Oz Election Thread #4 - Gillard's Labor

But this is a bigger, more amazing paradigm than you could ever have have dreamed of, Deb!

(I feel like I'm going to scream each time I hear politicians in the media rattling off the term! Enough, enough, for god's sake! )

Looking forward to heading home? Or wanting to linger longer?

Going by what I'm reading in the online letters to editors pages, people are fast tiring of Abbott's aggressive style of opposition "leadership". A number of writers have mentioned Malcolm Turnbull, waiting quietly in the wings, for his turn as alternative leader. (Lucky the independents weren't sucked in by the new, kinder, gentler Abbott, hey? He could have been prime minister now if they had. Imagine that! )

Both!!!!!!!

But it'll be good not to be living out of a suitcase, right? And waking up & wondering where you are & what day it is, exactly?
And Miranda will be overjoyed!

My suitcase has been yclept The Beast since Singapore

Not living out of suitcase GOOD

I guess many commentators, myself included, felt that all we needed for Tony to show his true colours was time.

I guess the question is, is it in Tony's power to reverse the mounting sense that he is a wrecker? In my mind's eye...

Tony: I AM NOT AGGRESSIVE - AND I'LL TEAR THE HEAD OFF THEN NEXT FRICKIN' A-HOLE WHO SAYS I AM!

The mother of all paradigms eh?

= ; - )

I'm not really sure what you meant by that first sentence, Deb.
Maybe it's jetlag?

"yclept The Beast"

Hmmm. Tolkein.

Yeah, all that!
But he is going to have to get over losing the election eventually, right? And I don't think (didn't think before) that he was up to a leadership role. As we all know, without the media running his campaign for him & also beating up the Kevin demotion for all it was worth, he wouldn't have been taken seriously at all. And now the bugger leads the opposition.
For how long would you say? Anyone taking bets yet?

It was as though our politicians & the media had never heard of the word before, Deb. And they went for it for all it was worth! "New paradigm this, new paradigm, that ..."
It was driving me nuts!
However, they seem to have calmed down now, back to the same old, same old poltics.

Ah.
Thank you, hinge!

I've been very busy, out of the loop, over the last couple of weeks & haven't properly kept up with what's going on in Canberra. Though I did hear on the ABC yesterday that parliament is going to consider/debate our role in Afghanistan. (Next week, I think?) High time we did that! What exactly is our strategy in Afghanistan & what are we actually achieving?

I thought our Foreign Affairs Minister spoke a bit eloquently about our role in Afghanistan (he'd make a decent PM one day, I'm sure).

Basically we occupied a failed state that terrorist organisations were using as an unmonitored training camp. To leave would return Afghanistan to 'failed state' status.

Our achievements are minimal - maintain the status quo, and hope that institutions strengthen enough to one day maintain a democratically elected government without outside assistance. I'm thinking that's decades off. Are we willing to pay the price? Are we willing to pay the price of not paying the price?

I think the Iraq invasion was wrong at every level. I think the Afghanistan invasion was right. Sadly I think the future of Iraq is brighter than that of Afghanistan.

I wish we heard more Afghani voices telling us what they want.

(This is quite rare, but ..) I disagree with you about our involvement in Afghanistan, hinge. I believe we shouldn't be there & the only reason we're involved at all is because we're supporting the US effort. If the US wasn't involved, neither would we be.


The voices I hear most (or read most, I should say) are those of Afghan feminists, quite a number of whom believe that we have no place being there (& that we are just the latest of a series in foreign invaders) & that our involvement is doing little but prop up a corrupt government. Also that we have achieved little in improvements in the lives of the ordinary people, especially women.
In terms of terrorist organizations, I believe that tackling the problem in Afghanistan alone (& not also in Pakistan) is futile. I believe that this is a war that can't be "won".
If you asked me what the alternative to invasion & occupation is, I'd have to say that I honestly don't know, because I, like many (most?) people in western countries, believe I don't properly understand the nature of the problems facing that country, say nothing of the nature of the country itself.
Sigh.

Consensus is out, paradigm is in .
Can we reach a consensus that "paradigm" is the new "in" word ?

Olgs I think you have every reason to disagree with me. I'm not convinced myself. Of course we are there because of the US, but maybe, just maybe, if Bush hadn't been in power and the response to 911 was more measured, it would have been a UN action.

I wasn't aware of the thoughts of Afghani feminists, and while I sympathise with the 'latest in a long line of invader/occupier line' I wonder how happy they were with the position of women under the homegrown Taliban leadership? No school education for girls, uber-sharia control of women's movement, banned from holding drivers' licences etc.

When the soviet's pulled out in the late 1980s there were no invaders for over a decade and the country descended first into chaos, and then the taliban took control reducing crime but providing little else. I know that the vacuum of international attention after the Soviet withdrawal was a major mistake by the American's who'd provided backing for the mujahadeen against the Soviets.

So I guess what I'm saying is I think providing some sort of stability while national institutions strengthen is the best we can do, and I'm not sure that's enough. Maybe we shouldn't have gone there, but we did, what's the best path now that we are there?

Have you read the Khaled Hosseini books? (kite runner and thousand suns)

I believe that if Bush & his powerful cronies hadn't been in power (& the US had a more astute leadership at the time) that the invasion might well not have happened at all. The invasion & occupation of Afghanistan was a retaliatory response to 9/11. As was the "shocking & awing" of Baghad/Iraq. Both actions were a show of US military might, against a small number of fundamentalist "terrorists". But the impact of both invasions impacted most severely on innocent civilians (of both countries) & gave the fundamentalist crazies even more ammunition to continue than they'd had before. And I'd argue that our (Australian) involvement has created security problems here & abroad (for Australians) with which didn't exist before.


If you're interested, hinge, RAWA is a good staring point:
http://www.rawa.org/index.php


From my own reading, my understanding is that the Soviet invaders (of all people!) took the most proactive line in supporting the rights of Afghan women & girls. The right to education, especially, was a high priority. And when the Soviets withdrew, these concerns went back onto the back burner ... back to women & girls being out of sight & out of mind, covered from head to toe, as previously ...


I'm not at all sure of that, either, hinge.
It sounds (if I'm to believe the Afghan women's rights advocates & reports in the Guardian, etc, that we - as US allies) have been instrumental in installing a corrupt government (which even the US has acknowledged serious problems with) & entrenching the power of the self-serving warlords. Corrupt Afghan business as usual. Add to this the appalling number civilian causalities of this war & occupation & I doubt we are winning over too many of the hearts & minds of the ordinary Afghan people.


I honestly don't know, hinge. Except I believe we can't just wash our hands of the mess we've contributed to & withdraw, pretending our involvement has had no impact. Surely reparations need to be made?
(I note that recently our (Oz) government declared that it would begin processing the back-log of Afghan asylum seekers, as it is now "safe" for them to be sent back home (!).)
In the meantime, we will continue our involvement there, I guess until the US decides it has had enough & withdraws, as it did in Vietnam?


Yes indeed, I've read both.
Good reads & very informative.

Hinge, you might be interested in reading hamburger's now long-existing thread, AFGHANISTAN - A LESSON 200 YEARS OLD:
http://able2know.org/topic/125475-1
I don't know whether you've read it or not before now. It waxes & wanes, goes through "dead" periods (like right now) when I guess we all get a little overwhelmed with the enormity of it all ... but it's interesting & informative, I think.

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