High fives, low blows
WISHFUL thinkers habitually portray Treasurer Peter Costello as "mean and bad" and his brother, the Reverend Tim Costello, as "good and caring", indicating where their sodden sympathies lie.
The East Timor chaos has given them another opportunity to promote Rev Tim, but the gushing accolades may, unfortunately, be woefully misplaced.
East Timor's dysfunctional Marxist-leaning administration is largely the creation of political activists who operated from the security provided by international aid organisations like World Vision, of which the good and caring cleric, who is never afraid to enter the political fray, is CEO.
Indeed, Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, wife of East Timor's president Xanana Gusmao, worked for years as an undercover agent for the resistance movement using the code name Ruby Blade while maintaining her cover as a development worker and English teacher with an aid agency.
Poisoned pacifists simplistically react to any criticism of the failed East Timor with the ludicrous retort that critics must be part of the Jakarta lobby, but that isn't necessarily so.
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All it takes is a dose of realism, notably absent from the kumbaya crowd's gatherings, and a realisation that revolutionaries, be they the late Yasser Arafat, or the thugs from the ANC, rarely make good governors once they win power.
Rev Tim, a foundation member of the candle-waving black armband brigade, was in East Timor this week.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary brevity of his visit, his media cheer squad immediately promoted him to the rank of East Timor expert.
During his whistlestop tour, he found time to air his considerable knowledge of military operations with criticism of the Australian army's operations in Dili and the surrounding areas in an interview with the ABC's Sydney drive-time host Richard Glover, among others.
The Rev Tim has repeatedly claimed there was a humanitarian crisis and that the Australian forces had not responded to his call for 24-hour security at his charity's compound.
Within 24 hours he was back riding the media circuit in Australia, still unhappy with the efforts of the Australian soldiers, but full of praise for Gusmao for appearing publicly, and, in his view, improving the chaotic situation.
Unfortunately, the Rev Tim's vision did not apparently encompass the detachment of Australian soldiers providing the security which enabled Gusmao to appear in public, as he singularly failed to acknowledge their key role in quietening the mob.
"It's quite extraordinary," he said, "but you know when Xanana actually comes out and leads you can palpably feel the confidence in Dili and other places rise."
Maybe, maybe not. Others who are more realistic and less impressed with Gusmao say that the greatest confidence booster in Dili and East Timor, is the reassuring presence of the Australian soldiers who the Rev Tim told the ABC's Melbourne announcer Jon Faine "have been a bit powerless".
Rather than sheeting home the blame for the crisis to Gusmao or East Timor's Nobel peace prize-wining Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, Rev Tim and Faine blamed the departed Indonesians for the collapse of order.
Post-conflict societies, they politically-correctly agreed, break down mainly because there is no history of solving problems through peaceful political means.
In truth, post-conflict societies are more likely to remain in conflict when they are run by Marxist theorists determined to use dictatorial regimes such as that operated by Fidel Castro in Cuba as their role models.
Ramos Horta, less reliant on post-modernist claptrap than Faine or the Rev Tim, more expertly and more honestly acknowledges that his Government "failed miserably" to prevent the unrest, blaming particularly the Mozambique-trained Marxist Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.
Not surprisingly, Brigadier Mick Slater, the Australian commander in East Timor, unlike the ABC's military experts, disagrees with the Rev Tim's authoritative assessment and found that World Vision's problems were largely due to the agency's inability to get its act together.
Slater told Radio National on Tuesday that a number of troops and trucks were sent as requested by the Rev Tim on Monday afternoon but "unfortunately he wasn't able to organise his own staff and time to make use of that, so that support went to another NGO".
The commander said further support was provided on Tuesday but the Rev Tim, who had returned to Australia on Monday night, had sent an SMS saying the assistance couldn't be used then either.
"World Vision have now been unable to use the support that we've offered up on two occasions," Slater said.
The officer corps would seem to have a better handle than the Rev Tim on how crises should be handled.
However, as it would seem the real business of the irritating World Vision CEO is to drop into a trouble spot, speak to camera as an instant expert, and buzz off like a blowfly, the Rev Tim will probably keep bagging the army, pontificating about politics and how East Timor should be run.
His good and caring image has, however, taken a deserved hammering. Brother Peter and others in the Government are less likely to respond rapidly to his pleas for assistance when next he turns to Canberra for help.
akermanp@dailytelegraph.com.au
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