Thread by @NewtonMark

11 Sep 2019 was last month. 18 years since the twin towers and Pentagon attacks, American teenagers can now legally join the armed forces to get shipped off to the Middle East to avenge acts that were carried out before they were born. Semper fi, motherfuckers. /1

In the next few years, the last World War 2 veteran will die. At that point, there'll be nobody alive in the United States who has personal experience of fighting in a war they've won. /2

For the 75 years since, American military activity has been dominated by strategic failure in the presence of overwhelming tactical success. /3

Soldiers retaliating against events they have no living memory of, for a country with zero remaining living soldiers with memories of victory. How is America going to square that circle? /4

For US-aligned governments, including our own, the enduring lesson from Vietnam was that if your warfighting depends on democratic consensus, you will lose. /5

One of the things that led to North Vietnamese rice farmers kicking the arse of the world's most powerful military force was the withdrawal of popular support for the war back home. /6

US Governments, and our own Australian Governments, have responded to that by fighting their wars out of the public glare ever since. That way, they can keep them running forever. /7

Which is why we can look at the only thing the US military has been consistently doing for nearly two decades and conclude that their actual role is to detonate ordnance in Afghanistan. Everyone who signs up knows they'll get many tours there. /8

It is, for all intents and purposes, their only modern-day mission. There are no strategic objectives to achieve, and even if there were there's been no progress towards achieving them. /9

No voters at home have the faintest idea what's going on or what's supposed to happen next, even though we live in societies with civilian command of the military legitimized by democratic processes. /10

Why am I mentioning this now?

Well, right now, today, this very minute, Australia is prosecuting Operation Okra. /11

Operation Okra started more than five years ago. It involved deploying 450 personnel with F/A-18s and C-130Js to the Middle East to support a combined joint task force of Iraqis, New Zealanders, Americans, and (wait for it...) Syrian Kurds. /12

Our ADF has been dropping bombs on Syria to protect and support Kurds fighting ISIS (or Daesh or ISIL - no matter how important our polished suits are, they can't seem to agree on what our latest Emmanual Goldstein figure is called). /13

Last week, while our Prime Minister was smashing tins at the footy in Suva, Donald Trump decided that US policy would now be to stand back at a safe distance while Turkey invaded Syria, released alleged ISIS/Daesh/ISIL prisoners, and annihilated all the Kurds. /14

This weekend, Turkey has been shelling Kurdish targets (including US special forces, amusingly. Run harder, fellas!).

I'm yet to see a single account in the Australian press about how, following Trump's brain-fart, Operation Okra is a colossal monstrous failure. /15

Which is odd, considering that it's one of our largest long-term deployments since the Iraq war. Shouldn't voters be talking about this kind of shit, forming opinions about it, influencing the MPs who decide on the countries where our armed forces will die? /16

Should we not have an informed electorate, holding our Governments to account? /17

There's an unspoken agreement between electors and military personnel: /18

"You follow the orders from our civilian government, even if they take you to your death; We'll exercise diligence and responsibility to ensure that you're only in harm's way if it's justified, if you do end up being killed or maimed your sacrifice will be meaningful." /19

As civilian electors, we do not competently discharge that responsibility. I can't think of any military sacrifice since WW2 which has been meaningful for Australia. /20

So, with civilians abandoning their (our) side of the bargain, I confess that I don't understand a single thing about why someone would voluntarily join our military, knowing that they'll spend their career putting themselves at risk, pointlessly. /21

Knowing that there'll never be any thanks because nobody, including the people in command, knows or cares what they're supposed to be thanked for. /22

The Americans have the whole "Derr, respec'da twewps!" thing wrong. /23

We shouldn't be thanking military personnel for their service. The thanks isn't meaningful, words of gratitude for PTSD amputees begging for change are mostly worthless.

Forget the thanks. We should be apologizing to them. Apologizing for not holding up our side of the bargain. Apologizing for the decades of profound and enduring failure of leadership exhibited by our idiot Australian politicians. /end