The revelation of war crimes by Australian soldiers has brought our focus on to Afghanistan, why we are there and why the special forces did what some of them did there. If the US pulls out so will we but, if not, we face difficult choices. We must wait and see what President Biden will do when he finally gets into the White House.
The Government response to the revelation of war crimes by special forces has been to express horror at the actions of a minority and reassure us that most of our soldiers are honourable men and women who serve their country with distinction and courage. Both Government and Opposition reiterate the myth that we are there at the request of the Afghan people to bring them freedom and democracy.
In fact, we are there to please the Americans as part of our need to portray Australia as a loyal little ally who should be protected from evil. There is no suggestion that we should never have been there nor that it is time to leave although getting out would seem to be a sensible thing to do. So where do we go from here?
Donald Trump says he will pull out the US troops and we have said that if he does we could not remain because we need the support of the US forces to operate. We are integrated with them to a degree that makes this fair comment even though the real reason would be that if the Americans are not in Afghanistan there is no reason for us to be there. There has never been any such thing as the Afghan people or government. The country remains a pastiche of often warring tribes and warlords which have occasionally been brought together under strong leadership but soon revert to normal. The Afghan government only controls part of the territory and its president has been called the mayor of Kabul by other Afghans.
Earlier, the US gave arms and support to the Taliban when it was fighting the Soviet Union. Obviously, this was a Cold War exercise that had nothing to do with Afghanistan as such. After 9/11 which had been carried out by Saudi Arabians inspired by Osama bin Laden, the US turned on their erstwhile Taliban allies in the belief that they were harbouring Osama bin Laden and supporting terrorism. Again, this was not about Afghanistan let alone its ordinary people. Osama quickly moved to Pakistan where he was later found and assassinated. The war then became one against terrorists who were seen as posing a threat to the USA and other countries.
We do not know what Biden will do, but if Trump manages to pull US troops out before Biden enters the White House it is unlikely that Biden will send them back again. Morrison seems to have learned from Billy McMahon’s humiliation when Nixon hung him out to dry by changing tack on China without telling Australia the day after McMahon made thumping speech along the lines of the previous American views. The suggestion that we could not stay without American support gives us an out if the US does change tack again.
The troops have been asked to carry out a mission that was always doomed to fail because it was based on false premises. The same thing happened in Vietnam and Iraq. This is not the fault of the military. In a democracy like ours, the military must obey the commands of a legitimately elected civil government even if that government takes bad decisions. Otherwise, you have military dictatorship or anarchy. Most people like to believe they are fighting for a just cause and leaders must give them one. The ANZACs fought for the King and the British Empire of which we were a proud part. The Japanese fought for the Emperor and the Japanese empire. And so on. Thus, it was necessary to invent a cause that our troops could risk their lives for which was that we were there to bring a bright future to the people. While we proudly proclaim that Australia will act in accordance with our values, sovereignty and interests we seem to find it much harder to accept that other countries might like to do the same. We also seem ready to hand over our sovereignty to the USA as part of the American Alliance.
So how do we get out? No politician likes to admit that long-held policies were wrong especially when it would involve admitting that our soldiers died for a dubious cause. Pompeo’s visit to Kabul looks like a face-saving formula in the making. As in Vietnam, things are being handed over to the local government which can now run the country. It can’t but we look like we are doing the right thing. The result will probably be fragmentation or even the return of the Taliban. If Biden reverses the Trump policy and sends the troops back then we have a problem (NATO is a player but not one we must worry about too much). For Australia to act independently of the USA would be a good thing but the track record of our governments and oppositions suggests that this is not likely so, as usual, Australia will follow the leader which in this case will hopefully give us an out. If not, we fall back into the slough of despond.
Cavan Hogue is a former diplomat who has worked in Asia, Europe and the Americas as well as at the UN. He was Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia, dually accredited to Ukraine. He also worked at ANU and Macquarie universities.
Comments
35 responses to “Can we get out of Afghanistan?”
