Most Australians want us out of the Afghanistan conflict.
It doesn’t matter how old they are, how they vote, or how much they earn. That’s what Essential Research found in the course of its polling last week.
Support for increasing our commitment (the Coalition’s policy) was in single digits. Support for keeping it at the same level was around a quarter of voters. Support for withdrawal was over 60%.
Many of the breakdowns in Essential’s polling data are too small to make meaningful judgements, but it was noteworthy that fewer women want more troops sent, and more want us to pull out, compared to men. And Greens voters are much more strongly in favour of withdrawal.
And opinion against the conflict has hardened over the last 12 months. In March 2009, Essential found that 50% of voters wanted withdrawal. Just 14% — double yesterday’s figure — wanted to increase our commitment. Support for retaining the same level of commitment was the same at 24%.
Driving this is the damaging combination of a slow, steady drip of casualties coupled with the impression we’re not getting anywhere. Those literate in international affairs would be aware of the deep problems of corruption and fraud around the Afghan government, but that won’t register with most voters. They just can’t see why we’re continuing to sacrifice our young men for what appears to be no good reason.
There may still be strong support for the strategic goal of stabilising Afghanistan and preventing it from returning to a haven for large-scale terrorism, but there’s strong doubt it can be accomplished in the short or medium term.
And the rate of casualties is sufficiently low that each one can be grieved over individually, unlike in larger-scale conflicts. There’s no risk of anyone becoming inured to the loss of Australian troops when we can see each of their families, and our leaders attend each of their funeral services.
Those with real responsibility for the ongoing problems in Afghanistan appear to have escaped judgement. US neo-conservatives and officials in the Bush adminstration and Blair government are why we are still mired in a seemingly endless conflict. The 2001 attack on the Taliban, their removal and the occupation of the country was justified morally and legally.
Instead of devoting resources to stabilising, securing and rebuilding Afghanistan, the US and the UK, with Australia supporting them in the role of international neo-con yap-yap dog, launched an illegal and immoral attack on Iraq that will remain an example of tragic mis-judgement for generations.
Our soldiers continue to pay the ultimate price for that decision, which left Afghanistan as a second-tier conflict that reinvigorated the Taliban and dramatically increased the cost in lives and resources — Afghan and western alike — required to achieve the goals of the original invasion.
The successors of those governments, all of whom inherited the mess in Afghanistan, have been left with no easy, inexpensive or satisfactory options, only voters who are sick of the lack of progress and want to stop the casualties.
One need only read ‘A Study in Scarlet’ by Arthur Conan Doyle to see the futility of wars in Afghanistan: it was written in 1883 – the only good thing to come out of that conflict was Dr Watson’s being repatriated and meeting Sherlock Holmes…
Bernard, do you have a handle on the damage which has been done and will be done to this weak but resilient country if we simply pull out now?
Do Australia and the other nations involved there have a debt to be repaid, or should we simply roll up our swags and wander off? Is it morally acceptable to just leave? Or morally unacceptable to stay?
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
So, the flame has all but died in this “coalition of the willing” legacy – that should have been over in 6 weeks, according to the glossy brochures, distributed by the government and their media cheer-leaders at the time?
So now we get out and “leave them to it” – to get on with their lives, in what “we”, in our “values”, and cavalier fashion, created?
Abandon them and forget about what’s happened, so that we can do it all over again whenever the mood, or politics, takes us?
Just drop them like “expendable” hot spuds?
“We” that broke it, the least we can do is, fix it – and remember. We owe them that much, as fellow human beings, don’t we?
The last 3 paragraphs are the key. We missed out on seizing a moment. Iran is the biggest beneficiary of this decision. However, with respect, it is not just our soldiers who are paying the ultimate price: every day Afghans – most of whom are just making a living – are killed just going about their business, by American drones or suicide bombers, or hired gunmen. As for whether the 2001 military attack on the Taliban was a good idea will need a bit more historical distance. It is NOT unusual to hear young Afghans describe the preceding government as the real terrorists, comprised of old Northern Alliance members (who were supported by the West and Iran) – whose vicious infighting reduced Kabul neighbourhoods to bullet-pocked broken plaster and killed thousands – and opened the once incredibly rich Afghan National Museum to ongoing looting.
As for lack of progress: it totally escapes me why we think such a country will become a model democracy in just two electoral cycles – post-Taliban and 35 years of occupation, war, civil war.
Think medieval Europe when kings ruled the capital and not much else – and they had to work out whether to entice or bludgeon the provincial nobles into power-sharing arrangements. And there are few nobles in Afghanistan’s provinces, just warlords who are now in Parliament. As Afghans have noted, unlike in former Yugoslavia, the international community didn’t haul such people into the International Court, or even suggest a process of truth and reconciliation.
No argument that the war has been massively bungled but that is not a good enough reason to leave. If you believe in withdrawal then you have to come up with a plausible argument about why Afghanistan would not become a terrorist harbouring and training base for ever more. It is intolerable that such a state should be permitted to come into existence.