Afghanistan:

Les Heimann writes: Re. “Rethinking Afghanistan: no place for politics in military prosecution” (yesterday, item 1).  If we are not simply paying our insurance premium then why are we in Afghanistan?

Historically, Australia presents as a country unwilling to sit on the sidelines. Witness Crimea, South Africa, World Wars 1 & 2, Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan; and add in our “policing” activities everywhere — not all of these actions were insurance payments.  So are we warmongers?

Do we love the smell of battle such that we must thrust our sons and daughters into the cannons maw before we think to justify the act — or think at all?

Take away the jingoism, the patriotic smokescreens, the political rhetoric and, most of all, the brutality of it all and what have we?

When is war justified?

Is it a self defence posture or a pre-emptive strike, a last resort when all else fails and how does one know when “all has failed”?

So when the good men and women who are our parliament discuss the war in Afghanistan we can only hope they have some genuine and convincing justification for our continuing participation.

In my view, our insurance premiums are far too costly.

John Craig writes: May I respectfully suggest that your article (and perhaps even the independent Director of Military Prosecutions) show no recognition of what actually happens in practice (assuming that my experience in a different time and place still approximates reality).

The latter also suggests that there is probably no sensible place for the military in Afghanistan (or anywhere else) in trying to discourage Islamist extremism. This would probably be far better done in other ways, but given military involvement in shooting wars, idealistic legalism seems likely to make a bad situation worse.

Martyn Smith writes: Re. “Rethinking Afghanistan: Coalition’s zero credibility on military justice” (yesterday, item 2). I’m sorry to say that I doubt Bernard Keane will be invited to the Coalition’s Xmas party with articles like that. He’ll be attacked in The Australian if he’s not careful.

It got me thinking that the Coalition recently removed a highly intelligent and respected leader and replaced him with an Australian version of George W Bush. Abbott comes across as an empty headed character of no discernible principle, who probably agrees with the last person to speak to him.

May I respectfully compliment Bernard Keane on an excellent article; I found Angela Priestley’s excellent as well.

Armon Hicks writes: As the Prime Minister travels in to the CBD from Sydney Airport, or the Leader of the Opposition heads down from his electorate to fly to Canberra, both via General Holmes Drive, I wonder if either pauses to consider that escorting politicians to inspect troops on the battle field can be deadly?  Do either consider the irony as they wait in the traffic on General Holmes Drive?

General Holmes, a fine Australian officer “famed for his courage” according to Charles Bean, was killed on 2 July, 1917 as he was escorting the New South Wales Premier, William Holman, near the Messines battlefield when a German shell burst alongside and fatally wounded him. Mr Holman was barely scratched.

As the Australian War Memorial notes he was the highest ranked Australian to die on the Western Front. General Holmes was killed soon after his greatest success, his division’s victory at Messines, Belgium. Apparently he was also an outstanding senior NSW public servant before the War.

History is full of such lessons, forgotten but for civic monuments.

Gawenda:

David Salter, Editor-in-Chief, The Week, writes: Re. “Gawenda: ABC should be spending money on journalism, not opinion” (yesterday, item 14). No one, it seems, is more in need of an editor than a former editor of The Age who’s now Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Michael Gawenda took 760 words of Crikey space to say just this: “The ABC should not pay for opinion writing on its websites and should, instead, use that money to support straight journalism”.

I happen to agree, but the argument isn’t strengthened by verbiage.