The Greens have done it again, marching straight to the most predictable position in global politics and then congratulating themselves for being brave.
This time it was over the Prime Minister’s decision to back the US airstrikes on Iran. Another Greens example of pretending to be anti-conflict when they are really just anti-western.
Labor’s statement in support of the strikes was hardly bloodthirsty. It framed the action as an attempt to stop Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon, condemned the regime’s oppression, and warned about escalation.
In other words, all Albo did was support an ally’s deterrence efforts, while hoping the bombings don’t spiral into something more.
The Greens responded as though Australia had joined an invading army. They denounced the strikes as illegal and abhorrent, demanded that the government rule out any Australian assistance whatsoever, and reached for the familiar grab bag of criticisms about the alliance: Pine Gap, AUKUS, you name it.
It’s the kind of misplaced moral exhibitionism that ends up, time after time, giving comfort to the worst actors on the world stage. And who also condemned the actions against Iran? The authoritarian regimes of Russia and China of course.
The uncomfortable reality the Greens prefer not to mention is that Iran isn’t a fragile democracy being bullied by a bigger power.
It’s a totalitarian theocracy that crushes dissent at home and projects violence abroad. It arms and funds militant proxies.
The Greens have done it again, marching straight to the most predictable position in global politics and then congratulating themselves for being brave
Labor’s statement in support of the strikes was hardly bloodthirsty
It destabilises neighbours. It uses intimidation, imprisonment and brutality to maintain control. Its rulers do not fear elections, they fear their own people.
And guess what? Most Greens would likely be jailed or murdered if they lived in Iran, it’s not exactly tolerant of woke social values the Greens project when not weighing in on foreign policy.
When the Greens’ first instinct is a furious attack on the US rather than a clear eyed assessment of the regime being targeted, they are not standing for peace. They’re defending a status quo in which dictators keep their leverage and democracies keep wringing their hands.
The Greens’ line that ‘we cannot bomb our way to peace’ is a slogan dressed up as strategy. Nobody seriously thinks airstrikes create harmony in and of themselves.
The question is whether credible force can prevent something worse happening, such as a nuclear armed Iran that would entrench regional coercion and raise the stakes of every future confrontation. Or whether a show of western force cab finally destabilise the murderous Iranian regime such that dissenters can finally over throw it.
And then there is the Australian context to think about.
A Labor PM, of all people, quickly backing the US on a hard security call should tell you something about how mainstream doing so is.
Albo is not John Howard. Penny Wong isn’t Alexander Downer. Yet even this Labor government is saying, clearly and plainly, that Iran cannot be allowed to reach the nuclear threshold.
The uncomfortable reality the Greens prefer not to mention is that Iran isn’t a fragile democracy being bullied by a bigger power (pictured, people watching smoke rise in Tehran)
The Greens’ response isn’t to argue the nuances, it’s to treat the alliance itself as the problem.
If One Nation is a fringe right wing party considered radical, the Greens are an even worse fringe left wing collective.
Not because they care about peace, but because their worldview is so rigidly anti-US that it routinely lands them on the side of regimes that despise everything Greens claim to stand for at their domestic touchy feely best.
Australia deserves a serious debate about war and restraint, and the balance between the two. What it doesn’t need is a protest movement cosplaying as a serious political party while it runs interference, yet again, for a brutal dictatorship.
