We need to listen to those on the ground in Afghanistan

Sheedy's Left Foot says:

10:17am | 29/09/10

Agree what is Deconfliction? I need a made up word of the week as it is not in any of the dictionaries I possess.

Articles and topics such as this always interest me as the things I believe all levels of the military are built on is unquestioning discipline and obeying of orders. And when this is called into question by the ranks there appears to be a real brakdown in this backbone of belief.

Would be interested to see how the author proposes the feedback is delivered up the chain of command when in reality the military is not and possibly can not be a democracy where leadership is openly questioned.

I admit this may be a styalized or romanticised view of things and not the reality of it.

Sunnie says:

01:16pm | 29/09/10

Correct
British in 1890
Even Japs gave it a wide berth
Soviets gave up
and now we are going to succeed where no one else has done before.

I was singing that old song
“What are we fighting for
I do not give a damm
Next stop is Vietnam/Afghanistan”

Again nothing changes
and we are fools to be conned.
Sunnie

Nigel Catchlove says:

05:27pm | 29/09/10

Wow! So many exclamation marks. 

Anyway, airspace deconfliction is the process of making sure that bits of sky have discrete uses for specified periods of time so that aircraft don’t get shot down by their own side’s artillery, so unmanned aerial vehicles aren’t flying in a piece of sky where fast jets will travel through and indirect weapon systems (missiles, artillery and mortars) can be used by troops. 

Airspace deconfliction is a very clear term, well understood and widely used by first-world professional military forces worldwide.  Having written that, it is a difficult task to perform, particularly in a coalition environment.

Markus says:

10:55am | 29/09/10

Every report I have seen shows the vast, vast majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan being caused by opposition forces.

The only difference to this number if we pull out is that they will no longer be considered ‘casualties’ when they are brutally murdered by people from their own country.

acker says:

11:27am | 29/09/10

We sent troops to a place which was being used as a safe-haven training post by Arab backed Wahabi islamist fundamentalist terrorists.
And rather than just spewing hatred among a demolished society like those Arab extremists our troops are offering hope.
It’s not an easy job but unlike the Arab Wahabi extremists the Australian troops are trying to minimize civilian casualties whilst the Extremists are trying to maximise it.

Leto says:

11:50am | 29/09/10

The UNAMA estimates deaths caused by insurgent action at 4900 - 6500 Afghani civilians for 2001- present.

The UNAMA estimates direct deaths caused by coalition forces at 5800 - 9000, and 3200 - 20000 indirect deaths caused by and since the invasion. These indirect deaths were caused by starvation, illness, injury and exposure.

So No. 4900 - 6500 for the “Taliban” and 9000 - 29000 for the ISAF (I slaughter Afghani famalies… would be funny if it weren’t true). God alone knows how many times the President of Afghanistan has asked us not to stop killing civillians.

You might have guessed, but i’m pretty anti-war. This one in particular.

Jon says:

12:19pm | 29/09/10

Leto, We would not be there if not for Arab backed Wahabi Islamist fundamentalist terrorists and some bad decisions made by the Americans in the 1980s. How do feel when young girls going to school for the first time since the Soviet era get acid splashed in their faces or worse for daring to be educated by the same religious nuts we are fighting against. This is always a rock and hard place kind debate.

acker says:

01:07pm | 29/09/10

@Leto….No I don’t think you are anti-war ..obviously the terrorist attack on New York which was planned by “al-qaeeda” based in Afghanistan does not even come up as a bleep on your very one eyed version of “anti war” ..

Leto says:

02:05pm | 29/09/10

@ Jon. I like the notion that the stronger protect the weaker. But I can’t delude myself into believing that is the reason we are there. Lasting change must come from within: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Afghanistan is made up of lots of different tribes. Many of whom are extreemly angry at having infidels invading their country and causing thousands of deaths. Every time we kill someone, we create more. If we are going to be the world police, I think the poor old continet of Africa could use our help more than Afghanistan.

@ The people who directly caused 9/11 died in the planes they flew into the twin towers. Does it sound logical to you that we invade a whole country to find a couple of the masterminds? If some wack jobs from Melbourne blew up something in the US, would it then be ok for the US to invade us?

It’s the same with every war. A few idiots start it, and all the innocents suffer. I joined the army to protect this nation in the event we were invaded. Why is it so difficult to understand that people in Afghanistan fight for the same reason?

Leto says:

10:55am | 29/09/10

As I understand it, one of the “officers” that you clearly despise so much is being charged. A Lieutenant Colonel no less. How does that work into your logic?

We are there to keep the Afghani population safe, protected and help with their infrastructure. So when Australian troops burst into a house (the wrong house to boot) at 2am in the morning, kill five children and a farmer, it’s a big deal. Isn’t it funny how quickly dead farmers become Taliban?

They don’t fight for me. They fight for their money and a pretty little ribbon.

TheRealDave says:

01:18pm | 29/09/10

They have to include someone higher up the food chain for appearances. He’s got an easy out because he’s not the one that threw the grenade and has plenty of legal argument to fall back on to cover his arse - officers always will. Its always those at the bottom of the food chain that will cop it the Diggers and JNCO’s.

But then, at the end of the day, I expect that both Diggers will be cleared and this ‘trial’ is more for public perception that the ADF can and will ‘do’ something if there are any suggestions of wrong doing. As I said - its a Public Relations exercise…just like that utter bollocks over East Timor and the supposed ‘kicking’ of a corpse that created headlines and a farcicle trial a few years ago.

Further, when someone is shooting at you at 2am they are a target, no ifs and or buts about it. Would you sit back and cop being shot at in a warzone? They did their jobs, end of story. Instead of hiding or running away they worked up to the target and took it out. It was only afterwards did they find the children in the house. Its tragic and its also war. If you don’t like it - don’t vote for governments that send soldiers to war. No amount of planning and or ‘smart’ bombs is going to stop civilians from dying. Mistakes happen. Intelligence can be wrong or change from the time its received.

