Australian involvement in WWI was justified by the fact that Australia would have been deleteriously affected by a Central Powers victory: our reliance on Britain at that point was such that a British defeat would have severely damaged our economy, if not our political freedom.

The war in Vietnam, like the wars in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, had no conceivable relevance to the safety or prosperity of the people of Australia, and using Australian taxpayers' money to prosecute those wars was and is political chicanery of the highest order.

The Australian government has only one moral obligation: to protect and serve the best interests of its citizens. Our involvement in World Wars I and II was completely justified, although of course there were mistakes of policy and judgment in its execution. Our involvement in land wars in Asia and the Middle East has never been remotely justified by any real threat to Australian interests.

Bushbasher

I reckon oggy would know better than you:
Simply because you seem to have an attitude that because he doesn't see things the way you do he might not have the ability to think about vietnam as clearly as yourself.

And what your ilk forget is that the other nations of SE Asia greatly appreciated the efforts of people like oggy because they like us at the time saw the communist threat from the north as very real.

Mate many of our best relationships in Asia are with countries who understood how they benefited from the exhaustion of North Vietnam as a military power.

History won't be written by the media it'll be written by historians who don't pander to any particular political hue.

Thanks oggy

keith, grow up. oggy may well know better than me: i never claimed otherwise. but his having served in vietnam is not an argument for that, and he seemed to be claiming it was.

the thing that your ilk don't get is that people are not part of an "ilk".

It's a sign of desperation when someone quotes Gerard Henderson as a justification for the righteousness of the Vietnam war.
How ridiculous to apply this simplistic good/bad binary analysis to Gallipoli and Vietnam.
The Vietnam war remains a totally immoral war whether it be its impetus via the totally fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident to the pathetic attempt to portray the corrupt and despicable Diem regime as a democratic outpost in SE Asia.
It does not follow that to argue that Vietnam was an immoral war automatically places each previous war in the "good" column.
WW1 was an equally immoral war in its own way. And like the troops in Vietnam the diggers in the trenches were victims of decisions made at a distance and based upon colonial and strategic priorities of European powers.
So please spare us this specious argument.

It is interesting that so many of you here condemn the Vietnam war. My understanding is the US (and hence ultimately us) went to war because of the domino theory. We believed if Vietnam fell to communism, then so would most of Asia. Given the way communists seemed to attack their neighbours and their own peoples it was a genuine worry.

In hindsight, it was just rampant paranoia of course. It seems the Americans didn't have as much faith in the capitalist system as they made out. Who would of thought such destruction could arise from American under confidence? Indeed who would have thought there was such a thing as American under confidence?

Anyway, apparently such a thing did exist, and they went to war because they saw a genuine threat. They were the days - when the Americans when to war because of a genuine threat. Right now they have occupied a country for the better part of a decade and I am buggered if I know why. Vietnam seems a just war in comparison.

The essential difference between Australia's involvement in WW1 and WW2 and Vietnam was that Australia's involvement in WW1 and WW2 had overwhelming public support while support for Australia's involvement in Vietnam split the nation.
Australians went to war in 1914 to support their uncles and nephews and cousins and second cousins fighting for Great Britain. Australia was part of the British Empire with a common culture. A part of this culture was an admiration for military ideals.
The arguments for Australia's entry into World War 2 were similar but the prospect of the destruction of our democratic values and freedoms if the Axis powers were to win loomed much higher in the public mind.
Australia's entry into Vietnam lacked many of the circumstances accompanying our entry into WW2. There was no obvious direct threat to our political and economic wellbeing as a nation. The British Empire had largely vanished; Britain had been replaced by the USA as our number one ally. Indeed the UK did not send troops to Vietnam. There was a much greater discussion in the media including TV about the pros and cons of our entry into the war.
Australia's involvement in Vietnam was no more or no less moral than its involvement in the first two World Wars. The three wars differed only in their level of popular support which had very little to do with morality.