Australia's John Howard stands by Obama smear

Posted by Joshua Holland at 7:25 AM on February 13, 2007.

Australian PM John Howard -- one of the last of the hard-core Bush bootlicks in the Western Alliance -- is taking some heat after saying that Barack Obama is adored by terrorists everywhere …

OPPOSITION Leader Kevin Rudd today went on the offensive against Prime Minister John Howard over his verbal attack on US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, warning it might damage the Australia-US alliance.

Rudd said:

To accuse the Democratic Party of the United States of being al-Qaeda's party of choice, to accuse the Democratic Party of being the terrorists' party of choice, to accuse the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson of being the terrorists' party of choice is a most serious charge. I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say to the nation that it is his serious view that the Democratic Party of the United States is the terrorists' party of choice.

Rudd called for Howard's censure, but the motion failed along party lines.

Howard's standing by his comments, but he's back-peddling on the part about how Osama bin Laden is praying for the Democratic Party as a whole to win in 2008.

A defiant John Howard has stepped up his criticism of the US presidential hopeful Barack Obama as the most favoured candidate of terrorists in Iraq …

But the Prime Minister denied he was making "generic attack on the American Democrats" and said Senator Obama's call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq by March 2008 was also matter of Australia's national security.

Here's what he said, you decide if he was making a "generic" attack on Dems:

If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.

That's settled, I think. But what to make of this attack in the first place? What can you say about John Howard -- that self-inflated, insignificant shadow of a poodle; a raving, Liebermanesque Islamophobe who's launched a dozen stupid culture wars during his term while triangulating Australia's organized labor into the trash heap with his Frank Luntz-inspired "industrial relations reforms" -- what to make of his attacks on the Democrats' rock star, Barack Obama? How to respond to a suck-up like that messing with a man with Obama's moving personal story and such honest-to-God, non-scary religiosity?

I will say this: the only reason John Howard is squawking is that Australia has lost a grand total of two soldiers in Iraq, both in accidents. Without a single combat death, more than 6 in 10 Aussies disapprove of Howard's Iraq policies.

Hopefully, this'll come back to bite him on the ass. Labor's ahead of Howard's Coalition in recent polls, the lead's been widening since October and Rudd has the highest approval rating for any opposition leader in the 35-year history of the AC/Nielson poll.

Labor's watched similar leads disappear in the last two election years, but maybe this time they'll send him along the way of Berlusconi and Aznar.

Tagged as: iraq, obama, howard

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.