John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

If you stand up and say your policy is to bring about a withdrawal of all combat units by March 2008, that is noted by terrorist leaders. It is a source of encouragement and comfort, and we have got to be realistic about it. Bill Hayden once said, ‘Words are bullets.’ And in this particular operation, words spoken by presidential aspirants are, in diplomatic terms, bullets. They do send a signal. They do say to those who think that if they hold out long enough they will defeat the United States that there is real hope that that is going to occur. That is what I said and that is what I had in mind when I made those remarks about Senator Obama. I have no intention of retracting those remarks because I believe they go very much to the national interests of this country.

In the time that I have been Prime Minister, which is now approaching 11 years, I have had the privilege of working with both a Democrat President, in Bill Clinton, and a Republican President, in George Bush. We have agreed on many things in relation to both men. The policy that we pursued in relation to Iraq in 1998 when we sent the SAS to the Middle East in response to a request from Clinton represented an example of the two countries working together in close partnership. We have worked together in very close partnership with the Bush administration ever since President Bush was elected in 2000. We have criticised both administrations. We attacked the Clinton administration’s neglect of Australia’s farm interests over the lamb issue, where I believed the decisions taken by the Clinton administration were unfair and quite hurtful to Australian interests. And when the Republican administration arbitrarily and carelessly imposed tariff quotas in relation to steel on the exports of many countries we were amongst the first to complain, and in 48 hours we secured a dramatic reversal of that decision taken by the Bush administration.

Yes, I have supported the Bush administration on Iraq for the reason that I have outlined. Yes, I believe that for us to pull out of Iraq now would be to hurt an ally at a time of great need for that ally; therefore I am not prepared to do that because I believe that when the going is tough it imposes a greater obligation on you to stand loyally by your allies and friends. The Leader of the Opposition may imagine that if he becomes Prime Minister he can ring up the President and say to him, ‘Look, George, I’m going to pull these troops out within a little while,’ and that the President will say, ‘Okay’—he is a courteous man—and he will accept it. But do you think that will leave the alliance unaffected? Does anybody imagine at the present time that it will do other than great diplomatic and psychological damage to the American position in Iraq and to America’s fight against terrorism for us to do that? I believe it will. That is why I believe overwhelmingly the interests of the alliance are better served by our side of politics.

See this speech in context