www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9728&page=0
ON-LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of political and social debate.
Greens win the war but lose defence
by Sasha Uzunov - November 24, 2009
When prominent Australian youth worker Les Twentyman throws his political weight behind the re-introduction of national service or conscription, you sit up and take notice.
Twentyman told the Herald Sun newspaper that a return to national service would help to combat street violence and unemployment.
Whatever the merits are of conscription in terms of taming wayward youth, there may be another benefit.
In recent months we have seen a high profile sacking and a resignation over the direction of the Afghanistan War but without any immediate effect upon American foreign or defence policy. This has enormous repercussions for Australia’s involvement in that conflict.
First, United Nations diplomat the American Peter Galbraith was sacked by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon over refusing to take part in what he claimed was a “cover up” of election rigging during the Afghan Presidential poll. Now we have the resignation of US diplomat in Afghanistan Matthew Hoh, a former US Marine Corps captain.
"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," he said. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right'."
In Australia, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon has, in a thought-provoking article, called for a proper discussion on Afghanistan:
In Australia, while opposition to the war is strong, public debate about this country's military presence in Afghanistan and our tactics in fighting terrorism is muted in mainstream political circles.
She adds:
This is an issue our Government can't ignore any longer, and it's one that I will certainly be taking up in Canberra if my run for a NSW Senator seat at the next federal election is successful. The silence within our own political conversation on this issue means that no longer is it just the Taliban who show contempt for democracy. When the regime that we are supporting passes such demeaning laws, we join them in making a farce of any attempt to portray our military involvement as a commitment to promoting democracy and humane values.
Senator Rhiannon may be right about the level of public opposition to the Afghan War but that is irrelevant. Her beef is that the Rudd Government is not responding to opposition to the war. The irony is that the Greens, and their predecessors and fellow travelers the anti-Vietnam War movement protestors, were so successful that they have in fact lost leverage over governments in power when it comes to defence and national security issues.
How on earth can you come to that conclusion, you might rightly ask? The answer is quite obvious but too sensitive or taboo to mention! During the late 1960s and early 1970s the anti-Vietnam War movement only gained ground at the tail end of that conflict. In 1966 and in 1969 federal elections the sitting conservative government which supported the war was returned.
Respected authors on the Vietnam War, Paul Ham and Michael Caulfield, have argued that the impetus for the anti-war movement came about because of conscription. That is when you force members of the general public, namely young men, into a war; then the public becomes interested in the debate. Mortgages and the economy take a back seat when your own life could be threatened by going to war.
Since the ending of National Service in late 1972 by the incoming Whitlam Labor government, the average person in the street has lost whatever leverage he or she had over defence experts and the professional volunteer defence force.
The reality is that professional military forces and politicians do not like conscription, because of the intense public scrutiny it brings. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was willing to bleed our special forces, the SASR and Commandos, dry fighting conflicts in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq rather than have our regular infantry battalions do the fighting or for that matter using conscripts.
From a political strategic point of view it would be in the interests of the Greens to support the re-introduction of conscription, to act as a break against military adventurism. The question remains, will the Australian Greens be brave enough to support such a controversial issue?
History is full of political-ideological u-turns.
Joschka Fischer began his political career as a radical, left-wing, brawling taxi driver in the then West Germany in the 1970s. During a riot he beat to a pulp a German Police officer and almost blinded him. On becoming a Greens politician and later Germany’s Foreign Minister, Fischer apologised to the policeman and also supported the war in Afghanistan.
In 1972 South Australian Premier Mike Rann was a Greenpeace activist in New Zealand who actively worked against the French Security forces in the South Pacific by sending boats to disrupt nuclear testing by encroaching upon French territory. Rann has now moved to the right within the Labor party.
Conscription remains one of the last taboos in an Australian society where drug use, sexual orientation, rape, incest, mental health are now talked about freely.
About the Author
Sasha Uzunov graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, in 1991. He enlisted in the Australian Regular Army as a soldier in 1995 and was allocated to infantry. He served two peacekeeping tours in East Timor (1999 and 2001). In 2002 he returned to civilian life as a photo journalist and film maker and has worked in The Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. His documentary film Timor Tour of Duty made its international debut in New York in October 2009. He blogs at Team Uzunov.
Showing posts with label conscription. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conscription. Show all posts
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Monday, September 01, 2008
TIME TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
TIME TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
By Sasha Uzunov
copyright 2008
The Australian Army’s new Chief, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, has recently called for a dramatic change in the way our army fights in a modern and complicated world. This is long overdue, but we will have to wait and see if that ever materialises or just gets buried away in some report.
General Gillespie has acknowledged the need to peel away the layers of headquarters and bureaucracy that hinder the chain of command’s ability to direct soldiers in battle. This makes excellent sense.
For the record, General Gillespie is held in high esteem by many.
The Chief of the army has also acknowledged that the “enemy” the Taliban has cleverly adapted the use of modern technology such as the internet to wage war. However, his claim that “our operations will often be less about killing the enemy than about making them irrelevant to the population,” is pie in the sky stuff unless we make some dramatic changes in our Army.
I do not believe that the Generals or politicians would be prepared to do that.
Let me explain, General Gillespie has acknowledged that soldiers will have more to do on the battlefield overseas.
That is they will have to undertake humanitarian assistance, nation building, and so on. We will need to have flexible soldiers. But where will these flexible soldiers come from? Army training can only do so much.
