’t hold back on your opinion, and I’m sure you would be the first to object if you were, I feel that given time and space that your posts could me given as tripe by the right people, how about a little more constructive thought, rather than defend by aggression reply. I would enjoy it, I don’t enjoy your bolstering, and that’s a shame as I think you have a lot to contribute..
September 4th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Lang, I’m an old bugger too. Have to admit it. Entered the “55-plus” demographic on August 15th. They stop counting after that.
It was Ken’s use of the word “tripe” that got my gander up.
And then Mars - who’s usually no-one’s fool - attempted to equate the soppy, jongoistic Yank hoopla re. Iraq and similar to the genuine sacrifices of the Diggers in the SW Pacific by use of the words “contrived… bullshit”, separated only by the words “support the troops”. Well, I don’t mind supporting the troops in question, and the great politicians who supported them and died worrying about them, and who are still copping shit from smartarse historians and bloggers seeking to make an obscure point.
Come on Lang, I didn’t start this. I just finished it.
Mars and Ken are probably off reading up on their Peter Stanley articles right now. And if they’re not, they should be. They’re silence since I called them on their disrespect to people who actually went out and did something to defend Australia is deafening.
I
ll tell you what I don’t like about some of Ken’s posts. He often takes the lazy, cynical way out. He claims to be well-read, yet cites - at least here, today - Wikipedia for The Mob to garner their facts.
When challenged he tries the old, “I’ll leave you to wallow in your outrage…” gambit and, just in case that fails the logic test, tries to make out that Wikipedia is as good a reference as any to get out the basic facts: a Wikipedia article which cites the principal revisionist historian on the subject… yet Ken claims to have never heard of him!
The basic fact is: that if Ken was as well-read as he claimed, he’d have read Peter Stanley, certainly would have heard of him. Might have even realised he was interviewed on ABC Radio National just last week and made a fool of himself. But no… “wallow in your outrage” will do. Ken’s above all this anger business.
Well, 10,000 Aussies died defending our country in 1942-1945. I’m pterry glad they did. Aren’t you?
I bet some of them were damn angry as they breathed their last with a bullet in their guts. Angry at MacArthur, maybe angry at Blamey too, or the bloke next to them who’d said, “Stick your head up and have a look mate”.
A few more might have expressed mild disconcern if they’d known future commentators would label commemoration of their sacrifice “tripe”.
Many thousands more Japanese were killed than Australians. Thousands of civilians died too. Yet Ken dismisses the memory of this as a unique event in history in the most disparaging of terms.
It’s not me who’s angry that’s the problem.
It’s Ken being arrogant about something he clearly knows little about…. that’s the problem. And then he tries to cover it up with sad resignation. “Oh, to think that someone is so greviously mistaken as to disagree with me! I’ve spent my life reading books!”
That attitude is a whole other problem. Thankfully Ken’s, not mine.
As to the name “Aussie Bob”. It’s usually wingnuts, questioning my supposed “patriotism” that have a go at it.
Hey Lang, five years ago when I first started using that moniker on this very blog, it seemed like as good a name as any at the time.
It also did the trick as I originated thirty or forty posts here under Tim’s imprimatur during 2005-2007, on polling and the lies of the Libs and their supporters pertaining to those polls.
“Aussie Bob” will do for me. Tim knows who I am - just a nobody who feels strongly about certain issues. That’s good enough for me.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Good Grief, AB?
Where-on-earth did you find that “disrespect to people who actually went out and did something to defend Australia” stuff?
What I was pointing out (and you’ve just proved) is that it’s way too easy to bring up “the troops” in order to shut down a discussion. The CONTRIVED outrage is just cheap.
If you really reckon I’m comparing Australia’s role in the 1940’s to the Iraq misadventure, you’d better read my post again. If you seriously believe I’m out to belittle the sacrifices made in the Second World War, you’d better read my post again.
The only argument I have is with opportunist politicians.
Not convinced, AB? Well think what you want. You’ve gone off on a tangent with this one.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
That’s where I found it, Mars.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
That somehow means that I disrespect the “people who actually went out and did something to defend Australia” over sixty years ago? Are you serious? I’m having a go at the American politicians who hide behind the troops win votes. That’s all.
Think what you want. But in this case you’ve chosen to feel outraged at an issue which doesn’t even exist.
And no… I’m not backpedaling. I saying that maybe YOU misunderstood.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
AB, ‘well 10,000 Aussies and etc;) don’t be bloody silly and try and provoke a response that suits your agenda,
Did you ever serve in the AMF;
Have you ever put your talent as an orator to use for ex Servicemen/Women;
Your age suggests that luckily you avoided by faith or force you didn’t have to show gallantry for the Politics of the day to use you as a whore to their advantage,and for that I’m happy for you.
It may be of not much interest, although I feel you will feel otherwise, that there are a lot of us who don’t bang the drum, we just get back on with things left off, and with conversations with my father and with limited conversations with the fruit of my loins,that it’s a period that happened, and best over and done with, always is the annoyance of the war monger . And the people who take advantage of this.
(I’ll add the usual,Grandfather,WW1,buried at Sutton Forrest, Dad, WW2 buried (private), Viet Nam,buried in my mind)simple approach, it’s what you did.
I wish I was you age,I’m getting tired too early and too often, that’s why I ask you to not be so aggressive in your approach, I don’t care about your history,you own it, I’d like to see your comments on here as something we can learn from, not object to.
