Green Jello Hotdish

Front page news from the BBC this morning as Australia Prime Minister John Howard has said a victory for Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 will usher in victory for Iraqi terrorists.

Excuse me?

I’m the first to tell you I’m cautiously on the Obama bandwagon — but not because of his war stance. I’m afraid that he won’t be able to withstand the brutal attacks against him with minimal experience at the Federal level. Of course, this could very well work in his favor in the eyes of the American public, as we saw with Jimmy Carter and others in the past. He’s a better candidate than Sen. Hillary Clinton, of course, because of the baggage she carries.

But if Obama’s already pissing off foreign heads of state as a candidate over his anti-war stance, I’m 100 percent all for him. While I was in Australia two months ago, during Labour Party Parliamentary leadership elections in December, Prime Minister Howard has bigger fish to catch before he can be critical of American candidates. The analysis in the papers, on television, and from conversations with my good friend and travel companion Bryan who had just spent five months in the country, all pointed to rocky roads ahead for the PM. Perhaps this is just an antic to bolster Australian support for the war — and Liberal Party leadership — in the only country that still claims any positive public backing for American Middle Eastern policy in polling data.