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Defence

You are currently browsing the archive for the Defence category.

John “The Hipster” Faulker, defence minister

06 June 2009 in Defence, Politics, Transparency by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

New Australian defence minister John Faulkner

Marcus Westbury, who I’ve written about before, has noticed something special about Australia’s new defence minister.

“John Faulkner [pictured left] hasn’t changed his glasses for so long they’re almost fashionable again,” he tweets. “Do you think if I start referring to John Faulkner as ‘the hispter’ it will catch on? He has the retro ironic glasses for it.”

“It’s gonna be awesome to see those glasses in the back of an F-35 or sticking out of a tank. Cartoonists will love this,” Marcus reckons. And I reckon too.

So, dear Australian political writers and cartoonists, can we please start referring to Senator John Faulkner as “The Hipster”?

Marcus also wonders about the fate of the Rudd government’s transparency program, which Faulkner was driving in his role as Special Minister of State. “It was the most impressive thing about the Rudd government,” says Marcus. “What now?”

Over a year after it was first published, my piece Super Hornets are Go has garnered an interesting new comment. I’m not sure I agree, but my response is there anyway. If you’d like to add to the discussion, do pop over and do so!

30 April 2009 by Stilgherrian | Permalink

Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice

25 April 2009 in Defence, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Photograph of a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance

The cat vomited this morning. Again. Artemis has this habit of gorging her food and then, five minutes later, throwing up wherever she’s standing.

Today it was a projectile effort from the heights of the TV stand, a reddish-brown spatter right across the living room floor.

Remember that last time you threw up? How the acrid stomach acids burnt your throat and mouth? How it felt like it was surging up into the back of your nose? It’s just like that. Freshly warm and mixed with the reek of cheap fish.

You can’t help but get it on your hands as you wipe it up.

I’ll bet just the thought of that smell is causing tightness in your sinuses, clenching in your throat.

Wiping up cat vomit first thing in the morning is rather unpleasant, no?

If wiping up cat vomit is the worst you have to think about today, then you’re one of the luckiest bastards on this planet. It’s not a particularly demanding sacrifice to make in return for some furry companionship.

Today is, of course, Anzac Day, our national memorial for those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and that other country.

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About fucking time, Australian Defence Force!

23 October 2008 in Defence, Personal by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Finally! After a three-year battle, the families of four Australian soldiers who committed suicide will receive ex gratia compensation payments. The amounts have not been disclosed. My feelings are very mixed — because this is very personal.

I’ve told some of this story before, in last year’s post Releasing the Black Hawk crash video was A Good Thing and this year’s Anzac Day Rememberings. I won’t repeat it all now — though I reckon your time spent reading those essays and following the links will be well spent.

All I’ll say today is something I said on Anzac Day:

I pray that the commanders of Australia’s military forces, and their political “masters”, will one day remember that there are more important, more admirable personal qualities than the ability to cover one’s own arse.

That four fine young men who volunteered for the armed forces ended up taking their own lives is a tragedy.

That there are people who have tried shifting the blame and who have delayed these four families receiving the justice and closure they deserve is truly, truly disgusting.

Image from The Chaser team arrest at APEC

News has just come through that charges against The Chaser team for their APEC security breach stunt have been dropped. Good, someone has a brain. Yes, they did enter the APEC security zone — but you, dear police and security forces, stood back and saluted as you waved them through the checkpoints.

28 April 2008 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Anzac Day Rememberings

25 April 2008 in Defence, Politics by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

Photograph of a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance

Where the fuck do I start? For me, Anzac Day is a tangled mess of emotions and ideas — some about grand themes of global and national politics, others deeply personal.

What pleases me most about Anzac Day is that Australia and New Zealand commemorate the sacrifice of their war dead not through parades of tanks and missiles and a glorification of war but with highly personal ceremonies of remembrance starting before dawn.

We talk not of our nation’s military prowess — though Australia is, by all accounts, capable of fielding professional military forces which make almost everybody else look like disorganised amateurs — but of the personal qualities which have made this nation great.

Those qualities were listed in an Army recruitment advertisement designed by a soldier. They were reiterated this morning by Major General Mark Kelly:

Regardless of religion, racial background, or even place of birth, we gather not to glorify war, but to remind ourselves that we value who we are and the freedoms we possess, and to acknowledge the courage and sacrifice of those who contributed so much in shaping the identity of this proud nation…

The term Anzac has transcended the physical meaning to become a spirit, an inspiration which embodies the qualities of courage, discipline, sacrifice, self reliance, and in Australian terms, mateship, and a fair go. This is what Anzac means to me.

