‘We’ve become so soft that we go to war over what pronouns are acceptable’

It’s hard to not feel a little embarrassed by how Australia is tracking as a nation compared with the warriors in Ukraine, Rory Gibson says. Instead we go to war here over gender-neutral toilets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Picture: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP

War, for all its horror, has a curious side effect: it brings out the absolute best in human ingenuity.

Give people a peacetime problem and they’ll hold a focus group, commission a report, hire some consultants and eventually install a coffee machine.

But in war? Suddenly they’re geniuses. The stakes are high, the deadlines are immovable, and excuses won’t be tolerated. That’s when the miracles happen.

Ukraine’s audacious drone swarm targeting Russia’s bomber fleet was a masterstroke. Not just because of the precision and destruction it wrought, but because it was psychological - it was a punch in the bully’s face by the little kid.

That buzzing flock of clever, home-grown tech turning oil refineries into bonfires and military pride into scrap joins a long line of brilliant subterfuge forged in conflict.

History is littered with tales of wartime trickery that would make a magician applaud. The Trojan horse - a hollowed-out gift horse that hid Greek soldiers like a particularly violent Kinder Surprise. Operation Mincemeat in WWII - when the British floated a dead man off the coast of Spain with false invasion plans tucked into his underpants.

Israel’s use of pagers to wipe out terror group Hezbollah last year is on the same list. Hezbollah commanders suddenly found their gadgets chirping out death notices. A little beeping here, a little kaboom there. It wasn’t just a strike, it was a message: We know where you are. We’re inside your pocket. Chilling, brilliant, and weirdly polite.

And let’s not forget the legends of Z Special Unit, the Aussie commandos who sailed the MV Krait into Japanese-occupied Singapore, paddled ashore in the dead of night and blew up a bunch of ships using little more than guts, stealth and probably too much Vegemite.

Rory Gibson.

It’s telling that these incredible examples of lethal imagination are almost always dreamed up by a conflict’s underdogs. When forced into a corner, the human mind becomes a weapon of breathtaking subtlety.

It’s hard to not feel a little embarrassed by how Australia is tracking as a nation compared with Ukraine’s warriors.

We’ve become so soft that we go to war over what pronouns are acceptable or whether boys can use the girls’ toilet. How would we go if Russia started lobbing missiles at us?

Hopefully we too would put aside the frippery and respond with the best weapon we’ve got - our brains.