It is a heinous crime. Mediaeval barbarism. But the only reason to go to war is to secure the nation or its most vital interests from an existential threat, and those grotesque snuff videos don't come close. They don't even qualify as a challenge to civilisation, merely a squalid offence to civilised norms perpetrated by the sort viciously moronic janissaries the Nazis employed as death camp guards. The Herald reported this week that both Abbott and Bill Shorten "took a common position in declaring that Australia and its allies and partners could not stand by while innocent people were slaughtered". Why? We do that every day, and always have. Seriously. Every day, good men do nothing, evil triumphs and innocent people die. Every day. Some are beheaded by deranged jihadi on the web. Some are hacked to death in refugee camps not so far from here. Hundreds bleed out in what are laughably referred to as hospital wards overwhelmed by Ebola. Thousands die in hellholes like Gaza. Millions rot in concentration camps. Again, with some of the smaller boutique gulags funded by you, through your hard working tax dollar. The world is horror and madness. So why is the horror and madness of the Islamic State our concern? Consider their fanboy coreligionists in Nigeria, Boko Haram, infamous kidnappers/slave traders of 300 school girls. These murderous clowns look good for the sort of stern correction that can only be delivered by a squadron of heavily armed F/A-18F Super Hornets. Not content with knocking Justin Bieber out of Twitter's trending topics for a day with that kidnapping caper, Boko Haram declared their own Caliphate in northern Nigeria in late August, pronounced themselves best friends forever with the Islamic State, and celebrated with the usual round of mass executions, including the reported beheading of a six-year-old boy.

Not a grown man who took a professional risk and paid a grim toll for it. A little boy. Horror enough, you would think, to justify a tiny bit of bombing. Just a little touch of special forces magic in the night, perhaps? After all, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men and women be distracted long enough by celebrity nude photo leaks that evil has plenty of time to get its mojo on. But of course, we won't be going there. Perhaps Nigeria, in spite of its oil wealth, is not our strategic concern. Where, then, are the battalions of those who should be concerned? The Saudi King warns that IS will be in Europe and America within months. The Saudi King, the closest thing we have to an absolute monarch outside of North Korea these days, has at his convenience an army of 75,000 men, including a 1000-strong tank armada which might even give Vladimir Putin a moment's pause if he found them sitting astride some patch of turf he might like to place within his possession. The Royal Saudi Air Force, deploying from bases somewhat closer to the Islamic State than Williamstown, boasts more than 300 combat aircraft, including F15E Strike Eagles and shiny new Eurofighter Typhoons, barely out of their bubblewrap. And yet, in spite of King Saud's fit of the vapours about the threat of IS, there is no suggestion that these formidable war machines might do anything like deploy from those conveniently located Saudi air fields. No. His oil slaves will do that work. And many in his Kingdom will go on quietly supporting their Sunni brethren in IS. So why are we going to another war? Surely not because the last one went so well? And why is Tony Abbott banging the drum so much louder than his American commander?

You might imagine it has nothing to do with some infantile crusade against mediaeval barbarism. You might think a certain PM sees an opportunity to pull out of the death spiral his government's been in since it handed down the most unpopular budget in living memory. You might think that one blunder after another has forced him to an impasse where nothing is left to him but blood and circuses. You might think that. But I couldn't possibly comment.



Senator Sue Lines was happy to comment, though. Almost alone among her Labor colleagues she had the courage to call Abbott's pompous bluster for what it is, a desperate diversion. She didn't excuse or minimise the atrocities of IS. She didn't even argue against a military response. She merely pointed to the way the increasingly unpopular PM was using the prospects of military action as a shield against domestic criticism. She was, of course, traduced and belittled for it, by friend and foe alike. But she was right, and she was right to speak up. What she did took more courage than anything Abbott has yet done. She is the sort of politician who really protects her country.