Defence and Security
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Five Eyes on the Afghan collapse-one eyed or blind?
The catastrophic failure of US and coalition intelligence in Afghanistan offers serious food for thought about the extent to which Australia relies on the vaunted Five Eyes arrangements. Continue reading »
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Afghanistan, the aftermath: Recognition or engagement?
What are the options for states, including Australia, in their dealings with Afghanistan following the retreat of the previous government and the assumption of power by the Taliban? Continue reading »
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Australia’s government scares me more than the Saudi government
I left Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. But the Australian government’s recent draconian rules remind me so much of home. Continue reading »
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Dungeons and dragons: The China threat fiction
China is an increasingly authoritarian state, actively asserting its will regionally and within its own borders giving rise to a dangerous fiction. Continue reading »
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The terrible effects and disastrous consequences of war. But we keep doing it.
The chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan coincides with a debate in the Senate on a bill which would curtail the unrestrained power of the executive to take the country to war. Continue reading »
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Cowardly acts by both ISIS-K with its suicide bombers and the US with its drone strikes
ISIS-K uses human suicide bombers to personally assassinate targets and murder civilians. The Americans use mechanical drones piloted from Langley, Virginia to do the same. Continue reading »
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Australian Strategic Policy Institute rorts Wikipedia
In an important but shocking article in Michael West Media (MWM) on 21 August, journalist Marcus Reubenstein has exposed a pernicious practice by which supporters of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) have assiduously removed all negative criticism of ASPI from Wikipedia’s ASPI page, and added fawning praise of ASPI which renders the page, in Continue reading »
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“No Australian who has ever fallen in our uniform has ever died in vain, ever” The PM and the AWM
Prime Minister Morrison’s recent statement to the ABC that “No Australian who has ever fallen in our uniform has ever died in vain, ever” is glib, facile, devoid of any content and oblivious to the catastrophe in Afghanistan and to Australia’s role. It is little more than an arbitrary assertion – that Australia’s wars, by definition, bring good Continue reading »
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Crocodile tears by Morrison over plight of Afghans
The Taliban advance was swift; that was the point at which the Australian evacuation of at-risk personnel and their families should have begun. . Hiding behind ‘intelligence’ is a poor excuse. US intelligence relating to Afghanistan has been as bad as their intelligence on Vietnam. Continue reading »
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The United State’s use of Australia in the race to weaponise space
The militarisation and weaponisation of space highlight Australia’s integration in the US military-industrial-surveillance complex and the continuation of the US war for planetary hegemony against China and Russia. Continue reading »
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Easy Lies & Influence in the $90b submarine boondoggle
No-one knew what the evaluation process involved, but it was clear the decision was political, not driven by the obligation of government to spend public funds for the best product and the best price. Continue reading »
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Best we don’t ask why we go to war.
Australia seems to hold more inquiries into itself than almost any other country. We inquire into everything, from Indigenous deaths in custody, child sexual abuse, and same sex marriage to bank misdemeanours, casino operations, pandemic responses, and alleged war crimes. There’s one exception to our obsession with self-scrutiny: Australia’s wars. Continue reading »
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Afghanistan- of course it was about oil.
The Afghanistan war disaster raises questions about the ANZUS treaty and what we were really fighting for. Continue reading »
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The Great Game of smashing countries
As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed. Continue reading »
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Afghanistan: Was September 11 the only reason for the attack on Afghanistan?
In one of his latest statements, Joe Biden reiterated the US states mission in Afghanistan, “America went to Afghanistan 20 years ago to defeat the forces that attacked this country on September 11th. That mission resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden over a decade ago and the degradation of al Qaeda.” Continue reading »
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Making sense of Afghanistan in fragments: part 2: the present and the future
The deluge of images carried by the mass media are in realty merely an overburden of a disaster foretold. Their precedents were freely available long before the Western forces entered Afghanistan but they were brought into sharp relief as soon as that happened. Albeit less drastically, the documentation since then – specifically, the voluminous, now declassified Continue reading »
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Making sense of Afghanistan: If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied.Part 1
Whatever took place in the last several days in Afghanistan, be it the Taliban’s victory as insurgency or counter-counter-insurgency, it is a development that will not disclose its full consequences for some time. Continue reading »
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The All-American Base World
According to our list, American military bases overseas are now scattered across 81 countries, colonies, or territories on every continent except Antarctica. And while their total numbers may be down, their reach has only continued to expand. Between 1989 and today, in fact, the military has more than doubled the number of places in which Continue reading »
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The fall of Kabul: false friends for over sixty four years
On hearing of the fall of Kabul a few days ago on 15 August, I recalled how shocked I had been by the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. As an Australian soldier who served in the Vietnam War between September 1972 and March 1973, I was an adviser to the old Army of Continue reading »
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Full time in Afghanistan. The captains and the kings have departed- again.
And there’s the final whistle! What a disappointment for team USA. They began superbly, bigger, fitter and stronger, and made some lovely attacking moves. In the opening stanza, they sliced the opposition defence to ribbons. All around me the crowd was on their feet, roaring their team on, confident this was going to be a Continue reading »
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A new game in a new era: China is playing it right, the US is not
China and the United States are in a different game than the rising power/established power conflicts of the past. Most analyses of such rivalries are based on pre–World War II history and fail to notice that the game changed radically after World War II. Sometimes when alterations are made in the rules or implements of Continue reading »
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Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy (Repost from May 9, 2018)
They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan – the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20th Century. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes of Afghanistan despite enormous cost of people and treasure. What has not received much attention is Continue reading »
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Critics Say Investors in US Weapon-Makers Only Clear Winners of Afghan War
As the hawks who have been lying about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for two decades continue to peddle fantasies in the midst of a Taliban takeover and American evacuation of Kabul, progressive critics on Tuesday reminded the world who has benefited from the “endless war.” Continue reading »
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The Failure of the American War Machine
The American War Machine (AWM) is big and brassy. Sound and light, chest-thumping, shock and awe. It is an extension of the American psyche. Continue reading »
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Too little, too late: Morrison’s Afghanistan failures
‘Too little, too late’ is one of the Morrison Government’s defining characteristics. Continue reading »
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After Kabul – a great opportunity for Australia
Our “great and powerful friend’, the United States of America, has suffered another humiliating defeat, this time in Afghanistan. In fact, the USA hasn’t won a single war in which it has participated for more than 75 years – since the WW2 conflict with Japan, concluded in 1945. Continue reading »
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Another bright shining lie: the ADF and Afghanistan
It was the celebrated American war correspondent Neil Sheehan who used the term “a bright shining lie” to characterise the profoundly corrupt nature – moral, political, social, intellectual, strategic, military, religious – of the US’s (and, by association, Australia’s) disastrous invasion of Vietnam. Continue reading »
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Lessons from the winds of war?
“Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind” Herman Wouk, The Winds of War Continue reading »
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Time for facts on Afghanistan, not platitudes and propaganda
Facing the all too predictable chaos left behind by yet another unnecessary Australian military adventure, the prime minister mouthed insulting platitudes about ‘freedom’ and sought propaganda value about no member of the military dying in vain. Such remarks display historical ignorance as well as insensitivity. Continue reading »
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The US disaster in Afghanistan and the growing influence of Russia and China
Afghanistan’s economic and social reconstruction could be swift, provided it is not handicapped by continuing Western interventions. Continue reading »
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