The quality, relevance and consequent utility of general public debate concerning Australia’s military commitment to the UN-endorsed International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is often problematic at best.
Commonplace arguments against Australia’s commitment to Afghanistan tend to suffer from a factual deficit. Arguments for the commitment tend to suffer from a conceptual one.
This is not much different from wider public argument about how Australia is best defended now and in the future — and for much the same reasons.
Unlike the world wars, our small, professionally based, military effort in Afghanistan does not involve or affect Australians on a mass or national community basis. Unlike Vietnam, there is not even some wider involvement through selective conscription and community-based opposition to it.
More generally, most Australians only think about their defence force on Anzac Day and then only in an ahistoric sense. We think about contemporary and future defence and strategic challenges even more rarely, even where this involves current wars and their implications.
Very few Australians (especially those not of a recent immigrant background) now have any experience of military service or war, and even most extended family discussions of defence matters lack such input. The commonsense and trusted personal observations of older generations who fought in or lived through World War II are no longer with us, no matter whether their counsel would be for or against the Afghanistan commitment.
Public opinion is therefore mainly shaped by media coverage. But modern media coverage of defence issues and war in Australia is now mainly by generalist journalists, often political correspondents, rather than experts in the field (as with business, health or scientific journalism). Unlike previous wars, we also no longer have the valuable input from dedicated and experienced war correspondents who deploy with the troops for long periods and gain a thorough grasp of the trends and situations in play.
With a few individual exceptions (Brendan Nelson, John Faulkner), the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments have all led public debate on our Afghanistan commitment badly and complacently. Parliamentary opposition by the Australian Democrats and especially the Greens has also been ideological rather than evidence-based. No Democrat or Green senator has even visited Oruzgan Province.
Australia has very few genuine academic experts on Afghanistan and even fewer without ethnic or religious irons in the fire. Professor Bill Maley from ANU is almost the only one able to provide objective comment based on considerable and wide-ranging research in Afghanistan over decades.
The overall result is now a general lack of shared community experiences and memories about how Australia fought and coped with its previous wars, exacerbated by poor knowledge about Afghanistan in general and the situation there in particular. Rather than applying informed or cautious judgment, arguments for or against the Afghanistan War therefore tend to use frames of reference based more on emotion, sympathy for bereaved defence force families, ideology and even defeatist apathy. Historic examples, often based on popular mythology, also abound on either side of the debate, but more so among the war’s opponents.
Warfare is also dynamic and arguments for or against the Afghanistan War often ignore this through hidebound insistence on supposed certainties and the moral self-regard of the proponent. Debating points that might have been valid in the past might not be so now, and vice versa.
We are now in a dangerous situation for any liberal democracy at war. Our troops on the ground have an indisputably better belief in the worth of their mission, and a much better understanding of the situation in Afghanistan, the principles at stake and what their presence means at village-level on the ground in Oruzgan Province, than most public opinion back home in Australia. Much public opposition to the war remains markedly uninformed and often arrogantly comfortable in remaining so. Supporters of the commitment, even where better informed, are often just as complacent.
Finally, unlike flawed, context-free, largely ignorance-fuelled opinion polling that simplistically asks only whether we should withdraw from Afghanistan or not, a key question for any informed debate is surely what would be the strategic risks and consequences if we do?
“a key question for any informed debate is surely what would be the strategic risks and consequences if we do?”
Yes indeed. That does have something to do with it, Mr James. It’s not the entirety of the debate over this nine year old military occupation/war, but it is a significant component. Rather a surprise, therefore, to discover that your article devotes not a single paragraph to that topic.
Instead, we are treated to a long and patronizing moan about how the Australian media aren’t biased enough towards war (only a militarist could seriously suggest that!) and how, in general, only military folk with boots on ground experience fighting in Afghanistan know what they’re talking about.
Excuse me sir, but not so fast. I opposed the invasion of Afghanistan before it happened,rea when most of our politicians and reassuring was telling the public what a breeze it would be. Ditto Iraq.
What were your opinions about those invasions at the time? Did you share the neocon view that invading/occupying Iraq would be a cakewalk? Found any ‘WMDs’ yet? Any sign of Usama Bin Laden?
I agree with Syd’s sentiments.
With the greatest respect to our uniformed soldiers on the ground, their opinion on whether or not they should stay in Afghanistan is irrelevant. It is our politicians that decide whether or not they stay. In fact, soldiers areobviously biased towards staying in Afghanistan or even increasing our committment, because a) people who have spent their whole professional lives training for war actually do want to fight wars, and b) they get paid a hell of a lot more to be in Afghanistan than sitting around the barracks in Australia.
Yes, we could do with better war correspondents. As the private sector seems incapable of providing these journalists for Afghanistan, the ABC should be picking up the slack with multiple teams of journos, both embedded and roaming free (I’m aware of the threat to their lives, but I’m not going to argue about that here).
Finally, I do find this article patronising and insulting, with an incredibly obvious bias towards staying in Afghanistan, covered with the pretence of an article about the limitations of those debating the issue.
“Our troops on the ground have an indisputably better belief in the worth of their mission, and a much better understanding of the situation in Afghanistan, the principles at stake and what their presence means at village-level on the ground in Oruzgan Province, than most public opinion back home in Australia.” – Predictable nonsense. The same nonsense that police officers use when they say that only the police can understand when a taser should be used or when a citizen should be shot.
I am ‘on the ground’ in Sydney. So is Kristina Kenneally. So is Barry O’Farrell. So is Bishop Pell. So are the managers of porn shops and, for that matter, butcher’s shops. So is the old bloke in the Devonshire St tunnel who holds up a begging sign.
Our various understandings of the situation in Sydney, the principles at stake, and what our presence means will differ according to all sorts of things. It is quite possible that an academic or a journalist who lives in Adelaide but has made Sydney a subject of detailed inquiry may have a more comprehensive and objective view.
The reality is that it is likely that serving soldiers in Afghanistan, however brave and loyal, will have had a strong dose of enthusiasm for the war inculcated into them. They are not the best judges of whether Australia should have a military presence in Afghanistan.
Australia has an immediate interest in an open debate about our presence in Afghanistan – the arguments for and the arguments against. The arguments for should, of course, include the argument that our presence helps reinforce our relationship with the USA. If true, this is a strong argument, for staying there, but it needs also to be said that being mates with the USA probably has little to do with freedom, justice or quality of life and a lot to do with our own self-interest.
“No Democrat or Green senator has even visited Oruzgan Province.” True? Probably, relevant? Absolutely not. For one thing, the ADA hardly wants every Senator with an opinion putting themselves and others in danger by visiting. For the rest, the correspondant refers to people who opposed this invasion before it began.
The questions asked and the doubts raised 9 years ago still remain unanswered.
There is only one arguement for staying and that is to right the wrongs that have resulted from our going there in the first place. One argument I haven’t been hearing from the war pigs.
The article is ridiculous in that it purports to be all about how the military knows best and the rest of us have nothing to contribute because we haven’t been within a bees dick of a war. I presume Neil James has no opinions on, oh, banking or the GFC as he’s not a banker and hasn’t worked in a bank? James, and let’s not forget that the ADA is a military lobby group, fails to hold his own constituency to account on the most pressing question, i.e. what are we hoping to achieve and how do we do it? That question is the first question to ask in any undertaking, it is even more fundamental when the task at had involves putting people in peril.