Here lies Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s most potent argument. He can say that, to Australian public opinion, it looks like one rule for Americans, another for citizens of its ally | OPINION from Bob Carr assange
Two years ago at my local ALP branch, I moved a motion urging the party to support dropping extradition proceedings against Julian Assange. Maroubra ALP is not inner city. It might be regarded as a bastion of the right. The motion was carried, near unanimously. After the debate, one member came up and said: “I think Assange is probably a narcissistic bastard but he’s ours.
Manning, the American who slipped the material to Assange, goes free while the Australian who published it faces extradition, trial in Virginia and the rest of his life in cruel confinement in a high-security prison, likely on the plains of Oklahoma. In the context of Australia’s role as an ally – the heft we deliver for the US empire – a decision to let Assange walk free rates about five minutes of President Biden’s Oval Office attention. And our ambassador in Washington should be deputed to trot up and down the Senate corridors telling Republicans that, if they value our friendship, they might lay off the president for listening to Canberra on this one.
The Iraq War proved only the paradox of unintended consequences, unleashing Islamic State on the world and delivering a boon to Iranian power projection. Pursuing Assange makes it look like the unfinished business of these wars devolves on the pursuit of one shackled Australian, even as if snatching Assange is the last expression of American frustration at the battlefield defeats by ragged insurgents. It’s time the restless giant closed the books on the disasters unloosed by George W. Bush.
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