One of my favourite photos. It was after my second tour to Afghanistan. It wasn’t easy reconnecting with the girls after so long away, but on this day we built a wild, ambitious, wonky treehouse in our garden in Canberra, and it was a magical day I’ll treasure forever.
It was also just beginning of my attempts to get justice and truth restored in the Defence Force. For the next seven years it has dominated all our lives. My daughters are young women now.
‘My fight’ has been the only life they can remember. We will win this, but it’s taken a toll. Probably everything worthwhile does, but we won’t forget what the Defence Force has put us through, either.
When an organisation is broken, it attempts to break the lives of those who won’t bow down. We won’t be broken. Thanks again to all who walk beside me, as you also walk beside my family 👊🙏
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
If anyone still thinks the US are the good guys of the world consider the case of Catherine Gun.
She was a principled officer at GCHQ before the Iraq War, who (rightly) took exception to the fact the UK was tasked by the US to gather incriminating evidence on UN officials.
The reason the US wanted incriminating evidence on the UN officials was because they represented the ‘balance of power’ in the UN Security Council, and the US intended to Blackmail them to vote for war in Iraq.
That is the US was getting the UK to break the law, and be complicit in blackmail, in order to launch a war that would kill and displace (eventually) millions of people, in order to achieve US ‘foreign policy objectives’ (invasions that bring domestic electoral success)
After the publication of the ‘Afghan Files’, I went to Spain for one last attempt to get publicity for the case. While was there the AFP raided my house and it was clear I would soon be arrested. Sarah and the girls came to join me in Spain for one last holiday.
We travelled to the Sahara desert on the Moroccan-Algerian border, and rode the camel train into the dunes. To get there we had to travel for many long days on ferries, trains, and mini-buses, sometimes all night, but they never complained.
They knew there was a warrant for my arrest, and that I may be in gaol for a long time, maybe life. Occasionally we would cry together, but they never doubted I was doing the right thing. I have never loved them so much.
The US is not ‘protecting us’ from China. They are using us to make it seem like they have a ‘coalition’ of Western nations who are like-minded, when actually it’s simply their own desire to retain dominance over China.
We saw this in the Iraq War of 2003. We were ‘used’ then.
Our present Gov is like an untrustworthy partner who secretly takes out a second mortgage on the family home, and keeps the money for themselves.
They have sold ‘our’ birthright for ‘their’ election.
All the mistakes were made in Afghanistan are being repeated re China.
1. We are blindly following the US in order to ‘make them like us’. By doing so we both empower them to pursue a reckless unilateral policy, and lose our chance to be a moderating influence.
2. We are (ostensibly) trying to influence domestic policy of a sovereign country (Human Rights) by threatening their sovereignty, and dropping bombs on them.
We have no workable plan except propaganda, and sending lots and lots of military hardware into the region which will then (magically) kill ‘the bad guys’ if they don’t do what we want, but spare the ‘women and girls’
These guys were Afghan Special Forces drawn from the Hazara population, who, as the descendants of Genghis Khan’s invaders, were both a distinct racial and religious group (Shia). They were fearless and effective.
It demonstrates our duplicity as allies however that despite our claims of ‘steadfast brothers in arms’ we not only abandoned them but won’t allow them to emigrate to Australia.
Many of them will die at the hands of the Taliban (they are instantly recognisable), and many have already drowned trying to get to Australia in leaky boats.