:: Wog Blog ::

:: WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT? ::

:: Saturday 8 February 2003 ::

Talking talking.

In today's Australian Matt Price writes "So those boatpeople were fleeing evil then". Well g'uh. Of course they were fleeing evil, Matt. We knew it. We always knew it. And we knew we, like them, would obviously choose Oz over Indonesia even though Indonesia was an option. But that was the point. When you make it all the way down to Oz from Iraq or say, Afghanistan, you are no longer fleeing. You are choosing. And it is not your choice to make.

You can see where Matt is headed. He wants us to feel bad about Tampa and about the war.

He is still arguing that we should have let the Tampa folks in.

Because Iraq really is a bad place, where some of those folks are from. And we should have let them in to Oz.

And he is arguing that we should not go to war to make Iraq a better place, one people will be less likely to flee from, because in the process of making it better lots more Iraqis will flee and we will have to take some of them in.

Wha'? I thought he wanted to take them in.

Maybe he does, but he just reckons that our government won't take them in. I hope they don't. The point is not to make Oz the safe haven for Iraqis. The point is to make Iraq the safe haven.

You gotta watch this guy. He sometimes does that Insiders show on the ABC on Sunday mornings. It is great to watch him think to the middle of the line. And stop right there.

See, here's the thing. Iraqis want to be rid of the pox who ruthlessly leads them.

Once they are rid of them, just like Afghanistan, Iraqis can be told, fix your country. Make it good. And it will be a fair thing to demand of them. The west will have done its part. It has taken Iraqis as refugees for decades. And it has liberated Iraq itself from Saddam. And doing these things wipes clean the real faults of the past where the west gave Saddam support and let him continue on with his abuses.





:: WB 5:08 am [link+] ::