Howard's bubble speech
Yesterday John Winston Howard, Australia's prime minister had his moment in the sun. Live coverage on CNN. The foreign press got his name right for once. The speech was tedious, turgid, meretricious drivel. Howard produced no evidence. Howard produced no reason for war beyond maintaining the US alliance. Howard did not even take the Australian people into his confidence enough to admit, after months of prevarication, that we have been locked into the war drive for months.

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald's All the propaganda that's fit to hear: 'Channel Nine's Laurie Oakes summed up the frustration with his question: "... you were going to present today evidence from our intelligence agencies of a link between Iraq and terrorists. What happened to the evidence? Why isn't it in your speech? And since you've made no attempt at all to demonstrate a link, are we to assume there is none?"

In reply, Howard said he had endeavoured "to establish clear evidence that terrorist groups wanted weapons of mass destruction, and I think I did that and I think I did that quite convincingly."

So this was the message: that terrorists would like to get weapons of mass destruction? Who would have thought.'

Indeed, General Cosgrove, the chief of defence force, was saddled with giving the most embarrassing interview of his life when he had to use his reputation as a national hero to say that he would never lie to the Australian people and our troops are not yet engaged in combat in Iraq.

"I wouldn't lie to the media and I wouldn't lie to the people," General Cosgrove said.

"You asked the question and we thought about the answer and the answer was the truth."

Usually, we would expect such an announcement to come from the prime minister or the minister of defence. Sadly for them the Australian people trust Cosgrove but we do not trust Howard and his ministers. Why? Because they have spent months insisting that the decision to commit our defence force to battle has not been made.

In his long public career there has been no right-wing fashion or fad that he has not eagerly joined. if George W Bush suddenly started listening to the Beatles, Howard would buy bellbottoms. Thus Howard invented Hansonism before Hanson and tried to ride to power on anti-Asian feeling in 1987. He has always supported privatisation no matter what. He has always supported close ties to the US and Britain no matter what.

George Soros has more interesting things to say. In a piece today he argues that US supremacy is a bubble.

'I see parallels between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not arise out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but misconception distorts reality. Here, the dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of American supremacy the misconception.

For a while, reality reinforces the misconception, but eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable. During the self-reinforcing phase, the misconception may be tested, and when a test is successful the misconception is reinforced. This widens the gap, leading to an eventual reversal. The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences.

There seems to be an inexorable quality about this, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage. Most stock market booms are aborted long before the extremes reached by the recent bull market. The sooner this happens, the better. That is how I view the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy.'

Howard, ever the fashion-conscious speculator, has signed up to this one and bought a first-class ticket on the Baghdad express. He has done it without the knowledge or consent of the Australian people or their parliament, but what's a little prevarication among citizens when you have a great and powerful friend to impress?

Soros writes: 'Iraq is the first instance when the Bush doctrine is being applied and it is provoking an allergic reaction. The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars: (1) The United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and (2) the United States arrogates the right to preemptive action.

These pillars support two classes of sovereignty: American sovereignty, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations, and the sovereignty of all other states. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated starkly; it is buried in Orwellian doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because the doctrine contradicts American values.'

Sadly, Howard also needs doublespeak because the Bush doctrine violates Australian values also. Read Howard's speech. He would agree with everything in the last two paragraphs. And that is all he really needed to say. It could have been handled by press release instead of summoning the national press to the NeoRoman splendours Parliament House's great hall.

Howard supported the Vietnam War, as did his party. For a guy who so often tells us about his sense of history you'd think he might, just once, cast a thoughtful eye over one shoulder and ask himself what the outcome of the Vietnam adventure was. At least this time Howard probably thinks the Iraqis are to be bombed forward into the market age rather than backward into the stone age.