http://www.thepunch.com.au/tags/war/ Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/in-afghanistan-trust-no-one-and-question-everything/ In yet another attack by a ‘rogue’ Afghan soldier, four French troops were shot dead last week. Proponents of the current post-modern war fighting doctrine continue to believe we can make people love us.  Counterinsurgency has been a convenient doctrine swallowed by Western leaders as a politically correct way to fight a war. But it is built on the well-meaning principle of “hearts and minds” when it is nothing more than an unhealthy blend of social engineering and pork-barrel politics.  The fact is in Afghanistan they love you until the money stops and even then, as the latest incidents show, nothing will bridge the cultural divide. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/in-afghanistan-trust-no-one-and-question-everything/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/in-afghanistan-trust-no-one-and-question-everything/#item7586 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/alls-not-fair-in-war/ In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/alls-not-fair-in-war/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/alls-not-fair-in-war/#item7539 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/pearl-harbor-attack-highlights-lack-of-intelligence/ Author Craig Shirley announced with some fanfare in The Australian that the United States had “no intelligence of a potential Japanese attack.” Tell us something we don’t know. Writing all the way back in 1962, Roberta Wohlstetter made clear that the United States “failed to anticipate [the] Pearl Harbor [attack] not for want of the relevant materials, but because of a plethora of irrelevant issues.” feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/pearl-harbor-attack-highlights-lack-of-intelligence/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/pearl-harbor-attack-highlights-lack-of-intelligence/#item7343 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Digging-up-fallen-diggers-is-the-ultimate-indignity/ As we approach the Centenary of World War I, we start to think about the tremendous sacrifice so many of our diggers made. It is unimaginable to think that over 60,000 young men died in Gallipoli and the Western Front. When you visit the battlefields of France and Belgium and the cemeteries and memorials you see countless numbers of white crosses honoring the fallen. Many of those crosses are for soldiers who are “Known Only to God”. At the various memorials such as VC Corner and Menin Gate the names of those who were missing in action are engraved in stone. The Australian Government’s official estimation is there are approximately 18,000 Diggers lying under the fields of France and Belgium. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Digging-up-fallen-diggers-is-the-ultimate-indignity/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Digging-up-fallen-diggers-is-the-ultimate-indignity/#item7224 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/As-we-remember-our-fallen-we-forget-why-we-went-to-war/ It’s Remembrance Day. And this year, we have more to remember than ever. Ashley Birt, 22. Bryce Duffy, 26. Luke Gavin, 29. Rowan Robinson, 23. Todd Langley, 35. They’re all diggers killed in Afghanistan, and that’s just since June. While we’re remembering them though, we need to jog our memories a little further. Because over the course of this Very Long War in Afghanistan, there’s a lot that we’ve forgotten. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/As-we-remember-our-fallen-we-forget-why-we-went-to-war/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/As-we-remember-our-fallen-we-forget-why-we-went-to-war/#item7124 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/afghanistan-it-is-the-manner-of-our-leaving-that-matters/ The recent string of casualties inflicted on Australian trainers by their Afghan students is part of the ongoing tragedy of war. It is also not making the job of selling the Afghan War to the Australian population any easier. A recent Roy Morgan poll says that 72 per cent of Australians want to withdraw the troops. That’s good because we are, of course, going to withdraw and our casualties must be seen in that context. The withdrawal date is already set as 2014 and barring some strategic change, our combat troops will leave. The Prime Minister has announced that there will be an ongoing training commitment to Afghanistan, but the detail is unclear. Of course, if there were no consequences for the withdrawal of our troops, they would have been withdrawn long ago. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/afghanistan-it-is-the-manner-of-our-leaving-that-matters/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/afghanistan-it-is-the-manner-of-our-leaving-that-matters/#item7115 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/ Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/#item7058 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-doing-the-right-thing-in-afghanistan/ Three more Australians are dead, and seven injured, in Afghanistan. It’s even more tragic because it appears the killer was an Afghan soldier, a colleague. Follow the news at news.com.au. Nathan Mullins spent time with the Australian Special Forces in Oruzgan, and this is his perspective on the many questions that beset Australia about our role in Afghanistan. What are ‘we’ doing in Afghanistan? People ask me whether we can win the war. That’s not the important question. The question is whether we should be trying to ‘win’ in the first place. But before that the question is: who’s ‘we’? We the Coalition, we the Australian Army, we Australians, or indeed, we the western world? It’s a long way from Melbourne to Afghanistan, both geographically and figuratively, but when I had the chance to fight in the hills and valleys of Uruzgan with the Australian Special Forces, I did it. I needed to know if ‘we’ should be there. When I decided to go I thought I represented the Australian Army. While I was there I realized that the people of Afghanistan feel isolated from the rest of the world. They didn’t see me as an Australian soldier, or an Australian really, they saw me as a citizen of a world that was so foreign to them as to barely exist. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-doing-the-right-thing-in-afghanistan/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/we-are-doing-the-right-thing-in-afghanistan/#item6995 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-day-that-changed-everything/ It’s a pretty reasonable guess that, over the coming week, we’re going to hear a LOT more about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Ten years on from that awful event, the media will hammer us remorselessly with commemorative newspaper liftouts and TV specials, and we’ll quickly tire of emotionally-loaded words like “courage”, “tragic” and “heroism” being used ad nauseam. At times, it will seem like a collective remembrance of tragedy almost completely disproportionate in scale to the nearly three thousand lives lost on that day. (Which, to put that number in perspective, is one fifth of the number of people that died in March this year as a result of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.) feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-day-that-changed-everything/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-day-that-changed-everything/#item6638 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Cool-heads-are-needed-when-horror-is-writ-large/ It was not until I recently heard an art historian visiting Australia to talk about Guernica – the iconic anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso – that I connected the dots of why the 9/11 attacks had such a penetrating impact on the global community. Art historian Professor Timothy J Clark was explaining in a Sydney Ideas lecture why Picasso’s depiction of the world’s first terrorist air-raid continues to have political currency in the post-9/11 era, despite the existence of more “real” forms of media than existed in 1937. Clark said that in essence Picasso managed to communicate what it is really like to be bombed. He told me after the speech that “Guernica wouldn’t have its continuing political relevance if it didn’t somehow manage to wrench the material reality of suffering out of that black and white virtual world”. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Cool-heads-are-needed-when-horror-is-writ-large/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Cool-heads-are-needed-when-horror-is-writ-large/#item6291 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 In the film Balibo, five journalists paint an Australian flag and the word ‘Australia’ on the wall of their ‘safe’ house. They are then coldly executed by the invading Indonesians. They believed – naively, in retrospect - that their very Australianness and their civilian status as journalists would save them. Their brutal slaying outrages us, offends our sense of fairness – and shows that the concept of fairness is an odd sort of idea to have in the midst of carnage.