Australia’s PM John Howard Slams Obama

It seems that Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard isn’t exactly looking forward to a possible Obama Presidency:

Australia’s conservative prime minister slammed Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war, a day after the first-term U.S. senator announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008.
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Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch Bush ally who has sent troops to Iraq and faces his own re-election bid later this year, said Obama’s proposals would spell disaster for the Middle East.

“I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory,” Howard said on Nine Network television.

“If I were running al-Qaida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”

Of course, terrorists aren’t ‘praying for’ an Obama victory at all. Utter nonsense… Some people say that terrorists wanted Kerry to win in ‘04, others say that Bin Laden wanted Bush to win. Howard now says that terrorists want Obama to win, I’m quite sure that other people will start saying that terrorists want someone like John McCain to win because of his support for the Iraq war and the escalationsurge.

As for me, I believe that we (people living in the West – well, everywhere actually) should vote for the person who we believe will deal best with today’s (and the future’s) problems. What terrorists think of the candidate is quite irrelevant. We have to do what we consider to be best. Besides: terrorists will use everything to their own advantage. A surge / war means more deaths, they will use it for propaganda purposes. A withdrawal means ‘defeat’ or something quite similar… and they will use it for propaganda purposes.

One must look at what one believes to be the best way of dealing with problems. Again, what Osama thinks about it is irrelevant. In the global fight against terrorism ‘we’ must try to understand the results of different policies and, then, ‘we’ have to decide what policies to carry out.

Frankly, Howard was way out of line. It is absolutely unacceptable for a leader of a country to talk like this about the potential leader of another country, even more so, of an allied country.

More at:
Larisa Alexandrovna’s at-Largely, Ed Morrissey’s Captain’s Quarters, Jules Crittenden and Chris at AmericaBlog.

Also check out Richard Blair’s post at the All Spin Zone.