On the proper scope and use of the military Since the start of the new century we have seen a clear distinction in the public mind begin to crumble - namely, that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is for duly authorised war, and that maintaining domestic safety and peace is the job of the police.
There are three key lessons for Australia deriving from the report of the Iraq Inquiry, conducted in the United Kingdom over a period of seven years by a panel of Privy Counsellors led by Sir John Chilcot.
In this desperately complex situation, the nature and extent of Australian involvement is effectively in the hands of just three people—Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, and Defence Minister David Johnston …
The appalling events we are witnessing in Syria and Northern Iraq are both the product and the source of powerful forces unleashed by the final collapse of the century-old efforts of the First World War victors to redraw the map of the Ottoman Empire, which had both lost the war and disappeared from history following the Ataturk Revolution. They are both cause and effect.
Preparing for war-our decisions about war require parliamentary debate. Here we go again. Australia is once more embarked upon a military adventure in the Middle East, again at the behest of the United States, and again without a clear definition of what the aims are or what we might hope to achieve.