We can and do need to look into deliberate attacks on known civilians or murders/rapes etc that have been uncovered by other forces. Yes, I fully support that. But not incidents like the alleged when soldiers acting under their ROE defend themselves and take out a target trying to kill them.

And yes, they fight for you even if you don’t want them to or appreciate it. They don’t fight for ‘pretty ribbons’ or money. If they were fighting for money they would have all become ‘contractors’ years ago.

TheRealDave says:

01:22pm | 29/09/10

Oh, I forgot one more thing.

You’ll find that plenty of the Diggers in 1 Commando, an ARes unit, are actually serving police officers including TRG (or whatever they call themselves now) personel, so not only are they militarily trained to Commando standards they are also the top echelon of armed police officers as well. Men trained professionally to act properly under fire and legally and not just put rounds into anything that moves.

miketron says:

01:22pm | 29/09/10

Spot on Paul.
It’s hard to achieve something that you can’t define.

stephen says:

09:08pm | 29/09/10

The Police provoke peace, the Military provide it, maybe because the soldiers shoot back, and are encouraged to do so.
The Taliban don’t like us. And they showed this by ramming 2 jets into New York towers. They’ll do it again if they’re not dealt with entirely, because they are mad and see only light and dark.

Michael says:

11:11pm | 29/09/10

@ Stephen: the Taliban didn’t ram 2 jets into the Twin Towers.  Not one Afghani national or expat was involved in 9-11.  It was *Al-Qaeda*, a terrorist organisation, that did it, not the Taliban.

I also stand by what I said.  We can’t complete “the mission” in Afghanistan, because “the mission” as contemplated can not physically be achieved by military means, and probably not even by a combined military/police/diplomatic effort, either.  These people would have dragged themselves out of the Stone Age by now if they had any real desire to join the civilised world.

Michael says:

05:00pm | 29/09/10

The point I’d make is that if the CDF is directly answerable to the Minister of Defence, the moral obligation for the armed forces’ highest ranked officers to refuse an impossible, suicidal, or plain stupid order from that Minister remains.

Let’s remember: the Minister of Defence is a politician and is not in the armed forces.  Almost by definition the Minister does not have the military experience (if not expertise) to decide for himself what the best tactics or strategies are to conduct a war in Afghanistan.  For that he has to take advice from the highest ranked officers in the armed forces.

And let’s remember that no one can be more honest than their boss.  You’ll either do a dishonest thing, or become complicit in that dishonest thing that the boss asks you to and thereby keep your job, or refuse the dishonesty and lose/resign your job.

In Afghanistan there is a distinct impression being left—filtering out of the place despite military secrecy around operations—that the rules of engagement in Afghanistan and the overall tactics we are using there are putting Australian personell at needless risk.  The rules of engagement in particular could not have come from the armed forces; they would have been a demand made by the politicians who asked the Australian armed forces to go there.  I can not see how any supposedly smart general with military experience would not figure out that those rules of engagement endanger our military and put our troops at *needless* risk.

Even so, how many resignations or protests against of the ROEs or the US/Australian strategy have we seen from the high command of the CDF?
I would venture none.  Certainly no private objections made to ministers or to Parliament, because there have been no resignations for “undisclosed reasons”, and no overt resignations over the way in which the war is being conducted.

There are only three conclusions you can reach in this situation:

(a) the chiefs of the armed forces think the ROEs and tactics are fine, which is ludicrous if they are competent military men;
(b) the chiefs of the armed forces think the ROEs and tactics are risky, but they’re prepared to let our servicemen take the risks associated with complying with them, which is sociopathic behaviour given it’s young men and women they’re thereby putting at risk intentionally and given the existence of very straightforward alternatives;
(c) the chiefs of the armed forces think the ROEs and tactics are bad, but they’re not going to say so to the Minister or to the public because they like their large pay scale and their rank more than they like their integrity.  In this case moral cowardice applies.
(d) the chiefs of the armed forces don’t like the ROE or tactics, but they’ve been ordered to take the course they have by the Minister.  If so the duty to resign is clear, and again, they don’t do so because they like their pay and rank more than they like their own integrity.  Again, moral cowardice applies.

It has nothing to do with the US/Australian alliance, it has everything to do with the chiefs’ own personal moral integrity.  By definition, they have none if one accepts the view that the ROE and tactics are bad and that the CDF is following them anyway.  Making the CDF more independent isn’t going to make its chiefs any more morally courageous than they are now.  That requires something entirely different, not to mention the willingness to break with the established “In with the US” mindset we’ve got at the moment.

Michael says:

11:05pm | 29/09/10

While I don’t disagree with 99% of what you say, Fark, I might point out that most, if not the vast majority, of generals in the military are armchair generals almost by definition.  The vast majority of military personell have no direct combat experience, or at best a few minutes’ combat experience stretched over a three or four year period.  That’s because Australia is only rarely at war, and even more rarely deploys a significant portion of its armed forces to a combat zone.  That means most of Australia’s high ranking officers truly do not have any direct experience of close combat operations other than through ‘training’, which is not a substitute.  Their jobs are to manage, which means they fight from armchairs.

Cosgrove was an exception.  He had some direct combat experience. Angus Houston doesn’t - his Air Force Cross was for an open sea rescue off WA in 1980, not for a combat mission.  Peter Leahy had no operational experience and therefore by definition no combat experience.  His successor, Ken Gillespie, also has no combat experience either.  Mark Kelly? No combat experience.  None of these guys, bar Cosgrove, have any medals for bravery in a combat zone.