Our political
leaders are either liars or simpletons who have no memories.
There
is no doubt in my mind that I am the world’s least successful terrorist – even
though, in truth, I was only a suspected
terrorist. So every now and then I
wonder who stands out as the most successful terrorist(s) of my lifetime. There are two nominations I cannot
split. One was an American
president. The other was a group of students
who overthrew the same US president and installed a new regime halfway across
the world.
It
was late in September 1977 when I set out on my supposed mission for an
eclectic coalition comprising West Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red
Brigades and, much more likely given my Celtic facial features, the Provos, the
infamous Provisional Irish Republican Army.
I
had spent more than a year living and working at the Australian Embassy in
Tehran and I was badly in need of a holiday and a break from my daily dose of
an addictive mixture of culture shock and outright fascination with a foreign
land. So I headed to Europe with my then
wife and our one year old daughter.
Our
first stop was Amsterdam. I can still
see the emerald green fields of the Netherlands as our KLM flight made its approach
into Schipol. We left the airport in a
bus destined for the centre of the old city.
During the journey we consulted our borrowed copy of Frommer’s ‘Europe on Ten Dollars a Day’ seeking a
budget hotel. We were, quite simply,
broke.
Why
were we broke do I hear you say? Malcolm
Fraser had taken power in Australia and, under his leadership as Prime
Minister, government expenditure was slashed by a newly minted razor gang or,
as it was known more formally, the expenditure review committee. That committee is still a standard feature of
federal administration in Canberra. The
then Department of Foreign Affairs faced some of the most savage expenditure
cutbacks and staffing reductions. I
recall that my promotion to Foreign Affairs Officer Class 1 had taken place as
scheduled at the end of my training year in 1975. However, it had yet to be confirmed because
of the uncertainties resulting from Mr Fraser’s stinginess. A few months after I returned to Tehran it
would be duly gazetted and I would receive a large amount of backpay. But,
as I looked for a hotel in Amsterdam, I was still on trainee’s pay and I had to
watch every cent.
As
it happened I had quite a bit of contact with Mr Fraser during the 1990s in the
private sector. He was a difficult man
and he had an extreme sense of entitlement that featured a reluctance to ever put
his hand in his own pocket. It was his
expectation that someone else would always pay all his bills despite his position of considerable wealth and his
enjoyment of huge taxpayer-funded allowances.
Even prosperous companies have rules relating to personal expenses but
they seemed to be irrelevant in Mr Fraser’s mind.
In addition, his treatment of staff was appalling even by the loose
standards of those times. I have often
wondered whether the celebrated ‘lost trousers’ incident was in fact an act of
revenge by an aide.
But
I have wandered from the subject, even though Mr Fraser’s attempts to
demoralise and render almost useless major organs of Australian government
might one day be considered a kind of non-violent terrorism. And, of course, his venality, in my opinion,
makes him another type of unpunished offender of fundamental morality. It amazes me that he is so universally
idolised now that he has passed away.
The
place we chose to stay in Amsterdam was a quaint establishment beside an abrupt
curve in a tiny canal. From there we
could walk everywhere, including up the several flights of stairs to our room
with its linoleum floors and views of an alleyway. There was no elevator, no central heating,
and the communal bathroom was several metres down a narrow corridor. We were charged about US$5 per night.
But
the rustic accommodation did not matter.
I loved Amsterdam at first sight and I still love it now, albeit from a
distance. In my opinion Dutch beer is
one of Europe’s genuine miracles and I get a little teary when I recall my
first cruise on the canals running into the River Amstel as dusk fell and the
lights in the streets and inside the gabled buildings turned the place into a
wonderland.
When
we walked into the hotel foyer we were not exactly welcomed by a middle-aged man
who spoke a mixture of Dutch and English as if he could not distinguish any
boundaries between the two languages. He
took one look at us and swallowed hard as if he had seen his own death stroll
into the room. Then he accepted our
money in advance for three nights and asked for our passports. The diplomatic passports we handed over
somehow made him more nervous about his new lodgers. He promised to return them within 24 hours.
When
we finally got our passports back two days’ later, our host apologised
profusely for the delay. He explained
that the city was gripped with fear of terrorism, adding that a young couple
with a baby was standard travelling cover and diplomatic passports often turned
out to be fakes. From that moment he was
a perfect host, he and his wife cooing over our baby daughter at every
opportunity. He observed that the cheap
stroller we had bought in one of Amsterdam’s well-stocked shops was ‘prima’.
I knew that my career as a suspected terrorist had failed dismally when
I heard that most versatile of Dutch words, ‘prima’.
The
American President who wins, jointly, my award for success in the field of
terrorism is Jimmy Carter. His betrayal
of the last Shah of Iran was an act of such ignorance and short-sightedness that
I still find it hard to believe. Mr
Carter undermined a friendly government by naively chanting his human rights mantra and insisting that his untested principles must be applied in circumstances
that he would never understand. The Shah
was disempowered not by his own countrymen but by his closest international ally. His fall was followed by years of misery for Iran and
demonstrably irreparable damage to American interests. There are no reliable estimates of the associated
death toll.
My
other winners are the students of Shia Islam who occupied the US Embassy in Tehran
in November 1979 and took most of the American staff members hostage. Apart from the impact of their cruelty and fanaticism inside Iran, perhaps their
greatest achievement was rendering Mr Carter unelectable when he sought a
second term. After 444 days of captivity
the US Embassy personnel were released on 20 January 1981 – the very day of
Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the USA’s fortieth president.
I
pray the current generation of terrorists might be surprisingly unsuccessful, whatever their grotesque methods
and selfish objectives.
