has been making a fool of himself again at our expense.Downer let fly a bucket load of sanctimonious hogwash at the United Nations last week, exposing the feeble minded backwater of contemporary Australian politics for the whole world to witness.
Downer is the prototypical postmodern politician; smug, arrogant, petulant, lazy, complacent and incompetent. He exhibits about as much political acumen as the tar baby.
He is completely impervious to rational thought and utterly intolerant of criticism. He can be condescending, haughty and hurtful at times.
His innate ability to avoid public debate and parley nonsense rivals that of his fellow western leader, friend and coconspirator, George W Bush, president of the United States.
Downer suffers from an incurable case of self-importance, which has been exacerbated by ten years of ministerial privilege and preening.
He fancies himself as a great statesman, striding the world and dispensing pearls of wisdom. But those pearls are plastic imitations.
He is in fact, a phoney, a fraud, a laughing stock. He’s a prancing pony, a flamboyant fruit cake, a perfumed powder puff.
Downer is the political equivalent of a loose cannon with a screw loose.
He is a bumbling, fatuous half wit with unbounded pretension.
Radio shock jock Ray Hadley once called him “a pompous dope”.
Downer exemplifies the shallow absurdity of the pro-war, anti-democratic, neoconservative, post-9/11 terror-crazed, groupthink mindset that as become de rigueur in the current political climate.
His performance at the UN provides an illuminating illustration of just how lame brained and ill informed our foreign minister really is.
Downer launched a scathing attack on the UN for failing to prevent the spread of nuclear technology and get tough on terror.
He criticised the “outdated ideology” of some UN delegates who believe that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”.
Wasn’t that the ideology of Reagan and Bush senior, whose CIA financed, trained and armed with stinger missiles, the anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahedin “freedom fighters” throughout the eighties.
But wait a second, aren’t Bush, Blair, Howard and Downer currently supporting the Northern Alliance “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan and the Peshmurga “freedom fighters” in Kurdistan?
Downer said it was important to criminalise “terrorist organisations and their foot soldiers - like those captured in Afghanistan - who bear arms on a battlefield but pay no heed to the laws of war, fight for no regular army, wear no uniform, and no recognisable insignia”.
But wait a second, isn’t that an exact description of the two British spies caught in Basra last week. Isn’t that pretty much an exact description of the American and Australian spies operating in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere round the world. And isn’t that an accurate description of all those mercenaries employed by private security firms in ever greater numbers.
“How can some nations continue to assert that the deliberate maiming and targeting of civilians is sometimes justified?” Mr Downer asked.
But wait a second, aren’t we one of those nations that asserts it is justifiable to deliberately target, kill and maim civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, in order to spread freedom and democracy?
And just who was responsible for the failure of the UN summit to reach an agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons? Well of course, it was Downer’s good friend and ally, George W Bush, who, according to senior diplomats quoted in the Observer, “sabotaged” the agreement by refusing to countenance any form of disarmament.
Downer desperately needs a reality check. His conception of the world bears little relation to the situation he helped create in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His rhetoric about “staying the course” and “getting the job done” is meaningless drivel, errant nonsense, misguided, misleading and deluded tripe authored by the White House.
His stubborn refusal to consider any viewpoint other than his own, his denial or ignorance of pertinent facts and his blasé rejection of expert opinion, leaves him with very little to recommend his attitude or substantiate his position, apart from his title of foreign minister.
But these days, political office is sufficient to garner credence.
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