Joe,

Here's the thing. Australia is powerless.

Let me repeat that in caps.

AUSTRALIA IS POWERLESS.

We do not have the power to influence events in the Javanese Empire aka Indonesia. We have even less ability to persuade the Javanese elite to respect the human rights of West Papuans than the Americans have to keep the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan indefinitely.

In fact let's discuss Afghanistan.

Should the coalition leave?

Most people on the Left will say an emphatic "yes!" Just as they said "yes!" to leaving Vietnam 4 decades ago.

Both times I agreed with the Left

Trouble is the Left was dishonest about the consequences. The communist victory in the South caused untold misery and a million refugees. This was foreseen by anybody not blinded by ideology. But I still thought we ought to leave because we did not have the power to bring about a happy ending in Vietnam and, in the end, it was of little strategic value.

Unlike the Lefties I simply said we have to abandon the Vietnamese to their fate. I did not kid myself it would be a pleasant fate.

In the same way, unlike the Left, I don’t kid myself about the consequences of leaving Afghan women to the tender mercies of the Taliban. Life for Afghan women now is pretty miserable; once the coalition has pulled out it will become hell on Earth. See for example:

Afghan widow given more than 200 lashes before being shot dead by Taliban for adultery was PREGNANT

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1301487/Bibi-Sanubar-Afghan-widow-shot-dead-Taliban-adultery-pregnant.html

But I think the coalition ought to leave because it is not in our power to change anything in Afghanistan. It was an excrement-hole before the coalition went in, it is still an excrement-hole and it will likely be an excrement-hole for many years.

Sad but there it is.

This is not "Realpolitiek"

This is realism.

AUSTRALIA IS POWERLESS

We should not waste our time and treasure or the lives of our soldiers in pursuit of the unattainable.

Hi Steven,

Afghanistan is a pretty unique case, at least for the time being. For the Yanks, there is something of a Greek tragedy about it: IF there is such a thing as al-Qaida, and IF it was responsible for flying planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and IF the Taliban harboured al-Qaida, then the US had the right - and the obligation - to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban regime. IF the Taliban came back to power and IF they gave sanctuary to al-Qaida, then they would keep promoting their shared ideology of converting the world, by force or otherwise, to their literal form of Islam, the Caliphate, the rule of the Book, which would justify the most brutal means to do it.

As it happens, I do believe all of those IFs and as far as I am concerned, I am on the Left: to me, the Wahabis, the Taliban, al-Qaida, al-Shabbab, Basjir et al. represent an attempt to impose the rule of the Book on all temporal societies, much like the attempt a thousand years ago by the Catholic Church to impose religious rule over Europe (a time that we now know as ? The Dark Ages). In other words, the Wahabists by whatever name would impose a new Dark Ages on however much of the world that they can bring under their control - which would be, as long as they exist and if they had their way, ALL of the world. To me, they represent the most extreme form of reactionary Right-wing ideology that the world has experienced for a thousand years. I wouldn't have liked it the first time around, and I wouldn't survive it this time around, and neither would you.

The Left, or sections of it, seem to have a simple rule - US: bad, therefore whatever not US: good. They will sit back and watch all those Afghan women who lifted their heads being butchered and feel very holy that, at least, they didn't support the US. The gutlessness and bankruptcy of that approach will never be forgotten.

Thanks Steven for being the first to try and poke a stick.

You may not be aware of this but you've attempted manipulation, in your response by using fear to scare the audience out of rational thought. You tell us that Indonesia is the scary 'Muslim' with 'times our population' and 'Do we really want to get them angry at us?' Hysterically funny, what are they going to declare war? NOP. They couldn't even if they wanted to.

Next you use misinformation, you tell use "it clear that they want to build a strategic partnership with Indonesia". What you forget to mention is that the Republican US Congress majority five years ago voted for a Foreign Relations Authorisation bill which required their Sec. of State to provide a detailed report on conditions in West Papua and about the alleged 1969 'Act of Free Choice'; that bill was only halted in the US Senate by the combined efforts of the Freeport, Bechtel and Exxon corporations. Just last week fifty Congressmen signed a letter asking Obama to make West Papua a high priority. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats support the colonisation of West Papua any more than they did East Timor.

