Why picking fights in the street is a bad idea

Bwahahahaha! That is all.

TWO drunken yobs tried to start a fight with three strangers - who turned out to be the military's most decorated hard men.

The thugs, who had a Staffordshire bull terrier with them, got a surprise comeuppance after hurling abuse at the smartly-suited trio in a street.

They had no idea their intended "victims" were a hero Royal Marine, an Army captain and a VC-winning SAS hero.

The louts pushed and shoved the three men, attempting to provoke them into a punch-up.

After ignoring polite advice to "walk away" they suddenly found themselves on their backs while their vicious-looking dog fled yelping.

L/Cpl Matt Croucher, 26, and Captain Peter Norton, 47, both George Cross winners, were walking through central London with Aussie Cpl Mark Donaldson, 31, after a reception at Buckingham Palace. Though they were in civilian clothes they were wearing their medals on their chests.

A witness to the incident said: "It was a case of yobs picking on the wrong people.

"After they ended up on the ground the guys just calmly adjusted their suits and walked off."

Three genuine peace activists murdered

No, I'm not referring to the recent tragic news of the three Australian SF soldiers recently killed in a helicopter accident. Accidents will happen when machines and men are pushed to their limits in an environment of threat, and while their deaths are a tragedy, it is hardly worthy of the fury of speculation as to the future of Australia's commitment to the war in Afghanistan. If anything, it is slightly unbecoming for the deaths of three men whose commitment to the objectives of this war can hardly be questioned to be used as a catalyst for discussion of the abandonment of those same objectives. Their sacrifice ought to be honoured and serve as a reminder of the deadly seriousness of the endeavour and to steel the resolve of our leaders to see that their sacrifice was not in vain.

The three genuine peace activists I refer to in the title are the three UN Peacekeepers killed in a random action in the western region of Darfur on Monday. The peacekeepers were providing protection to civilian engineers when they were attacked. This latest attack takes the toll of UN Peacekeepers killed in Darfur to 27 since the UN took over the operation from the African Union in 2007.

In contrast to the agent provocateurs who committed suicide by IDF Commando on the Mediterranean several weeks ago, these genuine peace activists will go unmourned by the world media because they were killed by Islamic bandits and not teh evil Juice.

Why just the officers?

ADF to drug test officers

Media to blame for Defence secrecy

The Daily Telegraph has run a story on the apparent secrecy around wounded ADF members returning from operations overseas. The thrust of the story is that Defence is trying to keep quiet the wounds that are being received over there. The story leads in with this line:

With opinion polls indicating Australians are divided over our involvement in Afghanistan, the Australian Defence Force's handling of casualties has come under scrutiny.

It has come under scrutiny from whom, the DT? The people getting upset at the lack of blood and gore horror stories coming from Afghanistan are the salivating media. The stories will come out, but rushing that through so that the Australian media scrum can onanate over the tragic circumstances of a wounded digger is not high on the list of priorities.

Wounded Australian soldiers, some having faced amputations and long-term suffering, are recuperating in facilities around the country, but the public seldom hears their stories.

Very true, the primary concern is the treatment and rehabilitation of the wounded. In order to achieve that, Defence go to significant lengths to make sure they are left alone by anyone not from their intimate circle of family and friends, or involved in their administration or their treatment. That includes nosy reporters having a slow news day.

The stories of the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will come out. Some already have. The rest will happen when the wounded themselves are ready to tell their stories. Defence won't throw them in the deep end and feed them to the press, no matter how much that infuriates them.

Guest post at OSK

Kae asked me to write a guest post for Ocean, Sky and Khaki; a site set up to provide information to people interested in sending care packages to deployed soldiers. It is a great idea, and a great way of showing your support for those Australians a long way from home in harm’s way. The post can be found here if you’re interested.

Proud to be Australian

As a follow up from the post about the heroic actions of our SAS friend, here's a quick tune to remind us all of why we ought to be proud to be Australian. Enjoy.



h/t Blackfive

Take a VC out of petty cash

If this guy doesn't win a VC, there is no justice left in the system. Bravo Zulu brave son of ANZAC.

An ABC interview about soldiers

Boy on a Bike has a link to this discussion on Counterpoint, an ABC Radio programme with Michael Duffy. John Farrell is the founder of Australia and New Zealand Defender, a magazine that follows Australian soldiers throughout the spectrum of military operations and exercises. It is an interesting conversation. Duffy displays some of the tired old cliché beliefs about the military and the US, but to his credit, does actually ask some engaging questions and tries to get his head around what Farrell is telling him. I’m not completely sold on Farrell’s point about soldiers enlisting to seek adventure, but otherwise he seems to have a good handle on what’s going on for a journalist and ex-reservist. He makes some very good points about Rules of Engagement (ROE), and their impact on operations, and about some of the environmental conditions that soldiers on operations deal with. Well worth a listen. h/t Boy on a Bike.

