By Sarah Smiles
A PROMINENT former diplomat has labelled the war in Iraq a "disaster" and flayed the Howard Government for undermining Australian democracy.
Richard Woolcott, the former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that the Howard Government has become shackled by "arrogance" and a doggedly pro-American foreign policy that has allowed it to neglect Australia's commitments to human rights.
In a damning speech at the University of Newcastle yesterday, he cited the ongoing detention of terrorism suspect David Hicks in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay as an example that "Australians' civil liberties are being undermined in the name of protecting them from terrorism".
He said that politicians in government were more concerned about getting re-elected than about the wisdom of their policies. With fewer statesmen in their ranks than Soviet-styled "apparatchiks", Australian democracy had consequently suffered.
"It is affected by hubris, the arrogance that comes from 10 years in power and the politics of fear, nurtured by the so-called war on terror and latent racism," he said.
"The Government has suffered from a lack of patience and humility and tends to treat its critics — even those who have served it in the past — as virtual enemies rather than as possibly useful channels to community opinion."
He also said that public servants had become infected by a dangerous "culture of conformity and cover-up", where they were less inclined to question failing policies.
Mr Woolcott, the adviser to eight Australian prime ministers and departmental secretary during the 1991 Gulf War, said Canberra's decision to go to war in Iraq had been a "catastrophic foreign and security policy blunder" that had increased the global threat of terrorism.
He said the Government's rhetoric on "staying the course" in Iraq in order to establish democracy was spurious.