Do the MATHS, an independent West Papua is a better security and trading partner for Australia. Self interest.

Daeron,

I'm aware of everything I've said and why I've said it.

The US sees Indonesia as being of strategic importance for two reasons:

--it is a RELATIVELY democratic Muslim country

--it could be a useful ally in containing China which the US views as an emerging strategic rival

The requirement of the Secretary of State to report on West Papua is the sort of political theatre the US indulges in from time to time to appease human rights activists. It means little. The US like every other state will put its own perceived vital interests ahead of protecting a powerless minority group within the Javanese Empire. And the Javanese Empire is deemed far too important to let the little matter of slow genocide in West Papua upset relations.

If you require proof of this consider that the US has recently renewed its military cooperation with Kopassus.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/world/asia/23military.html?src=mv

So what do you think is a better indication of US intentions? A five year old gesture in the US Congress? Or the renewal of relations with Kopassus?

Joe

I share your dislike of the Taliban. I just don't think the US has the ability to keep it out of power in Afghanistan.

Steven,

What you write is fair enough, as far as it goes, but the world insists on imposing problems on all of us. If the Yanks did leave Afghanistan, not only would everybody who opposed them, and the poor women who only wanted to live a more human life, not to mention the Hazaras, be pretty quickly killed off, but the various ratbag groups dedicated to a Khalifate would have a clear run to initiate terrorist acts, as they have done in Bali and Madrid and London and Pakistan and Yemen and Uganda and god knows how many other places, in order to impose their Divine Rule on all of the rest of us. Even on the Left, not that they would exist for much longer.

Sometimes in history, hard decisions have had to be made. How would you have advised Lincoln on going to war against the Confederacy and, by the way, freeing the slaves ? How would you have advised Neville Chamberlain in the face of an immensely powerful Nazi Germany ? What would have been the alternatives in both cases ?

Surely, we have to stand up for what we think is right, even if such decisions are uncomfortable and dangerous. Eventually, those decisions are forced on us belatedly, as in the case of the anti-Nazi forces, at even greater cost than might otherwise have been.

Surely you don't expect other people to live on their knees just so that you and I can have relatively problem-free lives ? Aren't we all better than that ?

Joe Lane

Joe writes:

"Aren't we all better than that ?"

No. We aren't. Maybe we should be. It would be nice if we were. But we aren't.

Let's take a closer look at the two examples you mentioned.

Lincoln did not go to war with the Confederacy. The Confederacy went to war with the Union. The war was not about slavery but about keeping the Union in one piece.

In other words it was a good old fashioned battle for territory.

As for Chamberlain, he went on appeasing Hitler when even blind Freddy could tell that Hitler was unappeasable. It was only when Chamberlain realised that Hitler could not be appeased that he decided to go to war BEFORE Germany's power become overwhelming.

Note that very carefully.

The Brits and the (reluctant) French did not declare war in September 1939 because they were champions of human rights. They did it because they were afraid that they'd better get in before Hitler got too powerful.

As William Shirer has documented in "The Collapse of the Third Republic", in terms of men and material the Anglo-French and German forces were about equal at the time of the Battle for France in 1940. Since the attacking side needs an advantage in military capacity, the Nazis should not have won.

So what happened?

Hitler had better generals. Period.

After the war the allied generals – especially the French – concocted the myth of overwhelming German military superiority in order to excuse their shortcomings.

I know this is hard for people to understand. But it's true. The myth of an invincible German juggernaut in 1940 is well entrenched. But it is a MYTH.

What is more, once on a war footing, the French and British between them were capable out-producing the Germans. If the war had gone on it is the allies who would have gained in strength relative to the Germans. Hitler understood this which is why he gambled on an attack 1940.