In the words of The Cranberries “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”. If you didn’t know, that’s the name of one of their albums. Being a military man, as much as I wanted to avoid a post about Bin Laden, I really can’t.
Whether you agree with the War on Terror or not, or whether you agree with the coalition government’s decisions to invade Iraq and Afghanistan or not, let’s look at what has happened and what it means.
Obama summed this up quite well in his speech. He said “This is not a war on Islam.” And he’s right. Nobody in the coalition has anything against Islam – in principle. The reason why we’re in these countries is to stop the terrorism. It wouldn’t matter whether the perpetrators were Muslim, Catholic, or Buddhist.
This is about preventing violent, oppressive, torturous behaviour against innocent people. And don’t for one minute think that it’s just about stopping the behaviour against coalition countries.
I’ve served in both of these countries, and let me tell you – straight from the horse’s mouth – that the locals HATE organisations like al Qaeda and the Taliban. The locals want to live in peace. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want to be able to run their small businesses, and they want to be able to go home at night and spend time with their families, eating together and playing together.
That doesn’t happen if you’re being oppressed by these terrorist organisations. I could go on and on and on about how these organisations treat their citizens, what they put them through, and the ridiciulous reasons they have for killing their own people. A great example is one of Bin Laden’s final acts – he tried to use a woman as a human shield to protect himself.
What this post is supposed to be about is what is going to happen now. Sure, this brings an end to Bin Laden’s reign, and for a couple of weeks there will be some pretty major disruption to al Qaeda. But the fighting will go on. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been fighting for centuries, and the coalition’s involvement is a blip on their radar.
But for the last ten years, the difference we have made is nothing short of astounding. When I was in Iraq, my CO was a genius. For his time over there, he won a Distinguished Service Cross, and had previously won a Commendation for Distinguished Service, and a Conspicious Service Cross.
One of the first things he did when he arrived was to visit the local sheiks – and there were about 20 of them – and discuss with them what we were there for (which was to protect the Japanese Engineers while they rebuilt schools, hospitals and other infrastructure) and to ask them what they wanted and expected from us.
Shortly after that, one of our patrols was sent into a local market place, for what’s known as a “Hearts and Minds” activity. They parked a LAV at the markets and invited the locals to come and have a look. But everyone was afraid and nobody wanted to see. So one of the young soldiers physically grabbed one of the locals, dragged him over to the LAV and let him touch it and go inside.
After that, there was no stopping them. Everyone came to see, and they all started chatting with the Aussie soldiers – not that anyone knew what the other was saying, of course! The locals then started to understand who we were, and what we were like. When we first got there, they couldn’t differentiate between the different coalition countries, but they very quickly learned about the Australians.
They understood that we weren’t there to hurt them. We weren’t there to oppress them. We were there to help them. And it didn’t take long before our patrols were being stopped by locals, and given information on “the enemy”. And the same happened in Afghanistan.
Locals understand, and support, the coalition. They know why we’re there, and they thank us for their help. Thanks to the coalition, locals can get medical help. Kids can go to school. Families can run their market stalls and make enough money to feed themselves. All things that were not permitted during Taliban rule.
I’m glad Bin Laden is dead. Not for what it will do in the immediate future, but for what it means to the big picture. Australians keep calling for our troops to be sent home because we keep losing young men. And that is the wrong message. The death of Bin Laden lets everyone know that we will not stop until this is over.
It tells the Taliban, al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and all those other organisations, that if you attack us, we will fight back. And we will fight back until we get you. If Australia sent their troops home, the message would be “Kill enough of our soldiers and we’ll pull out”. It’s what the UN do, and they have absolutely NO credibility around the world.
War creates casualties. Nobody denies that. If you think that governments go to war without analysing this aspect, you’re naive. It’s about the biggest factor they consider. They want estimates, with supporting evidence, of how many soldiers will die. No leader sends their troops to battle lightly. Sun Tsu teaches us that fighting is pretty much the last straw.
So yes, I’m happy Bin Laden is dead. Am I naive enough to think this will end it all? Of course not. In fact, it will probably strengthen the resolve of terrorists – at least in the short term. But what this does, is to go a long way to showing we’re in it for the long haul, and that we will do what we set out to do.
If you agree – or disagree – feel free to tell me.
