Formersnag: << Marx did not even write his evil book, personally. It was produced for the "Illuminati" nearly a century earlier & supplied to Karl as a complete work. >>

You must have studied history at the same fascist kindergarten as Boazy. Hilarious.

Boazy: << gotcha >>

Always happy to point out your factual errors.

Kellie Tranter

It is overwhelming.

Our young people die in Afghanistan for a PM’s opinion, a PM fixated with exams and uniforms.

What exams did she pass to qualify for the job?

Shouldn’t she wear a uniform?

In my times, in Italy, I had to wear a uniform as the PM did and so did Hitler, Stalin, and Franco.

REVISED VIEW - STICK WITH THE US UNTIL WE BUILD OUR OWN

On further consideration my extolation of the article was simplistic. While everyone has an opinion that can be eloquently put it carries more weight if a person has some experience of the military, military policy and the people in it. Knowing people in Afghanistan on patrol whose kids are less than three years old focuses the mind more than political point scoring.

Experience is not necessarily an absolute benefit but it helps when one has talked for many years to those prepared to fight and die for their country and perhaps for other human reasons which I won't dissemble here.

I'm frustrated that our troops are dying for primarily American reasons. However in the absence of a self reliant (meaning sufficiently armed) defence force we have nowhere to go but to rely totally on US protection from powerful nuclear armed countries.

I wish it were otherwise (we would be talking Australian nuclear weapons then) but the reality is that our dependence on the US alliance means that America's distant interests are also our interests by default. Our chosen role is as a supportive ally until we build the means for defence and foreign policy independence.

Until we have the ability to defend ourselves we will continue to waste resources and lives on protector's causes. This idea is not new of course. Different people have different ideas of Defence Rudd/Chamberlain relied on pieces of White Paper to create a peaceful zone in their time. But what counts for countries that have adequately defended their military interests, like Sweden, is security that comes from military preparedness and inventiveness - not just White Papers full of good, underfunded, intentions that avoid the nuclear future.

So the tension between the naive, idealistic generalists and the experienced, if less articulate, military realists continues. Protection is expensive but, as the slogan goes, we're worth it.

Peter Coates

Following warmongering America is complete folly.

America has an economy which is built upon endless war. The American Administration and the Pentagon are built upon the bodies of millions of Americans who have died in vain as their imperial country goes around the world invading and occupying and stealing resources belonging to others.

We are indoctrinated to think that war is normal, that using military force is the way to solve problems. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan to see how well war works.

War is not normal! It is barbaric. It defies intelligence. And, one day, perhaps soon, we'll have a nuclear war and humans will become extinct.

Stop the rot! Condemn the warmongers. Isolate them. Boycott them.

Save our world from extinction.

http://dangerouscreation.com

You know, David, humans WILL become extinct, sooner or later, it is only normal and according to the laws of physics that anything with a beginning will also have an end!

War is normal - there is sufficient evidence to indicate that war is and was prevalent between ape-tribes as well as among humans throughout the ages, especially when over-populated and resources are scarce.

The alternatives to war are: natural-disasters, starvation, plagues, or willful abstention to procreate. If anything is barbaric, it is the blind desire to bring more children into an already-overcrowded planet.

Whether our world will experience extinction is subject to a hot debate: it may either collapse, reversing the big-bang, or continue to spread forever, thinning to infinity. In both cases, humans will not be included.

Let the Americans think whatever they like to think, for even a broken watch shows the correct time twice a day. We are not going to live forever, but while we are here we deserve to live in dignity and freedom. Afghan people are not given this opportunity, so it is only noble to come out and help them.

P.S. you should have the courtesy to mention that the quoted web-site is your own and as you declared, comments in opposition to your views will not be published there.

Hi David G

Yes and certainly protecting our poeple from the warmongers in Russia and China (who killed millions of their own people, very rapidly, before they built their own nuclear weapons) should also be considered.

Noting also that 1944, BEFORE any nuclear weapons existed, almost certainly saw the most people killed in war in history.

While it is easy, trendy (even slogan frequenting) to say that the US is the font of all evil - the Americans constitute the bastards on our side. It is bastards on the other side revealed or potential, in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, who now have first strike nuclear weapons, who will threaten us once we "successfully" isolate ourselves from our main ally. Just imagine a trade blockade enticing better resource prices from us for our main customer's benefit. That's the likely tip of a sharp iceberg.

Threat is the main benefit of nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines - no-one needs to pull the trigger - they are that overbearingly powerful.

Basically our choices are:

- continuing alliance OR

- building our own nuclear weapons OR

- practicing the Mahatma Gandhi style of non-violence that resulted in 3 million dead in the Indo-Pakistan War, India being beaten by China in 1962 and only then "pacifist" India realising that it needed nuclear weapons to defend itself and to reduce the more-demonstrably murderous scope of coventional war.

Since Pakistan, China and India armed themselves with nuclear missiles, conventional megadeath for them has become obsolete while MAD has always prevented nuclear war.

Anyway I'm happy to argue for weeks but just cut down the (anti US only) "peace" slogans.

Regards

Pete