Inseparable Bond
Afghanistan: Soldiers from Mortar Platoon 2 RAR engage the Taliban with 81mm mortars. Picture: Australian Defence Force/ Gary Ramageclick to enlarge pics
pics from
Herald Sun reporter Ian McPhedran went into the thick of battle with brave Aussie diggers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Picture: Gary Ramage
Great Work:
Afghanistan: An Australian Army ASLAV fires on a Taliban position in southern Afghanistan. Picture: Australian Defence Force/ Gary Ramage.
Alliance into the 21st century
John McCain September 23, 2008
John McCain September 23, 2008
A LITTLE more than 100 years ago, president Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet steamed into Sydney Harbour. Hundreds of thousands of Australians cheered the 16 battleships that would circumnavigate the globe as a demonstration that America was now a Pacific and a world power. On board the gunboat Panay, patrolling the Philippine archipelago, a young midshipman named John Sidney McCain - my grandfather - shared in the navy's pride at Roosevelt's audacious gesture. Only two years out of the naval academy, my grandfather would shortly be promoted to ensign and assigned to the flagship USS Connecticut for the fleet's triumphant return to the US.
In the middle of 1908, Australians and Americans recognised immediately the kindred spirit of two rugged and energetic peoples separated by half the globe but united by shared hopes for mankind. That initial friendship would be forged into an inseparable bond through many struggles in the years to come. Ten years after the Great White Fleet left Sydney Harbour, American soldiers would serve under Australian general John Monash at the decisive Battle of Hamel on the Western Front. My father and grandfather would both serve side by side with the Royal Australian Navy in the Pacific theatre, turning back the Japanese tide and then building a post-war network of alliances that would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in Asia.
Afghanistan: Aussie and British gunners engage the Taliban. Australian Artillery Gunners in Helmand at Forward Operating Base Armadillo. Australian Artillery gunners, from the Darwin-based 8/12 Medium Regiment are deployed as part of the United Kingdom's Task Force Helmand. The 15 Australian gunners are with the UK task force under a bilateral arrangement to further enhance the training and experience of the Australian Army's offensive support capability. Picture: Australian Defence Force/ Gary Ramage
.
A fight we must take seriously
The Taliban were seeking to outlast NATO, and they were succeeding; for as in Iraq, as long as the Afghan Government failed to create effective governance and provide services to the people, the Taliban were winning by default. The outcome of the fighting was becoming less relevant, because even when faced with a string of tactical defeats, the Taliban were expanding their influence and base areas and cowing more of the population. -- Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, 2008.
ALMOST seven years into the Afghanistan war, Australia will soon face a decisive test of its engagement in what promises to be the hardest and most durable campaign of the "long war" against Islamist extremism.
In the dry, dusty mountain-locked province of Oruzgan in southern Afghanistan, Australian troops have notched up some notable successes in the past two years.
The Special Operations Task Group consisting of elite Special Air Service soldiers and commandos has fractured the local Taliban leadership and killed or captured a string of their key military commanders over the course of 2008.
Our versatile and capable army engineers have built four significant forward patrol bases at the Baluchi Pass and other strategic gateways to the provincial capital Tarin Kowt and the sprawling Dutch-led base that sits on a barren slope just above it.
They have also built roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. Just a week ago, Oruzgan Governor Asadullah Hamdan opened the new women's wing of the local hospital at Tarin Kowt, one of our engineering contingent's biggest projects for this year.
But the paradox of this Afghanistan war is that continuing tactical victories in Oruzgan are not delivering strategic success. The real counter-insurgency struggle against the Taliban remains in the balance.
=
McCain pledges to renew Australian alliance
Patrick Walters, National security editor September 23, 2008
Patrick Walters, National security editor September 23, 2008
AUSTRALIA has looked to the US for leadership on global climate change and it is "time for us to answer that call", John McCain says.
Writing in today's The Australian, the US Republican presidential candidate says he will work with the Rudd Government to establish a global framework that would encourage China and India to become part of the solution to man-made climate change. Senator McCain says he is committed to a market-based cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing carbon emissions. And he wants a closer bilateral partnership on other key issues such as nuclear proliferation, trade liberalisation and combating terrorism.
On nuclear proliferation, Senator McCain warns that Americans and Australians face unprecedented challenges and says a McCain administration would lead by example by pushing for an international ban on fissile materials to be used in nuclear weapons and by reducing the US nuclear stockpile.
"Australia is a key partner in our efforts to reverse both the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs ... I will also work with Australia and other allies to make the International Atomic Energy Agency more effective," he says.
In a passionate evocation of a bilateral friendship spanning 100 years, Senator McCain cites president Theodore Roosevelt's dispatch of the Great White Fleet to Sydney in 1908 as the event that "forged an inseparable bond" between the US and Australia.
posted by 10 men at 8:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home