Too many out of too few

Mr and Mrs Politician,

Ours is not a big army. We can't keep losing these guys while hearing about how YOUR resolve is undiminished.

Axis of Deceit, Fulcrum of Power?

In 2003 a former Australian Army lieutenant-colonel and intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie, spoke out as a whistleblower against the invasion of Iraq, and quit the Office of National Assessments.

The ONA provides builds assessments on international political, strategic and economic matters of interest to Australia, reporting to the prime minister and the National Security Committee of cabinet, linking up with services such as ASIO, the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation.

The conservative Coalition government of the day promptly mounted a campaign of personal vilification.(...a Right-wing government vilifying an experienced military officer for doubting the wisdom and basis for an illegal war...good heavens... who would have thought it?)

Then prime minister (and eternal scumbag) John Howard said Wilkie was ''guilty of distortion, exaggeration and misrepresentation''. Liberal Party senator David Johnston described him as ''unstable and flakey". Howard's own office called Wilkie "unbalanced".

Well... the tables might or might not have turned now...

Andrew Wilkie is now an independent political candidate and a potential power broker in the stand off in the hung parliament, wherein neither government nor opposition alone has the numbers to take power. Wilkie was once a member of the Liberal Party (the greater part of the conservative Coalition), and later stood as a Green.

This week Wilkie said Australia should separate from the US on Afghanistan war policy, and exit the conflict, saying that the assertion that Australia was there because of terrorists is a "great lie". He says the terrorists have "morphed years ago into a global network" making Afghanistan an irrelevance.

Both Labor and the Coalition opposition currently support Australian military presence in Afghanistan.

The night before last yet another Australian soldier was killed. He was from what was Wilkie's own battalion and regiment.

Wilkie has yet to claim victory in his Tasmanian seat but the current Coalition leader and would-be prime minister Tony Abbott has called him and apologised for what the Howard government - of which Abbott was a key member - did to him.

I bet he did.

Gillard has arranged to meet Wilkie on Saturday. Abbott will meet with him on Monday.

Election day

Election day. Two more soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Private Grant Kirby, father of two, previously served in Iraq.
Private Thomas Dale, on his first deployment.

Gillard says "The mission in Afghanistan is a dangerous one... The mission is a vital one."

Bloody hope it's worth it.

What we weren't being told

A sequel of sorts to this post.

Wikileaks has done it again. This time, though.... they've REALLY done it:

"The US has emphatically restated its mission in Afghanistan while condemning the leaking of a trove of secret military field reports that lay bare the grim reality of the nine-year conflict, including the apparent duplicity of ally Pakistan. A statement by National Security Adviser General James Jones implied that the leaked material was out of date and had been overtaken by President Barack Obama's ''surge'' strategy, now under way. But the statement did not deny key judgments drawn from the 92,000 documents released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks: that the Pakistan military had been aiding insurgent groups and that coalition forces were struggling alongside an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence."

You'll have heard or read all about it by now...

...how the Taliban are using heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, how the Pakistani intelligence service is playing both sides against the middle, how civilians have been killed in numbers far beyond those reported... how utterly screwed we are in the war in Afghanistan...

I want to believe there's a point to all this, but are our people (Australia is the biggest contributor of military to the effort outside of NATO) being killed over there just to save face with a protracted pullout and handover?

No United Nations?

A former US defence adviser called Edward Luttwak will speak in Melbourne in September about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.

I have actually read a well-known book by this guy called The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. I have a taste for history and it presented a controversial theory about how the Romans solidified their borders which I found interesting but faulty.

Can't say I agree with what he has to say about the conflicts of our times either...
He said building schools and other civilian infrastructure in Afghanistan was "infinitely more outrageous than bombing".

...uh.. yeah, you read that right....

"It is not intervening in the country to knock off the enemy and go home... this taking over Afghanistan, wanting to determine the history of Afghanistan and have it evolve the way you want it."

Yes Dr Luttwak... I would like Afghanistan's history to evolve in a way that makes it a tad less fertile for terrorist safe havens. Pure military force is failing to achieve this. Clearly he doesn't give a shit about civilians either....