Thanks, Lang.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:55 am
No I’m not glad they died but I assume that was clumsily worded and not what you meant. For the record, one of them was my uncle. My other uncle spent four years in Changi and my father was invalided out from New Guinea in 1945 after four years service.
Both are long dead now but I never heard them say “Gosh I wish we had a Battle for Australia Day so our service could be properly commemorated”. Neither of them wanted to be reminded of the war at all. They would have been horrified at the glorification of war that has occurred over the last 15 years - their wives and mothers, even more so. The idea of yet another day when pollies can strut around trying to get vicarious glory from things that they were never part of would have made them chuckle wryly (the men) or downright angry (the women).
September 5th, 2008 at 3:25 am
For what its worth, I reckon the road side argument about the “Battle for Australia” boils down to semantics, maybe it was the “Battle to not have the Battle for Australia” or “Battle for south-east Asia”. It was a Battle alright, and it was damned close to Australia.
But I’d have to agree with Ken in as much as that the way I read the original post, the issue was not “did thousands die to halt and reverse the Japanese advance”, there is no doubt about it, the issue is why we need another memorial day reminding us of a war long over? What is the point of this introduction of another WW2 memorial day?
This is why Paul Ham at the Herald Sun thinks we should have another war memorial day:
If offence is the best form of defence then battles in Papua, at Milne Bay and on the Kokoda Track, were extraordinarily courageous in taking the offensive to the Japanese. And that’s why the Battle for Australia Day and the sacrifice of older generations deserve a moment of quiet contemplation today.
Right, I wonder when Kevin will suggest a day to formally recognise the Australian airmen, sailors and soldiers who fought the fascist Germans and Italians in Europe or the Mediterranean and Middle East. I suggest a name like the “Battle for Somewhere Else Than Australia Day”.
Makes you wonder where this need comes from to have more war memorial days. The timing is amazing, just when the Australian electorate is mulling over its long term commitment to the war in Afghanistan, we get a day to contemplate a heroic war some 60 years ago.
What surprises me, it seems that no one of those urging for a Battle for Australia Day suggest a national day of observance for when Australia was invaded in 1788, causing the death of so many Australians you wouldn’t believe.
Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect and admiration for all those brave men and women who were prepared to follow Menzies call to arms in 39 to fight the Nazi gang wherever they needed to be fought. This respect will however not increase because we now have an extra day to remember them.
Compared to many other milestones in Australia’s varied history ww2 gets plenty of exposure, hardly a month goes by where there isn’t at least one show on TV analysing the ins and outs of that period. Why not put a different cause worth remembrance in the spotlight for one day of the year? Instead of another war memorial day we could have our first extinction of native species day.
Note to AB: The Australian Office for War Memorials has links to wikipedia. I recommend you write them an official complaint regarding how that is just not credible enough. Out of curiosity, would you please be so kind and post us their response here? Thanx.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Why not just thrown a few more sacks of money at the Olympic hopefuls and let them get the medals?
Heaps of reflected glory and photo ops in thumping the Poms, and nobody gets hurt
September 5th, 2008 at 10:40 am
At last we’ve moved away from lazy dismissal to something more concrete.
Of all the battles that Australian soldiers have fought in there was only one that involved direct attacks by the enemy upon Australia and direct offensive land operations on Australian territory (Papua) against that enemy.
That’ll do me as a “Battle For Australia”.
Why should we commemorate it?
For too long these grim fights - which included Milne Bay and Kokoda/Buna/Gona, the two first land defeats of the Japanese - have been pushed into the background.
A lot of it, especially recently, comes from political origins: the need by conservative governments to belittle Labor governments as “soft on National Security”, so as to prop up their military adventures in Viet Nam and Iraq.
It got to the point where even the Australian War Memorial (where Peter Stanley was the relevant historian at the time) displayed signage playing down the importance of the battles to our north, based on Japanese documents captured after the war. A few documents balanced against 10,000 dead and three years of fighting doesn’t cut it for me.
If the Japanese had been handed New Guinea on a plate, instead of thrown out, the whole Pacific War, maybe even the World War could have gone differently, with Australia occupied. The threat of invasion had to be met, or else we might well have seen the contents of those Japanese High military documents quietly reversed.
We celebrate debacles - Gallipoli, Viet Nam and Iraq - with bands and parades and commemorative days, yet the one battle Australian soldiers fought in that involved the literal forward defence of our shores has been officially almost ignored until now.
No, I haven’t been in the ADF and I don’t see how that is relevant. Yes, I realise that a lot of the now old blokes who fought in the Pacific just want to forget it (I’ve spoken to many). But as a nation I still believe the battle ought to be remembered as a victory in what was perceived at the time as an existential fight.
This is especially so as, for conservative political reasons, the Battle For The Pacific has been sidelined deliberately and quite cynically. I assume that if Ken has done all the reading he will have read some of the speeches Downer made in 2005, and the articles he wrote, as well as those written and published (mostly in The Australian) by similar peddlars of misinformation.
To their credit, The Australian also published rebuttals, one of them by Rudd himself when he was Foreign Affairs spokesman. It’s a good rebuttal and shows that at least to him the Battle For Australia was no mirage.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,15332416-7583,00.html
I re-read it from time to time when I think Rudd’s lost the plot. It explains a lot about the man, and also explains a lot about why Downer hated him so much.
September 5th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
AB, thanks for that link and your comments..