jamesnixon.com
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TIME TO LEAVE
AFGHANISTAN?
In terrain that has defated every invader since time began, Australians are fighting, and dying, in Afghanistan. The futility of Armed Forces Vs Terrorists becomes apparent to anyone who has seen the geography.
The only time terrorists have ever been defeated was in the Malyan Emergency where armed forces were supported by the hard-slogging detective work of the Police Special Branch.
Now that Afghanistan has become the longest war for both the USA and Australia; with the President and the United Nations telling us that The Taliban may actually be our friends after all; it seems that the public is becoming restless.
Motivated as we are by images, we will stay until we are shown a defining image of the war's futility ... to sicken and revolt the Mothers who continue to send their children to fight. In Vietnam, it was the police chief executing a plain-clothed viet cong soldier in the 1968 Tet Offensive, and followed-up, after the decision to pull-out, with vision of napalm-victim Kim Phuc. But today the media is controlled in Afghanistan and there is little chance of such an image making it onto the front page.
As letter writers flood the Australian press imploring their government to pull-out, a lesson in history may be gleaned from the U.S.A's Vietnamese disaster - the only war they have lost. It's widely agreed that if they had stayed an extra three weeks they would have starved-out the Viet Cong in the southern half of the country, and maybe won a Korean-like victory. Food for thought.
16th Sept 2010
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