Motivation for war

1735099, a former Nasho and general pain in the arse, has a review of Paul Ham’s “On War” from the Weekend Australian Magazine from 4 Oct at his site. The article includes one of the most pretentious and demeaning memes about military service.
"We were fighting for our lives and the lives of our mates" seems to be the most common thread that binds men in battle.

Whilst I acknowledge that in times gone by, young men would enlist because it was the thing to do, or because all their mates were and they didn’t want to be left behind. The days of the massive armies made up of rapidly mobilised civilian populations are now behind us. Modern professional armies are made up of volunteers. Not volunteers who enlist for the duration of hostilities, but career minded young men and women who are fully aware of the ramifications of their decision to join.

"We were fighting for our lives and the lives of our mates" is a very narrow approach to the motivation for soldiers to fight. By scorning the more altruistic ideals behind military service, it actually demeans ability of soldiers to rationalise their involvement in conflict. Whilst the example of conscripts like 1735099 provides a convenient escape clause for ownership of a decision process that led them to war, the same generalisation cannot be made for the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts. The soldiers fighting in those theatres are volunteers. They enlisted with the knowledge that going to war may be required of them. To focus on the immediate and visceral reaction to combat oversimplifies a broader understanding that the modern soldier has about his role in any operation. It is an attempt to paint soldiers as pawns rather than the masters of their own destiny and the bearers of responsibility for their own decisions. By so doing, it comes across as the condescending and paternal reassurances from our “intellectual betters” that assume that because we’d be involved in a conflict that they see as repugnant, the only answer that doesn’t lead to the same sort of horrendous treatment of soldiers that the veterans of the Vietnam War experienced, is that we are too stupid to know better. The motivation for going is that all our friends are. The only reason we fight is because we are in the immediate danger that the “evil government” put us in and we are defending our own life and those of our mates. It is demeaning, condescending and insulting.

We know why we deploy to these places. We know the geo-political manoeuvrings that put us there. We know the historical and cultural roots of the conflict. We know our mission and our role in it. I am yet to receive a deployment briefing that runs along the lines of “You are going to country X in order to protect your own life and the lives of your mates”. Those are what we call implied tasks. They are important, but never the primary mission for any deployment. They are also usually the first questions asked; our ROE hold a very important role in the maintenance of morale. Overly restrictive ROE in dangerous situations makes people tense. Rwanda, specifically Kibeho, is a textbook example of that. Even that example though, of soldiers in the heat of the moment concerned with protecting their own life and those of their mates, were able to clearly see the more important concern was for the civilian populace caught up in those terrible events. They are now horribly traumatised by that experience, not because of the danger that they were in, but because they were denied the opportunity to serve the greater good in accordance with the altruistic ideals that they believed they were there to implement. To reduce those experiences to "We were fighting for our lives and the lives of our mates" cheapens their suffering and ascribes to them a baser level of their understanding of their own involvement than is painfully evident to even the most naive observer.

That does not obviate the primal desire to protect your own life, nor does it the quintessentially Australian ideal of prizing mateship above all. These things are highest in mind when rounds are cracking nearby, although concern for one’s mates doesn’t end when the adrenalin fades either, it is often in the most mundane that the true regard for and from our mates is evident. To condense that into the rationale for involvement in conflict or to ascribe to it the thematic principle of operational service misses the point. Without a higher purpose, fighting for your life and your mates overseas is no better than thugs who will do the same in a pub or back alley on a Friday night. Servicemen and women who accept the risks of joining the military and who serve the ideals of the mission when deployed deserve better than "We were fighting for our lives and the lives of our mates".

Foxymorons

Military Intelligence is often cited as the default example of an oxymoron. Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has bettered this example when discussing Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith’s recent pessimistic statements that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. According to The Australian, “Mr Fitzgibbon agreed the door should be open for political negotiations with Taliban moderates”. What differentiates a Taliban moderate from an extremist? Are they prepared to allow girls to go to school, but not allow them to learn? Will they fill soccer stadiums with crowds of jubilant Jihadists, line up all of the homosexuals, apostates, adulterers and women who have allowed a man other than their father or brother to see their face, and cut their heads of just a little bit?

A Taliban Moderate















Why, after nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan, when the Taliban are hiding in caves in the mountains, fleeing into Pakistan to evade coalition arse-whoopin’, and are splintered and disorganised, would the Australian Defence Minister be talking about a negotiated peace? The reason we went into Afghanistan in the first place was to oust a regime that had harboured Bin Liner and his cronies and provided them with a safe haven to train for and plan the September 11 attacks on the US. Are these the same “moderates” that the Defence Minister now thinks should be invited to the negotiation table to discuss their future role in the governance of Afghanistan?


The military will not provide a comprehensive victory in Afghanistan. There will be no triumphant parade through Kabul announcing the cessation of hostilities. Any workable peace for that troubled country must involve a political element. The Afghan people deserve a functioning political system that will provide the stability they need to begin the rebuilding process. There is no room in that political process for medieval thugs. To do so would only give them access again to political power, and Afghanistan would suffer for it.

Australians in Afghanistan

There is an excellent feature at News.com.au today on the Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan. It is well worth a look.