Kellie, you state

"Unlike the Labor and Liberal parties, the Australian public are actually intelligent enough to realise that a war against insurgents and terrorists is by default a war against innocent men, women and children, that a war to bring peace is an oxymoron and that the impossible task of preventing places from becoming training grounds means staying there forever".

Can I suggest you read the following, notably the relevant sections concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan, although reading all the chapters may also help you learn about the complexity of international relations. It may provide you with many reasons why the West has little choice but to stay there for a long time.

Patrick M. Cronin (ed), GLOBAL STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT 2009 America’s Security Role in a Changing World, Published for the Institute for National Strategic Studies, By National Defense University Press, Washington, D.C., 2009, 46.

I can remember when George W Bush started the war
and we said at the time that it was about oil.
Something about getting an oil pipeline from one side of the Afghanistan to a sea port.
My opinion is that there will be no victory in Afghanistan. The Taliban will just withdraw to their multitude of mountain hideouts and regroup.

We should be guarding our “national security” in Australia, not in Afghanistan. Let the Afghans look after themselves. Send back the cowards who are coming to Australia illegally while our soldiers are being killed doing the job they (Afghans) should be doing.

Terrorists will always be training, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. The only place we can protect Australia from terrorism is in Australia, by stopping illegals, reducing immigration and being more selective with who we allow in, and stopping Muslim immigration altogether.

Whether or not the Bali murderers were linked to anything or anyone in Afghanistan is quite beside the point, given that we had already fallen for the NATO (we don’t even belong to NATO) request to send troops to the terrorist playgrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And why, after all of the rubbishing Labor gave Howard over Iraq, is it OK for Labor to maintain troops in Afghanistan?

Australia soldiers are more at risk in Afghanistan than they were and are in Iraq.

I have to say, though, that it’s hard to work out Tranter’s “war against innocent men, women and children” when it is Australians we should be concerned about – not Afghans, who are the ones who should be fighting the Taliban if they want them gone. Instead, they are running away to Australia! To hell with them.

The Russians couldn’t do anything with the Taliban or the rat hole that is Afghanistan. Neither will the Coalition of the Silly. In fact, it is a great trick of America NOT to win in the conventional sense: since Vietnam, America has been content to merely leave countries they meddle in paralysed by instability. They could have, if they really wanted to, won in Vietnam, and they certainly could win in Afghanistan. Instead, Obama sacks generals when they try to tell him how they could deal with the problem once and for all.

We would be unwise to ignore the hasty withdrawl of Russia from Afghanistan and the political void that resulted.

We chose to become involved in Afghanistan and therefore have a responsibility to 'fix the place' before we depart. When they have enough infrastructure to function as a sovereign state we can then responsibly withdraw. To do so before will only repeat the political vaccuum and invite extremists to occupy it.

Kellie Tantrums is in good form as usual... "plainly incorrect" to the intelligent segment of Australia, "stupid" to the less intelligent.

She just trots out the usual lefty mantra, over..and over...and overrrrr A-gain.

Kellie.. go live for a while in some 3rd world contry.. get some real world therapy and for goodness sake stop reading 18century Marxist rubbish.

I'm going to headline this next bit.. against a background of Kellie's latest trantrum.... where she spitefully says:

"that a war to bring peace is an oxymoron"

No kellikins... sorrrry.. but this is how it realllly is:

@@@ EVERY PEACE NOW IN PLACE, IS A RESULT OF A WAR @@@
or more than one.

So, whether you like it or not...'thats life' (to Sinatra's crooning)

That's life, that's what all the people say.
You're riding high in April,
Shot down in May
But I know I'm gonna change that tune,
When I'm back on top, back on top in June.

aaaah that illusive Utopian dream eh Kelly... you keep reaching..keep hoping.....keep writing... but it's all a dream.. a mirage... it sure as heck ain't life.

Now that large mineral deposits have been found.. oooooweeeee...watch out.. the *scramble* begins... war lord against war lord.. representing different major multinationals.. or nations.. China.. America..France... EU...

The chances of peace in Afghanistan are similar to those of a snowflake in hell.

Hi Kellie

Your article is probably the best I've seen on OLO. This is in terms of use of evidence, argument and succinctness. The reason for the continuing Australian presence in Afghanistan is, of course alliance politics - backing up an American political decision made in 2001 - to deploy military power in Central Asia due to a set of primarily American interests. Australia's presence adds credibility to this exercise of American foreign policy goals.

What adds extra strength to your article is its move to a gut feel, centrist position. Arguments, also used by the Left, are important, but have not been allowed to marginalise the article. I'm talking as someone whose talked the talk of Stalinists as well as fascists and those shades in between. I can see you've had wide experience also.

I think Centrism, a little to the left of our now very conservative Labor Party (talking Green ground here) is indeed the new powerful direction of politics.

Gillard is cynically playing the shifting voter/marginal seat game as a very conventional, establishment, politician does. But people are seeing through that.

Defence Minister Faulkner implicitly agrees with your/our line on Afghanistan as he wants to bail out of a portfolio that is killing our soldiers for US interests. Our soldiers will keep on dying in Afghanistan until America permits us to withdraw.

Leigh

I also agree with your first five paras. Australia's main security interest is defending our region. Our overstretched national security effort has permitted dangerous things to happen – not only in counterterrorism but in geo-strategic areas (which includes allowing the Chinese military into East Timor).

Afghanistan is permanently dysfunctional. Since the nineteenth century countries who have gone in with good intentions of fixing the place with infrastructure and democracy have found that the destructive power of Afghan tribal and opium interests is dominant. This not an issue of Islam - or the failings of invader/occupiers - just a tragically destructive masculine way of life in that country.

Regards

Pete