If Australia's main reason for remaining in Afghanistan is to train the Afghan Army that reason is clearly a nonsense.

However the real reason 50 more Australians will die before the US permits Australia to withdraw in 2014 is the US hasn't given permission for Australia to withdraw yet.

Do you follow me?

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2011/06/afghanistan-lets-hope-australias.html

I find it passingly amusing that these people can argue one minute that the Gillard mob are correct in ignoring a huge percentage of the Oz population in imposing a carbon tax, then trot out a lower percentage population in disagreement with the Afghanistan adventure as reason to abandon the exercise.

I do not however, disagree with the idea of getting out of the place. We have absolutely nothing to gain, unless some very large advantages are quietly granted by the US. There is nothing for us now or ever, other than becoming even more of a target for Afghan illegal migration.

Previous such efforts, even when successful, have shown a zero return to us, despite a huge cost to our servicemen. A lot of Ozzies died defending Malaya from communist insurgency after WW11, but we have yet to see any returns for their lives, & that's one we won, I suppose you could say.

Time to save a few service men, & protect our boarders 200 hundred miles out. Some big guns on our patrol boats, & instructions to fire on illegals would do more than all these international adventures.

The authors say

"If Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Defence Minister Stephen Smith believe that trust and confidence can be re-established by Australian soldiers toward Afghan troops they are meant to live alongside and train they are sadly deluded."

They (ie the authors) may be right. And this is on account of just two (?) particular incidents of Australian soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers.

How may incidents have there been of Afghan civilians being killed by Australian troops? Certainly there have been lots killed by allied troops of other countries (eg, in the commonplace "night raids"). Are the folk that run the war concerned that these incidents may also destroy "trust and confidence"? It seems not, judging from the way that such incidents continue to occur.

I agree with the autrhor's argument. It does not go far enough however in analyzing this sorry mess. The (ostensible) original reason for the attack on Afghanistan was the US claim, never proved even remotely, that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by bin Laden. Even the FBI rejects that one. The US promised a White Paper but withdrew that promise the very next day. We are still waiting. the US said that the Taliban government of the day refused to hand over bin Laden. That was a lie too, although our tame media faithfully parrot it when required.
John Howard sdaid we joined the attack because of the ANZUS treaty. But that treaty is subject to the UN Charter and the attack on Afghanistan was clearly in breach of Article 52 of the Charter. To this day the Australian media refuse to even discuss the international law ramifications of the attack. You can draw your own conclusions as to why that is the case.
Over the succeeding 10 years the official rationale has shifted at regular intervals, but again the media does not bother to analyse this, being content to simply repeat the (current) official rationale. Never any discussion about Bagram prison that exceeds Guantanamo in numbers held, tortured and killed. Never any discussion about CIA involvment in the international heroin trade, 93% of which is sourced in Afghanistan. And so on. The media are no more than cheerleaders for a discredited, illegal and indefensible policy. Don't experct any change any time soon.

...There is a military machine that needs oil!

Send Julie Gillard and her bunch of cronies, also her hairdresser boyfriend to the front line, Obama might like to join them also, end of story.