Unleash the dogs of war
Major Jim Hammett is frustrated. What’s the point of being a tough-guy soldier if they won’t let you kill and be killed? Hammett has been to Somalia, East Timor, Tonga and Iraq, and now he’s an author. Writing in the Australian Army Journal, he has “deflated the boastful bombast that has characterized official versions” of Australia’s role in Iraq.
Howard kept the soldiers out of harm’s way, but Hammett says the troops find this humiliating. Their allies see the Australian forces as “plagued by institutional cowardice” and express their “collective disdain and near contempt”.
In the Sunday Age, Tom Hyland has some fun contrasting this with Howard’s rhetoric, and tries to draw mildly anti-militarist conclusions. The Rudd Government should “temper its rhetoric” about Afghanistan because “things are more complicated”. But I doubt that’s what Hammett is on about. Just the opposite, he wants lots more fighing. Nothing complicated about it.
I seriously doubt that all the troops feel that way, but Rudd will love it. The fact that this could appear in the army’s journal suggests the military brass and the government both want to soften up the public for some ugly combat in Afghanistan.
Full story here.
Tom O'Lincoln is a left activist in Melbourne, member of Socialist Alternative, and author of several books on Australian labour history
