War On Terrorism

Australia marched into Afghanistan on the khaki coat-tails of the Americans in 2001 and it now seems we will be walking out ahead of previous schedules.

Courtesy: Australian Defence Force

It will be a well-overdue withdrawal and the electorate’s dissatisfaction with our presence there will have been a factor along with any military appraisal.

It is an unpopular war and one the Gillard Government has been having trouble trying to justify.

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  • Sean says:

    11:28am | 19/04/12

    @Peter Dellaplane, it’s not the deaths you naive fool. It’s the hundreds of life changing injuries, the untold mental scaring and the silence forded to you as the ignorant fool who has neither stepped up nor volunteered. You are a feckless coward who is all to happy to criticise from… Read more »

  • RyaN says:

    10:38am | 19/04/12

    @Lindsay: “If she didn’t want to do good then she would have done anything BUT the carbon tax” Do tell Lindsay, what good the carbon tax is going to do. We can already see companies planning for the impending onslaught of another massive tax, jobs being cut, refineries closing down,… Read more »

 

Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. He writes about his time in Tarin Kowt in this second part of a two-part report. Read the first part here.

The next stop on the trip was the Australian stronghold of Tarin Kowt.

Tarin Kowt, planet Tatooine.

We flew there on an Australian Chinook, a large transport helicopter that can fit about 40 soldiers and gear. This was an amazing journey. Flying tactically, we buzzed across the Afghan terrain only about a hundred metres off the ground, hugging the valleys and mountains for cover.

In the back of my head I knew that only a few weeks before an American Chinook got shot down carrying 30 Special Forces troops. But somehow this was suppressed by the sheer excitement of being in a big loud flying machine.

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  • St. Michael says:

    03:40pm | 05/11/11

    You seem to have missed this little thing called “propaganda” while you were over there. The genetic problems, for example.  Napalm does not cause genetic problems.  It’s similar to petroleum jelly that’s set on fire, which is what makes it stick to people and burn.  There’s no genetic conditions caused… Read more »

  • youdy beaudy says:

    05:08am | 05/11/11

    In Saigon they have a museum. The Vietnamese call it something like, ” the museum of american atrocities”, from what i can recall having been there and seen it. I saw people crying there, western people from all over the world while looking at the photos of the carnage caused… Read more »

 

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