Luttwak bases this view on the idea of "frozen" conflicts that never end.

He calls the creation of the UN a "colossal mistake", noting "The Israelis eventually fought hard wars with the Egyptians and they fought enough to reach a peace. They fought with the Jordanians, they reached a peace. But with the Palestinians, the rules are United Nations cease-fires - there is fighting, people are horrified … so you impose a cease-fire and the war doesn't end."

I've heard this before... mostly on the Right wing but occasionally on the Left too: The notion that all would be okay if Israel simply wipes the Palestinians out, ironically as these same jerks go on to dismiss any photo of a dead Palestinian child or other non-combatant as "fake"...

I enjoyed Luttwak's book about Roman strategy and keep it on my shelf, but anyone who sees unlimited war as the way to peace needs his head examined. The UN was created because people didn't want another conflict like WW2, and had there been no UN, there may have been none of the slight relief the world has had from famine, disease, cultural destruction, environmental destruction, child slavery and just about every other evil you care to name.

A world without the UN...? Seriously?

By the way... Luttwak stated in print of Obama prior to the election that he was "born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood".

Hmm..... very few understandings are indeed "universal", Dr Luttwak... that's why we have wars in the first place.

Keep America Safe for Justice

Liz Cheney is apparently is not familiar with the notion that a trial is meant to be conducted by professional lawyers and that justice requires the accused have a competent defence.

She has been royally smashed from elements of both political vectors over the "al Qaeda Seven" slur.
Deservedly, although the comparison to McCarthyism is held at arms length on the conservative side.

I don't think I could - were I a lawyer - stomach being the defence lawyer for a lot of people in this world. Yet because of that... the more I recognise the professional detachment, commitment to the rule of law and the moral courage of those who do.

I note with amusement that the Keep America Safe site has a link to none other than Rush Limbaugh defending Liz Cheney.
No professional legal defence for Liz - just a Youtube of drug-addled shock jock instead.

The Christian Science Monitor - not exactly a force for Left-leaning dialogue - notes John Adams himself wrote that his defence of enemy British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre was “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country.”

Defending terrorism suspects did not come without cost to those who did it in the military justice system either...

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Mori - then a Major - was the military lawyer for David Hicks.

David Hicks is an Australian man who was captured by the Afghan Northern Alliance in December 2001 and turned over to US Special Forces. He was then detained in Guantanamo Bay till 2007. In a very murky and controversial process of legal bargaining he was given over to Australian authorities in May 2007 and finally released in December 2007.

Major Mori was passed over for promotion twice subsequent to taking on the Hicks case.

Incidentally, Hicks alleges that while at Guantanamo Bay he was beaten, forced to run while shackled which causes ankle injury, injected without consent and subject to sleep deprivation, and that he witnessed attack dogs being used to maul detainees.
He was subject to a control order after his release, but 12 months later the Australian Federal Police declined to renew it.
Hicks has since married and has lived a quiet life in Sydney.

The Australian Lawyers alliance awarded Mori a civil justice award for recognition "of unsung heroes who, despite personal risk or sacrifice, have fought to preserve individual rights, human dignity or safety".

Mori was in time promoted and is now a senior military judge. He was very critical of the military justice system and at lack of promotion was considering retirement. Since promotion he has decided to continue his career. His criticism is also "more guarded" now.

I wonder what he would say of it had he not been promoted...

From Afghanistan - and it's not about the war

One of the world's rarest birds - not seen for 139 years and documented only twice either side of that span - has been found in Afghanistan, and its breeding grounds are being protected by Afghan authorities (such as they are)

As reported in The Age newspaper:

"The khaki-coloured bird was first discovered in India in 1867, but it was not seen again until 2006, when one was spotted near a sewage works in Thailand.

Afghanistan's Environmental Protection Agency has now added the warbler to its protected species list, established last year. Mustafa Zahir, the agency's director-general, said: ''It is not true that our country is full of only bad stories. This bird, after so many years, has been discovered here. Everyone thought it was extinct.'' "

Don't be adding the Taliban to that list, fellas.