Sniper Victim Meets Once Homeless Car Urchin

HILLARY Clinton and Kevin Rudd have met in the United States. The Prime Minister used the meeting to clumsily involve himself in the US presidential race by endorsing his now virtually beaten interlocutor. When George W. Bush did something comparably partisan in relation to Mark Latham, the Australian left and several old world nationalists were 'outraged'. "It is quite wrong for the US President to take sides in that dispute and seek to assist one party," sniffed Malcolm Fraser at the time. Adding to an increasingly long list of foreign policy bungles, Mr Rudd offered to help Senator Clinton "if he could." He'll also meet John McCain but has only spoken to the Republican's likely opponent, Barack Obama, by telephone. Ironically, in that conversation Senator Obama supposedly mentioned John Howard's partisanship in relation to the Senator's alleged attractiveness to a battered Al Qaeda.

The endorsement gaffe occurs within the wider context of Mr Rudd's mismanagement of Australia's relationship with Japan - he apparently thinks that country is an "emerging economy" - and India. Andrew Rob is properly concerned about the "amateur way" the government has treated the world's largest democracy over uranium sales. But having telegraphed his lack of interest in Japan and a lack of trust in India, Sinophile Mr Rudd looks set to exacerbate the impact of those mistakes with his escalating sycophancy towards China. As part of his government's multi-million dollar campaign for a seat at the Security Council, Mr Rudd now says he wants the world's biggest and worst police state to have a greater global and regional security role. Given the Tibet crisis, his timing is morally perverse. And a long way from the brave abhorrence of tyranny shown by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.