Posted on 05/18/2006 10:25:10 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
AUSTRALIA would always owe a war debt to its friend the US, which had been a great power for good, Treasurer Peter Costello said today.
Mr Costello was asked today if he agreed with Prime Minister John Howard that it was important for American power and influence to continue and prevail.
The Treasurer said America historically had represented the best and the worst, contrasting the nation building efforts of America's pilgrim fathers with those who traded slaves.
"I think you've always had this duality running through the United States," Mr Costello told ABC Radio.
"(It is) a great aspirational power, which stood for liberty and freedom, but like all great powers had its downside, its underside.
"And I think certainly since the Second World War, the United States has been a great power for good."
Australia must never forget the war debt it owed the nation, Mr Costello said.
"We should never forget in Australia, in the Second World War, when the Japanese advance was almost unstoppable and was bombing Darwin and Broome, our country, without American power we wouldn't have been able to defend our own country," he said.
"We will always owe that to the Americans."
Mr Costello said he understood why some people resented the US, saying it was similar to the way some in the Pacific resented Australia.
It was because everybody resented the big kid on the block, and the US was the world's only superpower, he said.
"In fact, I remarked once being an Australian in the Pacific made me realise how the Americans must feel in the world," Mr Costello said.
"Because we are the big economic power, we have the aid."
Mr Costello said Australia was also the Pacific's military power, citing recent interventions in the Solomon Islands and East Timor.
"When you see it that perspective, people both love you and resent you," he said.
"You can understand I think how people respond to Americans on the global stage.
"They both love and resent. But let me say this, the world would be a worse place if this great superpower, instead of being a democracy and extolling the virtues of liberty, was a military power.
"Lets suppose you had this great power which America is and it was under a dictatorship.
"The world would be a much, much worse place. And we are lucky that the great power of the world, which happens to be a friend of ours, is a democracy."
I'm glad he put this (slave owning) in the past, but would like to point out that we didn't invent slavery; vile as it was, it had been practiced since the dawn of time.
bump
aussie, thanks for the pleasant article - a nice change.
Were any of the slave ships American? Did American ships leave this shore for the express putpose of buying slaves and bringing them back here?
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