You have a 19 year old who enlists in the Army and his life experience is limited and yet he maybe required going to Afghanistan and assisting in that country’s restructuring. Or a 20 year old who is commissioned as an officer lead men into battle.
The current professional army does not allow for flexibility. I am not talking about changing the traditional chain of command structure or hierarchy. No army can function as a democracy, unfortunately. It is the nature of the beast.
What I am saying is a fully professional army consists of enlisted men and officers who, if they play the game, get promoted and move up the career ladder. Therefore, you do not encourage flexibility or initiative or the ability to think outside the box.
One way to overcome this is to have officers first serve two years as enlisted men before they can be lead men, the way they do in the Israeli Army. But our traditional military system inherited from the British is unlikely to change. There would be too much resistance because officers have a privileged role in our army.
Moreover, we need to encourage people from a wide variety of professional backgrounds to join the army. At present the system, known as Direct Entry Officer or Specialist Service Officer takes lawyers, dentists, doctors, engineers, journalists directly out of civilian life and puts them in fields related to their professions. This is a great idea.
However, we need flexible soldiers who will have to do the fighting. We need warrior-scholars, as opposed to a lawyer in uniform. We need to get people into infantry corps, the frontline troops.
How do we do that? One way, and this is highly controversial, is to re-introduce conscription. You might say why do you want people who do not want to be in uniform? They are precisely the people we need. It sounds crazy but a person who does not want to be in the Army is not interested in playing the career/promotion game and is more likely to speak his mind, within the boundaries of course. These are the people we need to fight these complicated new wars.
Let me give you an example of someone thinking outside the box. Colonel David H. Hackworth, US Army’s most decorated soldier from Vietnam, once proposed to the Pentagon that it hire a caving specialist (speleologist) who claimed he could locate all of the Viet Cong underground tunnels. But the Pentagon Generals with their narrow minded view knocked back the idea. It is one of the great what ifs of that controversial war.
Whilst the Taliban modify, adapt, change, organise, we just talk and pass ideas around.
(end)
links:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24248144-31477,00.html
http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-army-chief-flags-shakeup-to-fight-modern-war-20080827-4424.html
By Sasha Uzunov
copyright 2008
The Australian Army’s new Chief, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, has recently called for a dramatic change in the way our army fights in a modern and complicated world. This is long overdue, but we will have to wait and see if that ever materialises or just gets buried away in some report.
General Gillespie has acknowledged the need to peel away the layers of headquarters and bureaucracy that hinder the chain of command’s ability to direct soldiers in battle. This makes excellent sense.
For the record, General Gillespie is held in high esteem by many.
The Chief of the army has also acknowledged that the “enemy” the Taliban has cleverly adapted the use of modern technology such as the internet to wage war. However, his claim that “our operations will often be less about killing the enemy than about making them irrelevant to the population,” is pie in the sky stuff unless we make some dramatic changes in our Army.
I do not believe that the Generals or politicians would be prepared to do that.
Let me explain, General Gillespie has acknowledged that soldiers will have more to do on the battlefield overseas.
That is they will have to undertake humanitarian assistance, nation building, and so on. We will need to have flexible soldiers. But where will these flexible soldiers come from? Army training can only do so much.
You have a 19 year old who enlists in the Army and his life experience is limited and yet he maybe required going to Afghanistan and assisting in that country’s restructuring. Or a 20 year old who is commissioned as an officer lead men into battle.
The current professional army does not allow for flexibility. I am not talking about changing the traditional chain of command structure or hierarchy. No army can function as a democracy, unfortunately. It is the nature of the beast.
What I am saying is a fully professional army consists of enlisted men and officers who, if they play the game, get promoted and move up the career ladder. Therefore, you do not encourage flexibility or initiative or the ability to think outside the box.
One way to overcome this is to have officers first serve two years as enlisted men before they can be lead men, the way they do in the Israeli Army. But our traditional military system inherited from the British is unlikely to change. There would be too much resistance because officers have a privileged role in our army.
Moreover, we need to encourage people from a wide variety of professional backgrounds to join the army. At present the system, known as Direct Entry Officer or Specialist Service Officer takes lawyers, dentists, doctors, engineers, journalists directly out of civilian life and puts them in fields related to their professions. This is a great idea.
However, we need flexible soldiers who will have to do the fighting. We need warrior-scholars, as opposed to a lawyer in uniform. We need to get people into infantry corps, the frontline troops.
How do we do that? One way, and this is highly controversial, is to re-introduce conscription. You might say why do you want people who do not want to be in uniform? They are precisely the people we need. It sounds crazy but a person who does not want to be in the Army is not interested in playing the career/promotion game and is more likely to speak his mind, within the boundaries of course. These are the people we need to fight these complicated new wars.
Let me give you an example of someone thinking outside the box. Colonel David H. Hackworth, US Army’s most decorated soldier from Vietnam, once proposed to the Pentagon that it hire a caving specialist (speleologist) who claimed he could locate all of the Viet Cong underground tunnels. But the Pentagon Generals with their narrow minded view knocked back the idea. It is one of the great what ifs of that controversial war.
Whilst the Taliban modify, adapt, change, organise, we just talk and pass ideas around.
(end)
links:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24248144-31477,00.html
http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-army-chief-flags-shakeup-to-fight-modern-war-20080827-4424.html
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