Rudd is cutting and running

FIVE years ago, Kevin Rudd sneeringly referred to (erroneous) reports of an Australian troop withdrawal from Iraq as an attempt by then prime minister John Howard at "trying to crab-walk away from its (Australia's) responsibilities".

Today, the last 550 members of the Australian combat force in Iraq are in the process of withdrawing in fulfilment of Prime Minister Rudd's election promise to have combat troops out by the middle of this year. Is that an absurd contradiction? You bet it is but by no means the worst of this Government's policy backflips. When in Opposition, Rudd tried to paint himself as a conservative's conservative, mounting an attack on the Howard government from the Right side of politics. In December 2003, he told The Bulletin's Maxine McKew - now the invisible Member for Bennelong and Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care - that "the Americans and Brits are privately pissed off with John Howard because he has been quietly seeking to exit the field". Howard's strategy, he said, was "based not on a military exit strategy but on a political exit strategy". "I think that's going doggo," he told McKew. "Frankly, it reflects political cowardice on Howard's part." As it happens, the policy didn't exist, it was another of Rudd's frequent fantasies, and coming from such a spin-inspired politician as Rudd, the charge of "political cowardice" is more blathering nonsense. If any Australian government is judged by history to be guilty of walking away from its commitments in Iraq, to have cut and run, it will be Rudd's Government, not Howard's. That said, the Australian forces have done a fantastic job since the SAS first went in hours before the ultimatum given to the tyrant Saddam Hussein had expired. Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson and a number of Opposition MPs have emphasised the view expressed at the weekend by Howard that Australian troops should have remained in Iraq in a training role. As WA Liberal Dennis Jensen pointed out, Australia is being seen to leave Iraq even as the war is "essentially being won". That is, it looks like we're skeedaddling as the Coalition forces are showing real results. Last week, historian Professor Francis Fukuyama, in conversation with Professor Geoffrey Garrett of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, told a large audience at the Conservatorium of Music that US President George W. Bush should be given credit for the successful surge in Iraq. He said it appeared as if 90,000 Sunni fighters switched sides in the conflict and that the Iraqi army established a monopoly of force in Basra and Sadr City. A partial withdrawal of US troops, he estimated, might be possible within a year or 18 months. The situation in Afghanistan was very different, he suggested, with stability under a constant threat from Taliban forces given sanctuary in northwest Pakistan. He said the West might need troops there for the next 20 years or more. Rudd is taking Australians out of a war that looks winnable and putting them in a conflict which has no apparent end in sight. Good one, Prime Minister. Then again, Rudd has addressed NATO on the Afghanistan war - an exercise largely ignored by our allies and skipped by many in the Australian press contingent which accompanied Rudd to Brussels as they had to leave town (albeit on their own jet) to get to Rudd's next stop before he could deliver his view of the importance of his European mission. Australia's troops can take credit for participating in the ousting of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein. The Howard government can take credit for assisting the US and Coalition of the Willing. There is not much Rudd's Government can take credit for from the Iraq conflict beyond removing the remaining combat troops. Yesterday Rudd said the Howard government had not sought advice from its public servants before joining the Coalition of the Willing. Last week, Rudd was shown to have rejected advice from four of his own Government's departments before pursuing the chimera of the ridiculous FuelWatch program. In Parliament yesterday, Rudd backed the international community as embodied by the United Nations - the same UN that couldn't deliver aid to Burma for nearly three weeks after tens of thousands lost their lives in a typhoon. He said Australia was still committed to the reconstruction of Iraq though his Government's offer to train Iraqi police outside Iraq had been rejected by the Iraqis, with good reason. Nelson then nailed Rudd, quoting remarks from 2002 in which Rudd stated his unequivocal belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. While Rudd studied his briefing notes, Nelson made one of the finest speeches on Iraq the House has heard. The Middle East is still breeding extremists but Iraqis are enjoying new freedoms. Australians can take pride in the role our troops played in making Iraq a better place.