Why do we fight?

On 7 October 2001 U.S. President Bush announced the start of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan in very questionable circumstances. Did you notice that the United States “did not seek” to gain specific legal support from the United Nations Security Council for its action in Afghanistan?  One wonders whether the US knew that the UN Security Council would not have passed any resolution authorising the use of force in Afghanistan had it come before them.

On 17 October 2001 John Howard announced the deployment of Australian troops to the ground war in Afghanistan. On 22 October 2001 – during an election campaign - Howard and Opposition leader Kim Beazley farewelled the troops from Perth. The formal explanation Howard proffered on 25 October 2001 about Australia’s involvement in the Afghan war was that “not to support the US would be both strategically inept and morally indefensible”.

Nine years and countless deaths later the situation in Afghanistan is certainly now “strategically inept and morally indefensible”.

Late last year General McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, said he saw no signs of a major Al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, and US Deputy Secretary of Defence, William Lynn, told ABC’s Lateline that “...We don't think bin Laden is in Afghanistan...”.  A former diplomat in Zabul Province in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, says a resurgent Taliban does not threaten U.S. national security because they are only interested in their own patch. At least until recently, President Obama said President Karzai was capable of leading his country into the 21st Century and stabilising it and had the capacity to be the necessary “strong partner”, yet secret cables from the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry reveal otherwise.
 
Is there any truth in all this? How do you find it? What is the truth about this war?
 
There was government dishonesty in the lead up to and during the Vietnam war, and the same thing occurred in Iraq. Is the war in Afghanistan any different? How can we be certain that mistakes haven’t been made been, and more importantly aren’t being perpetuated, unless we have honest reporting, full disclosure and parliamentary and public debate?  
 
Has Afghanistan been a calculated directive- by puppetmasters who won’t be bloodied - to send young troops to mutual annihilation on an organised grand scale? Who then turn around and encourage and expect us to be patriotic about this carnage? For what? What political or economic ambition could conceivably justify it?
 
Australians may tend to apathy, but in this case our government can’t justify not supplying the truth on the basis of a lack of demand for it. We need to know - and we want to know - what is really happening and why.
 
Until we do the war will continue and the death count will climb.  We already know that in preparation for the NATO offensive that is expected to start this summer in residential districts on the edge of the city, the Taliban have stepped up their own campaign, planting more and more bombs and booby-traps around Kandahar and elsewhere in the south. 
 
Don’t we owe it to our troops and their families, and to the many innocent civilians in Afghanistan, to insist that we are told “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” so that we all have an informed understanding of what Australia’s role in Afghanistan has been and is, and so that we might all reach a true consensus about what, if any, ongoing role it should have?