No direction home

Does it matter at all what the public thinks? The perpetuation of this war is one instance where both sides of politics, without providing reasoned explanations or producing credible evidence, and contrary to the majority will, cooperate to send young men to their deaths saying simply, "We know what's best". What excuse do they give for ignoring the majority will of the

people and thus hijacking power? Shhh, we're "making progress".

Define progress? Does it encompass the "new" focus on economic development, like JP Morgan's hunt for Afghan Gold? It all sounds suspiciously like the Western mercantile imperialism that "liberated" Iraq.

Ending wars, and particularly unwinnable wars, takes time for countries like America and those of us on its coattails. In America, public support for US involvement in the Vietnam war fell from 60% in 1964 to 38% in 1970. Nixon was elected in 1968 on a platform that included ending it, and when he didn't nationwide protests in October 1969 demanding immediate withdrawal sparked his "silent majority" speech but nothing else. In May 1970 there were more protests when Nixon announced that the war had expanded into Cambodia, but still nothing happened. Nixon stayed in office until 1974 when he was brought down by the Vietnam war, via the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. America then withdrew from its unpopular war, defeated, in 1975.

Unfortunately popular opinion is expressed less often and less vocally now than it was then. Much of the popular opposition to Vietnam was marshalled by press photographers who sent across the world graphic images of innocent men, women and children blown to bits, or hideously burned or injured, or overcome by insufferable anguish, and of young soldiers dead or with appalling wounds. But the coverage of Afghanistan is sanitised if it is not censored, and trivialised by being presented almost as computer gaming screens. Where are Afghanistan's equivalent of the Phan Thị Kim Phúc images in Australia's mainstream media? Innocent men, women and children are being killed and young soldiers injured and maimed all the time, but we never see images of this reality. Protecting our sensibilities is a convenient excuse for preventing us from having to face the reality of what our intervention causes, but the Indonesian live cattle scandal shows how people react to undeniable truths. What Australians would see peering through the keyhole at the war in Afghanistan would be so unpalatable and popular revulsion so great, that no government would dare quietly enthuse about progress in Afghanistan. Our troops would be home in a flash.

Censorship isn't the exclusive province of America's or Australia's government-media-business-military cabals, either. Kabulpress' founder Kamran Mir Hazar's book, Censorship in Afghanistan details who carries out censorship there, including Afghan security forces, the Taliban, the Ministry of Culture, various governors, warlords, commanders, and those involved in the massive drug trade. He adds to that list international troops, the Attorney General, Interior Ministry, Education Ministry, Finance Ministry, Parliament and other governmental institutions.

It seems we like our news delivered in clean and innocuous words. But wars aren't the sanitised affairs that are served up to us. They are death and blood and pain and anguish and destruction, and if we're involved in them we should have to face the reality of both the death and damage we cause or contribute to, and the losses and pain our soldiers and their families suffer.

In 2006 journalist Robert Fisk said "...War is not about victory or defeat. It is about the total failure of human spirit. When you see the things I see, you would never support war ever again… film-makers saw fit to include the full gore of war in productions such as Saving Private Ryan and there was no reason why news broadcasts should be any different..."