Thread by @Dave_Brophy

Just got through @markwillacy’s book. To coincide with Alan Tudge’s speech today, I’m going to just post a couple of scenes from Australia’s proud recent history of standing up for freedom and liberal values.

Blooding - the execution of prisoners as a rite of passage - wasn’t just carried out in Afghanistan. Preparing people to do it was part of training in Australia.

One possible such case - a village imam taken out and shot because he happened to have the same name as someone the SAS was looking for.

I’m not someone who believes that because someone is identified as an “insurgent”, our troops had the right to be in Afghanistan and kill them. But leaving that aside, it seems people’s names were added to the kill list after being killed.

Walking into a village and threatening to massacre everyone.

Taking a photo of a dead Afghan boy, slapping it on a leaflet that you’re going to terrorise the local population with.

We’ve seen photos of Nazi flags, not sure if any of these Confederate flag photos have been published though?

Bantering about the good old days.

Couple of interviewees, who’ve been through hell themselves and did the right thing by speaking up, both end up making the same analogy.

I’m sorry this is extremely grim, and there’s much more in the book. Then you remember that everything in it reflects only a short window of time (~ 12 months) from a much longer war, and all from just one small corner of Afghanistan where Australians operated.