The line between the war which ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the war in Yugoslavia, the rise of Osama bin Laden and the arming and training of the Taliban, the terror attacks on America, the Western invasion of Afghanistan, the treatment of Muslim minorities in the NW China, the current increased Chinese interest in Afghanistan, the current great power contest between China and the USA, are all part of the same continuum. It could be said that Vietnam got the US and its allies used to drawn out decade long wars of seemingly zero value or point. Why not indeed mine Haipong Harbour early in the Vietnam War and cut off the sea route to North Vietnam? Well they didn’t. Why allow Ford Motor Co to build a truck factory in the USSR to allow more trucks to travel the north south route to resupply the NVA? well they did. Why not arm and train the Taiban and the Saudis to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan – demolishing the Afghan economy and middle class in one fell swoop. Why not encourage trained Taliban to fight in Yugoslavia while the world watched as the UN allowed the butchery of Muslims in the surrounded city of Sarajevo? (After that even moderate Muslim nations saw the West as complicit in the crime. The ICO threatening to raise an Army to save Sarajevo.) The USSR, bankrupt, eventually collapsed, releasing its captive nations, once fiercely proud and many Islamic, now newly independent. And the chaos was predicted in The Economist’s “The World in 1992”). One could compose a book , comprised purely of international shortwave radio transcripts, called “Monotheism and the New World Order”. (he said, shamelessly plugging his own work, which isnt for sale)
Diverse gods do not fit in the universalism of the Global Economy. Far safer to worship the dollar and the ability to export debt into fields of foreign combat. It has always been the same year in year out. It’s just that its a moving feast. One day it will be our turn to lay the table waiting for our guests to arrive. With their bombs and bullets. And sanctimonious phrases telling us why we are being bombed and shot. If Karma exists surely its our turn soon. Vietnam and Afghanistan? In both cases the supply lines to the declared enemies were permitted to remain open by the military forces of the would be occupiers. These wars are not meant to be “won”. They are meant to act as catalysts, as sinks, as stalking horses for bigger plans. In the case of Vietnam, the US spend $28 million a day on civil projects alone. How much the USSR spent on the war is not known. But the cost of the war weakened it. America was changed by it. Next time, they would not use conscripts. Nothing else changed.
Why are is The Australian military in Afghanistan given the centuries of ‘invasions’ and each ending in ‘walking away’. There was/is no clear objective (as with Vietnam). Successive Australian governments are toadying to US hegemony.
The shits who send ADF off to kill those, who want no poppies grown, now have an issue: what if the SAS take the war to them? I mean, not grenades under their beds, but fighting the very presence of the ADF in Afghanistan?
Will the “bipartisan” cowardice on opium supply break down?
Will the Feds investigate the drug gang?
Will the judges allow discussion of the whole farce?
Will the trials be in secret?
Will the “Guilty” be found with their “Service revolver” stolen from stores…..?
Will there be hurried coronial hearings?
All great stuff for those who make money from exposing wrong doing by the peasants, but not the rich…
Cui bono? Who makes the $$$ from the poppies?
As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, here we have, wondrously outlined by Cavan Houge, yet another example of our subservience to ‘our great and powerful friends’ (Holt to Johnson in the 1960’s). Like Vietnam, both recent conflicts were built on lies and fake news .
While my red hot anger over the deliberate tardiness and delaying tactics of politicians to the issues that confronted the Veterans of my era will go with me to my grave, I feel so sorry for the guys who obeyed the call to fight the unwinnable and immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers are young, like we were . They will face years of fighting for a fair go for the recognition of the trauma that will face them, as it did, us .While the horrors , now revealed, of atrocities committed in our name in Afghanistan and mot likely Iraq , do not surprise me , instead of blaming them for all the criminality of their actions , we must sheet the major blame home onto those who sent them there in the first place.
When will they (the politicians) and we (the voters) ever learn to divorce ourselves from slavishly following the dictates of the Arm Chair Generals in the Pentagon ?? Next engagement a war with China. Curtains!!!God forbid!
I agree. There will be no end to our military adventures, as keen lapdogs, for as long as the US Empire is not fallen. Must be an Anglo tribal thing. It’s disappointing that that is the way things are. Speaking as a peaceful migrant to this otherwise fabulous country. (And I also agree, we had better keep away from a war against China!)
