Howzat Howard!

Since we’re talking about shortcomings of Australian PMs, a recent release of Federal Cabinet papers from 2005 definitively nails one person with responsibility for Australia’s disgraceful military involvement in Afghanistan, the most reported subject here over those many years.

John Howard, our ‘man of steel’ according to Bush junior, made the decision unilaterally against the unequivocal advice of Defence chiefs and the Office of National Assessments, to send in special forces there for a 12 month mission, which ‘crept’ to twenty years. He momentarily became Australia’s autocrat-president.

Total cost to Australia of our longest war is estimated at $10 billion. Forty thousand Australian soldiers served there, forty-seven died as a direct result and 263 were wounded.

The Royal Commission into Defence & Veterans Suicide has also determined that subsequent suicides amongst those who served is sixfold the number killed, i.e. another 282 deaths attributable to their Afghanistan service.

The extent of damage and death caused to the Afghan populace by our military actions is unknown, except for the Brereton enquiry finding that Australian special forces had executed thirty-nine unlawful killings and cruel treatment involving twenty-five of our troops.

Howard’s autobiographical Lazarus Rising apparently does not mention his decision to send Australian forces on a fool’s errand, to curry favour with our U.S. ally. The result on the ground was an abject failure and prelude to the Taliban resuming total control of the country.  Howard’s omission and abdication of responsibility for that hubristic war-mongering is reprehensible.

You would think that lifelong shame would keep him out of the public arena. Instead, he arrogantly struts the national stage as a tribal elder dispensing wisdom, even lecturing Albo for his failings over the Bondi Beach massacre.

This latest revelation should remind Howard of his own fatal misjudgements twenty years ago and sole culpability for the tragic consequences of our Afghan misadventures. 

To use a cricketing metaphor from his beloved national game: mate you are clean bowled, leg-before-wicket, caught and run out, and must leave the field.