These are the qualities which once gave Australia such a fine reputation overseas — before our foreign policy became one of subservience to American Neocons, and before symbols of military might were perverted into supporting a never-ending War on Abstract Nouns. Before quiet patriotism turned into loud but ignorant flag-draped jingoism. John Birmingham wrote about this in his Quarterly Essay, A Time for War: Australia as a Military Power. But what does it all mean now under Chairman Rudd?

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Page 161

24 April 2008 in Defence, Music, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

I noticed this blogging meme over at Quatrefoil’s place and thought I’d give it a try. The results are surprising.

  1. Grab the nearest book.
  2. Open it to page 161.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
  5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Use what’s actually next to you.

And the sentence is:

“Sensitive site exploitation will continue.”

That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense by itself, but the next one adds all the context you need:

So far there had been no WMD stockpiles found.

The book is State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III by investigative journalist Bob Woodward. It’s been months since I read it but for some reason it’s still on my desk.

This afternoon the BBC reports that unnamed “US officials” have evidence that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. Here we go again. I think I might listen to some classic Detroit techno instead.

Lesson from Iraq: don’t ignore international law

24 March 2008 in Defence, Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Photograph of Mary Ellen O’Connell

Of all the writing about the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the more interesting pieces is by Mary Ellen O’Connell (pictured) of Notre Dame Law School. In Learning from the Iraq War: The Wisdom of International Law, she argues that the most tangible lesson is that the US ignores international law at its peril.

Going into Iraq, we ignored the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Once in Iraq, we ignored the Hague Regulations, requiring us to put a stop to looting and to make only necessary changes to local law and government. We ignored the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit secret detention and abuse of prisoners of the kind we saw at Abu Ghraib.

The talk on Iraq is all about what went wrong, whether the surge is working, and when we can get out. We hear virtually nothing about international law and look set to repeat our mistakes. Violating the law has cost our nation and Iraq dearly. It has denied us the guidance of rules based on long experience and moral consensus. We have lost standing in the world, a literal fortune, and precious lives. Rather than internalizing the lesson of law violation in Iraq, we continue to defy the law in serious and self-destructive ways.

At some point, sooner or later, America needs to understand that international law does indeed apply to everyone — including America. Otherwise any US action against any other nation breaking the law is nothing but hypocrisy. (Hat-tip to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.)

I’ve just watched defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon being interviewed on The 7.30 Report about the Super Hornet purchase. It’s not reassuring. When challenged on the performance shortfalls compared with the Russian-built Sukhois being bought by our neighbours — basic factors in a fighter aircraft like speed, acceleration, climb rate and turning circle — he keeps flipping the conversation back to avionics and interoperability. “Never mind the quality, feel the width,” eh Joel? Check it out while the video’s still online and tell me what you think about his body language.

19 March 2008 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Super Hornets are Go

18 March 2008 in Defence, Politics by Stilgherrian | 8 comments

Photograph of US Navy F-18E Super Hornet aircraft

Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon has announced that the controversial purchase of 24 Super Hornet aircraft will go ahead.

The review of the Howard government’s decision to buy the aircraft — at a total cost of $6 billion even though the RAAF hadn’t wanted them — reached some damaging conclusions, including:

  • There has been a lack of sound, long-term air combat capability planning decisions by the former Government over the course of the last decade.
  • The retirement of the F-111 was made in haste but is not irreversible. The cost of turning the F-111 back on would be enormous and crews and skills have already moved on.
  • The former Government’s decision to leave Australia’s air defences in the hands of the Joint Strike Fighter project was a flawed leap of faith in scheduling terms and combined with the quick decision to retire the F-111 early, allowed an air combat capability gap to emerge.
  • The subsequent timetable the former Government put on the acquisition of an interim fighter left Defence planners with no choice but to recommend the Super Hornet. No other suitable aircraft could be produced to meet the 2010 deadline the former Government had set. One year on, that is now even more so the case.

Cancelling the order would still incur a financial penalty and create “undesirable tensions”, and the final conclusions is that “the Super Hornet is an excellent aircraft… and is the only aircraft which can meet the small delivery window created by the former Government’s poor planning processes and politically-driven responses.”

As a shareholder in Australia Inc, I’d like to know why the former “board members” allowed this to happen. When company directors are negligent they become personally liable so why, given the report’s damning conclusions, does Brendan Nelson not become personally liable?

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