Enemies At Our Doorstep

The great expatriate poet Peter Porter once remarked that the British public was apt to behave like a herd of rather resentful, bad-tempered sheep and Australians weren't much better. If he's right, there could be few admissions more likely to incense the mob than that the Government had increased the risk of Terrorist attack on the home paddock.

That is the concession the Opposition has been trying to extract all week and that the Government has been resisting. It hasn't been a very edifying spectacle, as Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer did cartwheels around an ill-considered remark by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Mark Latham and Opposition Foreign Affairs and International Security spokesman Kevin Rudd contrived to suggest that, had they had pastoral responsibility, there would have been a more transparent process, better outcomes and less risk to the flock and lambs as yet unborn.

The depressing thing about the debate was that it dumbed down the whole question of the Iraq War from a moral issue or a strategic imperative to a mere argument about consequences. Worse, it misconceived the issue of potential consequences.

To his credit, NSW Premier Bob Carr was quick to dismiss the question of increased risk as unanswerable and, by implication, fatuous. "I'm not going to comment on that," he said. "That is something we simply don't know. You would have to have wire taps in every al-Qa'ida bunker to know whether that's the truth or not ... we saw the death of 88 Australians in Bali and that was before the Iraq War. We simply don't know."

Mark Steyn's column in The Australian ("These Guys Want To Kill Us Anyway") gave the most succinct answer to the question: "It makes no difference." He said Keelty's mistake was "confusing old-school Terrorism - blowing the legs off grannies as a means to an end - with the new: blowing the legs off grannies is the end. Old-School Terrorists have relatively viable goals ... You might not agree with these goals, you might not think them negotiable, but at least they're not stark, staring insane ... Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, summed it up very pithily, 'We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."'

The madness of the Islamo-fascist project, so alien to the Australian secular mind-set, is the central point. Confronted with hydra-headed opponents waging endless holy War with universal malevolence, the idea of increased risk collapses on itself. Relative vulnerability becomes more a matter of Terrorist opportunities than notional orders of provocation. By Tuesday the Government had wheeled out defence force chief Peter Cosgrove to contradict Keelty and put matters plainly: "I think we're being attacked by al-Qa'ida, JI and all the other Terrorists because of who we are and what we are rather than where we've been or when we've been there." It echoed ASIO chief Dennis Richardson's explanation in 2003: "Because we are who we are."

Cato the Elder, in response to an implacable North African foe, put Western civilisation's response very simply: Carthago delenda est. Carthage must be destroyed. Now, as then, we will never be safe while they are there. They must never imagine that we are too supine or decadent to comprehend the danger they pose and to annihilate them.

In its second term in office, commentators used to often remark that the Howard Government was administratively competent but "rhetorically challenged" (in the same way that the purblind were said to be optically challenged). If the Government is to win the next election well enough to govern with confident authority, it's going to have to become a great deal more rhetorically adroit in the meantime.

I don't mean that it's going to have to best the Opposition in parliament or in televised debate. That's not often hard. Rather, it must embark on the process of careful explanation of how the world has changed since the War on Terrorism began. Instead of expecting the electorate to respond like resentful sheep, the task of Government will be to engage them as conscious, civilian participants in a life or death struggle that will undoubtedly reach these shores, one way or another. For years Australia has been a target for Islamic Terrorists. Yet the surprise and outrage evident in last week's Letters to the Editor (in The Australian) suggest that the lessons of Bali have not been learned and that the land of the long weekend lives on in the infantilised minds of many.

When, as seems inevitable, Terrorists attack targets in our capitals, righteous indignation and blaming the authorities because someone has stolen our collective security blanket will be pathetically inadequate, childish responses. Instead we should be preparing for the queues, the restriction of free movement, the tedium and minor deprivations - with occasional interruptions of horror - that are in store.

An obvious but largely misleading point of reference is London during the Battle of Britain. September 11 is more instructive. Havoc-wreaking bomb strikes are to be expected, with or without Chemical or Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction, as they become available to Terrorist groups. Maximising civilian deaths and economic dislocation are high priorities in waging modern Jihad.

Sydney might expect a simultaneous attack on the Harbour Bridge and the submarine traffic tunnels. Some authorities discount this scenario in favour of softer targets, but it's plainly impossible to prevent well-organised and determined suicide bombers in cars.

The "demonstration effects", as they're called, would be like something from a Godzilla film. Imagine peak-hour commuter trains and traffic plunging into the sea while thousands drown below them. Think of the chaos and the crisis in public morale and business confidence. If the Terrorists managed to bomb one of the pylons as well, so the bridge couldn't be rapidly remounted on the coat-hanger, the structure would be a lingering reminder of crumbling certainties.

Anyone who imagines this isn't possible should consider what the leading expert on al-Qa'ida, Rohan Gunaratna, told last week's Terror summit: "Jemaah Islamiah is still a legal entity in Indonesia. JI continues to train operatives on the Philippines' island of Mindanao, producing its latest crop of graduates as recently as January. They could very well conduct a Terrorist operation today or tomorrow."

As if to highlight his claim, the Philippines and Indonesian delegations to the summit failed to attend.

Gunaratna also said: "Australia must continue its excellent work with Asian countries such as Indonesia, which have different cultures and may not share the same sense of urgency. They are different - that is the challenge ... The very fact that a week after Bali the JI chief of Australia left Australian soil legally and went to Indonesia, and now you have started to hunt for him, is a clear indication you did not have the appropriate legislation (to apprehend him)."

There are warning bells aplenty here for anyone with ears to hear.

As it happens, Gunaratna agreed with Keelty that Australia's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq had increased the Terrorist threat to Australia. However, he said: "Australia has no option but to work with the US in the fight against Terror because it has long been regarded by Islamic fundamentalists as a Crusader country."

It's ironic that our antagonists imagine us as a Crusader State. They pay a compliment that is as anachronistic as Jihad and give us credit for a degree of confidence in the values of Western civilisation too seldom seen.

Christopher Pearson: The Australian