War & Peace Quote by John Hewson

A politician’s triple hammer-blow - “not our war,” “not a war we should be in,” “better spending its time…” - is designed to sound less like dissent and more like overdue common sense. Hewson isn’t merely opposing a military campaign; he’s trying to redraw the boundaries of Australian strategic identity. The repeated “not” does the rhetorical work of confiscating inevitability. If war is framed as choice rather than fate, then participation becomes optional, and optional becomes contestable.

The phrase “I’ve been arguing this for months” is a preemptive defense against the oldest attack line in politics: opportunism. It signals continuity and credibility, positioning Hewson as the guy who warned you before the receipts came due. That timing matters because public opinion often sours after the initial rally-round-the-flag burst, when costs become measurable and the original casus belli starts to look like marketing.

Then comes the clever pivot: “negotiating with North Korea.” It’s not a soft alternative; it’s a hard one. Hewson is implicitly saying Australia’s real security test isn’t joining an American-led expeditionary war but managing the Asia-Pacific neighborhood where threats are proximate, nuclear, and diplomatically messy. The subtext is a critique of alliance reflex - the habit of proving loyalty through deployment - and a push for a more region-first foreign policy. He’s offering voters a different kind of toughness: restraint paired with diplomatic ambition, rather than participation as posture.