That is the generic case. My friend is a Vietnam Vet and military through and through and I respect the things he did in good faith, albeit mislead by sycophant Governments and media.
The boy bastards who enlist these days with electronic war game minds, anger issues and murder on their minds are a rank below good faith.
The thing for all vets I think is for them to realise that as their superiors will never tell them the truth; they should man up and tell the truth to themselves.
The considered public does not hate them and the public would applaud vets who school the new ranks as to what is really going on.
I am being treated for PTSD at present. The Psychologist (who holds rank of Captain) and I discussed this issue. As a Medic in Vietnam, I dealt with soldiers who should not have been posted overseas for psychological reasons. With the rudimentary knowledge Psychologists had then, that was to be expected .
These days rigorous Psychological testing is conducted of soldiers destined for combat duties. It is highly unlikely that guys obsessed with ‘war games’ would make the Regular Army, let alone Special Forces. Repeated exposure to combat stress with multiple Tours would seem to be the major issue here. Government policy over more than a decade to send just an elite unit to minimize casualties is the root and branch cause of this disaster! Hold the idiotic pollies and the woolly headed senior command to account, not the foot soldiers who were only obeying orders, distasteful and illegal as they were.
I think you raise important points, Gavin, but it’s still not enough to exculpate the war criminals – if indeed such they were, and we cannot know yet. But the reports seem to have credibility. If your final phrase implies that foot soldiers should not be held to account, I cannot agree. Soldiers still have moral responsibility for their actions, and this investigation is explicitly not into “fog of war” incidents but allegedly cold-blooded murder.
Too true Gavin…Vets of your experience and comprehension should I believe, take your experience and knowledge and try to impart it to the impressionable, young military mind.
You won’t be allowed to in official places as the aim there is to desensitise the young mind to unquestioned invasion and killing.
Excusing ones self and others on subordinate grounds is a pernicious, clinical involution and something the dogs of war rely on.
Of course I can never really understand what must be going on in your mind after being in those situations.
absit omen:
To be independent, Australia could renounce bio warfare Treaties.
A doctrine of plague etc for any invader of Australian or Antarctic territory.
We reconstructed the Smallpox virus to show that disposal of the vaccines would be a mistake…. Why send our precious young men and women when viri will deter?
We “need” USA because they will sell us arms we will never use in true self defence. If we deviate we lose leaders.
Think about what independence means?
And stop whining?
Who is doing the whining???
Sorry, but soldiers are not policemen. These are more than soldiers, they are Special Forces.
SPECIAL
FORCE.
They are there to kill or retrieve targets, killing all who resist.
To survive, they need to know that they are blood brothers. Someone who will not kill, can betray them, as with UK SAS in Iraq, with that goatherd.
“The Spice must flow”
Frank Herbert….
Opium, the religion of the elites?
Patrick,
As a Veteran I find your comments to be quite distasteful and disrespectful, not only to Veterans who live with the consequences of obeying the orders of their superiors, yet who are also beholden to the Geneva Conventions, but more so to the guys who died participating in these senseless adventures . We need neutrality not stupid wars .
I don’t think he is advocating war…Just describing some of the realities and recruitment poster mind conditioning.
That was not my experience, I was conscripted. The posters of WWI would not work today.I still maintain that too many Tours by these guys, dulled their sense of responsibility and moral code. Sure, ordinary soldiers are responsible for their actions, ….BUT I would find it impossible to find a Private who would be be so game to question or disobey an order to ‘waste’ an captive given by an Officer or more likely a senior NCO, when surrounded by other soldiers .
The recruitment posters are all the current, shit Hollywood movies.
That American Sniper Shit went down like sugar to the young, and not so young swallowers.
I have to agree with you.They are so unrealistic too!
If they were real they wouldn’t work would they.
Parents are so dumbed down they allow their infants to play the staring role as desensitised serial-killers in electronic war games. What fun.
A Veteran what? Officer or SAS Trooper?
