STFU
Hello readers.
I hope to finally break my 5 month abstinence from the blogosphere with this post. Rest assured, I have tried to bridge the gap in recent weeks, including one huge post about Afghanistan and the war going on in that country. It promises to be a great read (:)) so stay tuned.
However I thought I would break the drought with one of the old reactionary posts. It even could border on being a rant.
For those of you who follow politics in Australia, and also pay attention to Australia’s military deployment to Afghanistan (and this doesn’t relate to the monster post I have planned), you may be familiar with our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and her recent visit to our troops in the war-torn nation.
This was one of her first trips overseas since finally being elected Prime Minister (albeit in a minority government).
In a show of unusual cordial collusion, she mentioned to the right wing opposition leader, Tony Abbott, that he could, if he so wished, travel with her to Afghanistan, in a show of bipartisanship. He declined however.
Now, it is speculated that the PM allowed this information to leak out to the press, and Tony Abbott was forced to issue an embarrassing excuse, that he wanted to avoid jetlag on his journey to the British Conservative Party Conference, to be held whilst Gillard was visiting Afghanistan and some European nations.
However, on his way back to Australia, Abbott suddenly surfaced in Afghanistan, visiting the Special Operations Task Group, shooting some rounds from an AuSteyr and operating a Bushmaster Chain Gun in an ASLAV armoured fighting vehicle.
Now, one doesn’t just materialise in a country like Afghanistan, like Tony Abbott had just done so to counter the bad press he had received from Julia Gillard. It takes many weeks of secret planning with the Australian Defence Force in order to get a planned insertion into the country, to ensure that security, a paramount concern for visiting statesmen, to be assured.
So, the leader of the opposition asserted, upon his return, that he was not able to give a reason better than avoiding jetlag, for his decline of Julia Gillard’s travel offer, because his own trip was prearranged and was a secret which the leader of the opposition was not obliged to share with the government. Thus, he claimed ‘Machiavellian low bastardry’ from Julia Gillard, with Liberal frontbencher Chris Pyne also chiming in that it was backchannel bitchiness from the PM.
Of course, there were stern denials and claims of mistaken facts from the Government, as is a Labor tactic, to simply paint, no matter how unrealistic, a picture of incompetence and disability, on the Coalition.
But, now that I have painted this picture, and I am sorry for the apparent bias towards the Coalition, but I have conservative political views (there I said it!) I would like to discuss with you the awful image this gives both of our political leaders.
I am appalled at both of our leaders for the politicising of this issue. Probably a little more appalled with Julia Gillard, but not much.
The war in Afghanistan, with the exception of the Greens political movement and independent left wing MP Andrew Wilkie, is one of the few issues where both sides of politics more or less agree. The Coalition advocates an increased troop commitment from Australia, which the ALP does not, however, the both support our current contingent of forces until the completion of our segment of the Internation Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission, that is, to provide special operations soldiers to support the US forces in southern Afghanistan, and a mentoring task force to assist in the development and growth of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan police and security forces.
It is a mission that is far from easy or safe. Afghanistan is nation of pure diversity, with many ethnic groups occupying the nation, and to add further complication, many tribes diversifying those parent ethnic groups. The area where the Australians are operating, in the southern province of Oruzgan, is dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group, which is the largest in the nation.
The Pashtun people are the primary supporters of the Taliban, however, this is not universal, and there are examples of many Pashtun villages resisting the Taliban, often costing villages torrents of blood, but resisting nonetheless.
In conditions such as these, it is possible for the Australians to make a favourable impression on the Pashtun tribes, by helping them to rebuild. However, the Taliban insurgency does not make it easy for them. This year, the bloodiest for Australia, has seen 11 servicemen die. One of these fine men, Jason Brown, was an elite SASR operator killed in action during operations in the Shah Wali Kot region. Also, three 2nd Commando Regiment operators, Scott Palmer, Benjamin Chuck and Timothy Alpin, died in a helicopter crash while supporting a similar operation.
However, the rest of these fatalities were due to improvised explosive device (IED) strikes and gunfire from insurgents trying to eliminate the soldiers who were trying to assist the population.
These men see the greater good in their difficult and extremely dangerous task, and all of them absolutely want to be there, to see the job done.
However, while ever the leaders of our nation politicise the war, by way of saying, he or she doesn’t support you, but me and my party support you more, when this is neither respectful nor true, makes our soldiers just another political tool.
While the trivial sniping between leaders, from both sides, goes on, trying to score points on one another, our men and women in a war zone are dying, doing difficult, dangerous and unpleasant work. They are sacrificing one way or another. Some are unfortunate and sacrifice their lives, while all have sacrificed time away from home and family, and have had to endure the horrors of war, such as witnessing the deaths of comrades, or, perhaps worse, the suffering of children, as has been a common theme in this war.
Thus, I implore our leaders to stop speaking about who went first to Afghanistan and why. You have simply lost the plot of your visits, not going to support the soldiers, but preparing for the next election, with your despicable sniping.
I am sure, deep down, both our leaders care about the health and wellbeing of our soldiers, however, in accusing the other that this is not the case removes the sombre respect they claim to hold for the campaign, turning it into yet another political football.
So please, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, recognise that discretion is the better part of valour and STFU*.
*Please visit www.urbandictionary.com if you are unsure of this acronym.
