Victory of truth in a war of words

IT is sad but true that few Australians would have followed the debate on the engagement of our troops in Afghanistan.

The arguments made by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott were compelling and, though Gillard's monotonous delivery makes one wonder whether she is the only tone-deaf person to come out of Wales, she made a number of significant points. The contribution made by the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie was histrionic and embarrassing, and the less said about the lacklustre contribution of Victorian Green MP Adam Bandt the better. To his shame, Bandt misquoted former defence force chief General Peter Gration to give the misleading impression that he had suggested Australia should walk away from its Afghanistan commitment. It's a mark of the mindless nature of much TV news media that a great deal of footage was wasted on a handful of anti-war demonstrators outside the Parliament. The protest attracted six or so people - about half the number of those in the camera crews recording their action. Both Gillard and Abbott mapped out the familiar history of our involvement in the global coalition against terrorism, with Gillard quoting from conservative poet James McAuley's 1956 poem The Ascent of Hades: "I never shrank with fear But fought the monsters of the lower world Clearing a little space, and time, and light For men to live in peace." The Australian's Luke Slattery reported poet John Kinsella was "nettled" by the martial use to which Ms Gillard put a literary reference. "I'm a committed pacifist," Kinsella told Slattery, "and I disagree with the use of poetry for that 'heroic' purpose, even when it's a poet whose views I don't share." No one is likely to quote Kinsella to make a point, but his views illustrate the preposterous belief held by the chattering classes that the Left alone has some bizarre sole right to determine which side of politics may use literary references, even when those references are clearly at odds with the Left agenda. Little wonder wars have been fought over less. Wilkie's contribution provided an insight into his confused mind. His rambling dissertation revealed he was a supporter of the US alliance, on balance, though he did not say exactly what the alternate was that he presumably considered. He spoke of his past service with the same battalion from which some of those who gave their lives served and then he gave his parliamentary colleagues a lecture on democracy: "Numerous members are prepared to sit there behind their party's policy at the expense of genuinely representing the views of their constituents, and that is a shocking breakdown of democracy. "Some things should be above party discipline and this is one of them. Whatever happened to some of you that you are now so ready to sacrifice your soul for your party's political self interest?" Let me remind Wilkie that he received just 13,788 votes in Denison, as against Labor's 23,215, the Liberals' 14,688 the Greens' 12,312. He would not have been elected without Liberal preferences, and the likelihood of him being re-elected is looking pretty slim as he won't be receiving support from that quarter again. For this intellectual carpet-bagger and beneficiary of undemocratic preferential voting - elected with what seems to be the lowest primary vote recorded across the nation - to lecture his parliamentary colleagues on democratic principles is the height of arrogance. It makes as much sense as Green's leader Bob Brown setting himself up as an informed participant in the debate when he has never sought a briefing on Afghanistan, let alone visited the conflict. Senator Brown, who has been in Canberra while the Senate has been sitting this week, has been let off lightly by the media. He hasn't been present for the important Estimates Committee meetings and he wrongly claimed that former prime minister John Howard made only a quick trip there when the record shows Howard visited the troops in Afghanistan twice. Parliamentary veteran Philip Ruddock has quoted Mr Howard as saying: "The long-term aim of this war is to demonstrate that organised, international, state-sanctioned terrorism will not be tolerated by the world community." Howard said: "We know that our mission will not be easy. It will be prolonged and against an enemy hiding in the dark corners of the world. An enemy who will falsely portray our objective to destroy terrorism as an assault upon Islam. "The war will be a new kind of war. There will be few, if any, set-piece battles to bring it to an end. Rather it will be a sustained effort, requiring sturdy patience, and the careful marshalling and co-ordination of resources." Ruddock, who has visited Afghanistan to observe our troops in the field, said: "It is important that we do not allow ourselves to be beguiled by arguments that war is difficult, that the Karzai Government has perhaps less credibility than we would like and that we walk away from the effort of ensuring that there is no opportunity for al-Qaeda to operate on that scale again. "It has always seemed to me that, as hard as it is, it is more important to fight the battle there and win than to simply walk away and fight a battle here, on our own shores, with even greater tragic consequences." He said he believed the strategy in which we have been engaged is designed to serve Australia's interests and to protect our community and he made the important point that we are not alone. "We are committing in the order of 1500 Australian troops compared with the United States' commitment of 78,430; the United Kingdom, 9500; Germany, 4590; France, 3750; Italy, 3400, Canada, 2830; Poland, 2630; Romania, 1750; Turkey, 1740; and Spain, 1555. This is not something in which we are engaged alone. We are part of the world community dealing with this issue. This debate was overdue. It has now cleared the air and has left those who clamoured for an immediate exit without an argument.