Good article - so clearly written.

Its fortunate, in a distressing way, that Australia does not need to worry about wider issues in the Afg-Pak war outside Australia's patrol area of Oruzgan Province http://www.defence.gov.au/opex/global/opslipper/index.cfm.

The only reason we are there is to lend support to the US, be a loyal ally, simple. If the war unbalances al Qaida, preventing it to re-order itself and retrain, all the better.

Therefore it is the old but totally valid concept that we are paying a premium to the US for wider US defence/ANZUS protection of Australia in peacetimes and ultimately US nuclear protection in war.

NZ has troops in Afghanistan for the same US protection reason, although NZ is loathe to admit it.

Our presence in Afghanistan also means the US is providing much more intelligence (mainly military, in all modes) to Australia than the merely reciprocal level the US would provide if Australia were not in Afghanistan.

So we don't need to do the thinking on Afghanistan we just need to support the US with "troops and treasure" no matter what and for as long as Obama and perhaps his successor (in years to come) wants us to stay there.

This may sound cynical and simplistic but there is a way out: Australia building sufficient conventional and nuclear military forces for an independent defence and by extension foreign policy. But that route is currently too expensive for the Australian electorate to stomach and talk of nuclear defence is taboo in all but the most secure planning groups in Defence HQ (Russell Offices) Canberra.

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2007/06/australia-to-go-nuclear.html

Great article full of insightful thoughtful comments and links.
I am an expatriated ozzie and am acutely aware of the resistance to g bush policy in the USA which is large and obviously pro democrat.
The solution is going to prove a least Obama’s commitment to the Middle East problem which is both difficult and probably full of incongruous policy decisions.

For may years I also supported the war in Afghanistan, whilst opposing the invasion of Iraq, for the same reasons that Gary Brown has stated.

However, as regular OLO visitors may be aware, I now reject the premise that the invasion was necessary to both bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice and to prevent them from using Afghanistan to launch further attacks.

The simple fact that, after 8 years of military occupation of what was supposed to be the territory from which 9/11, the London Tube bombings (aka 7/7), the Madrid train bombings, etc were launched, not a single person with proven link to any one of these atrocities has been captured, should surely cause even the staunchest proponent of the Official US Government explanation of 9/11 to rethink his/her views.

I urge Gary Brown to do so. A good place to start would be the web site of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth at http://ae911truth.org

Also an extensive discussion has occurred at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2166&page=83

A more recent discussion can be found at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9500&page=0

Even if Gary Brown is not immediately convinced of the case of the 9/11 Truth Movement, it should be very easy for him to see that there has been a cover-up and that a new enquiry is desperately needed.

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Whilst I am now opposed to the Afghan war, I am not convinced that the rorting of the ballots by Karzai and that government's corruption is, in itself, a compelling argument against the war, given that the alternative of the Taliban appears comparably unpalatable.

Nevertheless, we can be confident that Governments such as Australia's which, as a matter of course, ignore popular will on almost every critical issue, most notably privatisation and immigration, to suit the corporate donors, who so generously bankroll the governing parties, are not there to fight for democracy or for the benefit of the Afghans.

Whatever outcome may ensue from a withdrawal of Australia, the US, the US, etc could not be as bad as the continued death and destruction and undoubted plans to pillage the natural resources of the region.

Yes, excellent article and excellent comments.

However I don’t actually agree with them.

Plantagent has the issue in a nutshell. We are there to support the US in exchange for protection. But that does not excuse us from thinking, as Plantagenet suggests; nor from being ethically implicated in our actions. The US is doing atrocious destruction and injustice with these wars; and perhaps we need to rethink the risk/ethics/costs relation.

If an enemy is planning to attack or invade us, I don’t think we need to wait until it happens. But it’s more complex than that. The war against Iraq was clearly based on lies and … what interests? And the war in Afghanistan just smacks too much of imperial adventurism in the middle of Central Asia, and a misguided sense of social engineering, to make sense in terms of defence; quite apart from the fact that it is unconstitutional.

As for the “extreme Islamist terrorist movement”, perhaps if the USA didn’t have troops in 130 countries, and stopped bombing Afghan goatherds, shopkeepers, and bridal parties, they might not be as pissed off as they are?

As for “…huge fraud in the recent Afghan presidential ‘election’ - an exercise our taxpayers helped fund, by the way - conclusively demonstrates that the regime of Hamid Karzai, which we are supporting, has no credibility. None.”

True. But according to the logic of majority rule, aka democracy, if no such irregularities affected the Afghan elections, they would be as justified in launching pre-emptive wars against other countries on the other side of the world as the US is with a minority of the population having voted for Obama. If a majority voted for the Taliban, would that justify them in attacking the US, which has been far more invasive of Afghanistan, than the Taliban have of the US? So formal democracy by no means answers the issues.

But perhaps the biggest problem with all the formulations in the article and comments is that they seem in effect to confound the public interest with the will of the executive.

Interesting article on point: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/10/06/us-foreign-policy-rudyard-kipling/

Bloody hell. Wouldnt it have just been so much easier to give Bin Ladin what he asked for 10 years ago? US troops out of Saudi and a resolution to the Palestinians.

The only way to stop terrorists is to stop them wanting to be terrorists. Good lives, freedom, less of the rest of us telling them what to do and maybe a sharing of some of our wealth and knowledge and I doubt anyone could be convinced to blow themselves up for some superfriend in the sky.

Afghanistan was always going to be a disaster and unwinnable. The seppos are so far up themselves they think history dosnt apply to them and that they can top the Russians for pointless viciousness and subjugation of the Afghan people. Stupid fools.

Such a shame AlJazeera is not in Oz. Or are they on cable? Don't know. Spend to little time in Oz currently. The reason I say this is because they cover a lot of areas of the world that receive little if any attention in Aust otherwise. Not to mention the quality interviews with the decision makers. Top brass, top pollies you name it .. atlength interviews where they are encouraged to answer questions with full global interactivity from the community. Most excellent relative to Oz standards. Of course they carry a bit of bias but don't they all - absorb what is useful as B.Lee said.

Point being, an interesting doco on Afghanistan was recently aired. Before the alleged fraudulent elections, *Karzai* invited back an exiled WarLord who carries with him an estimated 2.000.000 loyal votes.

The same WarLord has been accused of serious attrocities and there was alleged high level interference with the mass grave sites and "brick walls" erected to confound the investigators.

..

It is in my view a problem when the media is not allowed to do its job where ever that may occur.

..

Suffice to say, that whilst it may have been a tactic to use the WarLords to put the Taliban down, a lot of testimonials on the ground in the doco reckon that they'd far prefer the Taliban to the WarLords.