Special Forces are chosen for their ability to act. They do not take orders from a Rupert. They take ammunition and rations and tasks. Then they complete them.
I respect achievement, not pearl clutching
Patrick,
Neither, I was a Medic , but I was still trained to kill; as a ‘rookie’ at Kapooka (NSW) , then the Battle Efficiency Course at JTC Canungra (Qld.) prior to ‘deployment’, we called it a ‘posting’, with 8th Fd. Amb. Nui Dat. Ironic ! because my job was to stabilize our wounded and treat our sick soldiers, as well as enemy combatants and civilians in our care , which I did willingly. Yet when outside of ‘the wire’, I was armed to the teeth because of the possibility to have to kill or be killed! You did not, like in Afghanistan ; or Iraq , in the latter part of that war, know who your enemy was .That thought, even today, is very unnerving Patrick.
Who is ‘Rupert??
Trained to kill?
The point of SAS type forces is that they do kill. Up close and personal. Targetted, often face to face. We all know that a uniform and training do not translate into ammunition expended among the majority of soldiers, let alone aimed at an enemy, or a kill. Only killers are selected for SAS. They are the “sharp point of the spear”.
Brave beyond belief, they are now denigrated, told that they have a warrior ethos!!!
Breathtaking, isn’t it? Used for routine tasks, exposed and exploited, they are now told that they are an embarrassment to the shits who sent them! In Vietnam, greandes were sent rolling.
The Golden Triangle was the cause of the Vietnam invasion by Australian forces. Poppies again. Who makes the money from this?
Suicide may not be the only way out for the bravest of the brave.
Technically, and war is very technical, we are not at war with Iraq, merely providing bodyguards for diplomatic personnel.
Ex soldiers and others from Australia are allowed to kill with impunity, as private security, hired by whoever, as mercenaries. Hush! Tell no one!
Rupert is the officer structure.
There is no enemy army in Afghanistan, except the one the “allies” are creating.
All the “enemy combatants” are civilians. Aryans, armed and ready to kill. Trained by adversity.
The Taliban exist as an Afghan organization, opposed to secular drug smuggling warlords. The “Allies” are invaders, ensuring that the poppies are not burned.
The Taliban are perfectly entitled to kill and maim Australians. They are acting in self defence.
Australians are the evil force along with the rest. In this conflict, they are the genocidal force.
SAS have therefore an impossible mission: allow casualties and obey the totally hypocritical rules of engagement or survive.
Obama killed children, but used drones and B52 bombers.
Patrick,
Thanks for that explanation , its new one on me – is it of English military origin as I never head the term used by our army people . Actually the Taliban were used by the CIA to attack the Soviets!! Now the Taliban are attacking another “invader”, this time the “allies”.We have not learnt from the troubled history of this ‘country’.
The soldiers are just doing their job as ordered by the Government.So the Government is the ‘evil force’.If the military is not doing the will of the government, then we have a mutiny ! That would be very serious.
We must defeat those terrorists
And do it on their soil
To liberate our motor cars
And democratise their oil.
We shoot the Afghans
As we shoot the Talibans
Who knows what they are
When they all wear turbans.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
The last Australian Prime Minister who firmly believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources nor dictate its economic and foreign policies was Gough Whitlam.
Every Prime Minister since then has been acutely aware not to deviate from the path already set.
And so it is Cavan that we truly are in that slough of despond. Plus ça change… alas.
Or for Deputy John …na plus ultra.
And look what happend to Gough Whitlam and his government in 1975? I rest my case!
And look what happend to Gough Whitlam and his government in 1975? I rest my case!
Why must we wait and see what Biden decides? Why do Australian diplomats or former diplomats have a lapdog view of Australia? It’s time we stood on our own two feet and said: “We’ve had enough of this. We have no business in telling the Afghan people what they should or should not do” and unilaterally pull out. We would gain respect in the wider world and even the Americans might regard us as something more than a puppy to play with.
Undoubtedly, given their record, they would regard us as a puppy to kick in the guts to remind it of its role.
And we will then roll over and lick their boots.
We must buy their arms… and suffer the odd kickback to politicians