Government To Bombard Australians With "Patriotic" Recruitment Propaganda

"Conscription" Raised As Way Of Fixing Defence Force Recruitment Crisis

Australia To Double Special Forces Troops In Afghanistan

Prepare yourself, Australia. You are about to get bombarded by an intensive propaganda campaign designed to guilt trip you into joining the Australian military.

Defence minister, Brendan Nelson has announced that igniting patriotism will be "an extremely important part" of a vast new military recruitment campaign. Nelson has long promoted his theory that the Australian soldier, or digger, is the defining iconic image of the Australian identity.

The Australian Defence Force is having enormous trouble finding new recruits in the midst of a booming economy. Young Australians may be thinking about joining the Army, or Navy, but they don't like the pay, the conditions, or the very real likelihood of being deployed into a warzone. Many simply want to go to university instead.

Tens of millions of dollars will be spent in the coming months on the extended series of television, print, internet and radio military recruitment ads that will dispense with trying to interest young people in joining the Army, the Air Force or the Navy because they want to be soldiers, pilots or sailors, and will attempt, instead, to rouse their sense of patriotism and a desire "to make a difference."

Nelson : "...we need to get away from just promoting defence jobs, to promoting the key values of the three service uniforms, and putting those in a contemporary environment so young people especially understand if you want to make a difference, there's no better way to do it than join the navy, army, or air force..."

It'll be interesting to see exactly what the "key values" Nelson mentions will turn out to be, and what exactly he is asking young Australians to "make a difference" to.

At the same time, Nelson has announced that Australians as old as 56 will now be able to join up, and the compulsory retirement age will be raised from 55 to 60 years old.

The ADF will no longer be so fussy when it comes to education qualifications in new recruits. In fact, you won't even have to finish high school if you want to get into the defence forces now.

"...we'll look at their aptitude, work and life experience," Nelson said. "We'll provide them with the necessary education and get them up to that sort of standard...."

Nelson gave a preview of what we can expect to see in the advertising blitz during an interview last Sunday :

"There is no group of Australians that has done more to shape our values, beliefs and identity than those men and women who have worn and today wear the uniform of the navy, army and air force..."

But do the majority of Australians really believe their "values, beliefs and identity" were formed by the Australian military's more than 100 years of international war-fighting? A long and brutal series of campaigns that killed more than 100,000 men and boys , disabled and injured hundreds of thousands more and robbed generations of children of their fathers and grandfathers?

Nelson is going to be treading on mine-filled ground if the coming recruitment ads try to rewrite the shocking fallout that World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War had on Australian society.

ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day are not about celebrating victories in war for the vast majority of Australian, but are instead sombre, extremely sad occasions when we remember just how deeply successive wars have scarred and shattered Australian families and communities, particularly rural communities.

With a focus on "patriotism" and "values", the coming ads will also be in danger of drifting close to the kind of American-style cheesiness, flag-saluting and gung-ho militarism that makes most Australians laugh in dismay, or shake their heads in disbelief.


On a busy Sunday for Brendan Nelson, he also committed Australia to doubling its troop commitment in Afghanistan to almost 1000, most of whom are expected to be special forces.

Nelson, like prime minister, John Howard, refuses to acknowledge that the pullout of most Australian troops from Afghanistan in the second half of 2002, in preparation for the illegal invasion of Iraq, set the scene for a revival of Taliban strength which now has to be dealt with and is likely to result in Australian troops being killed and wounded.

"We believe there is a need (to redeploy)...we think that the Taliban will be mounting a very strong offensive shortly," Nelson said.

The Prescription For Conscription

In an interview with ABC News, influential defence industry expert Neil James, said that while improved wages and conditions will help to increase overall defence forces recruitment, national conscription could prove necessary should a serious conflict erupt in our region :

"It would depend on the likely duration of the problem. You'd have to say that conscription would have to be one of the things that would need to be considered," he said.

Rest assured that if Neil James is saying that, conscription is already being considered.


In a final bit of news related to the Australian Air Force, a new video flight simulator game is to be launched via Windows Live Messenger.

From 'The Australian' :

The game, Supreme Air Combat, developed for defence force recruiting, was launched at the Avalon Airshow by the RAAF's deputy chief, Air Vice Marshal John Blackburn.

The game features multi-player aerial combat, in which each player controls a small flight group and tries to outmanoeuvre an opponent to win.

It is based on fast turns, which its designers say is designed to encourage quick decision-making using a simulated F/A-18 jet fighter.

The game was also intended to emphasise that a career in the Australian Defence Force was "cutting edge", general defence force recruiting chief Brigadier Simon Gould said.

"It's demonstrating to young Australians that the ADF is fresh, innovative and involved in high technology. It will encourage people to join the team and "have a look at all the possible jobs we have to offer", he said.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson : "We Are Not Going To Risk Our Own People" - Why Australia Turned Down American Request To Join Baghdad Troop "Surge"

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Tim Dunlop On Iraq Vs Afghanistan : John Howard's Dilemma

Howard Announces Australian Troop Withdrawal Strategy Based On "Our National Interests"

Defence Minister : "There Will Be No Victory In Iraq"

Australia's prime minister said before the Iraq War began that he thought the conflict would last "months, not years". He is sharp enough to not make the same mistake again when it comes to the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq.

While John Howard spent the two weeks before US Vice President Dick Cheney came to town lambasting any talk of a troop withdrawal as giving in to Al Qaeda and betraying "our good friends" in the United States, he has changed his tune dramatically in the past three days.

Howard has now decided he must leave himself the option of pulling out Australia's combat troops well before the United States does, and without their permission, and on extremely short notice.

This could be called the "Australia's interest" option, and the key to it may be an outbreak of violence in the troubled island nations to Australia's north, like East Timor.

"If we thought (withdrawing troops) was in our national interest to do so, yes," Howard said during a radio interview yesterday.

The marker for when Iraq is stable enough to warrant a total withdrawal of Australian forces has now been pegged by Howard as a "sustained reduction in the level of violence".

Talk about leaving your options open.

So only five car bombings a week instead of fifteen? Only 200 executed Iraqis found on the street every seven days instead of 600 or 700?

The prime minister, and a stream of government ministers and MPs have been buttering Australians up for a withdrawal from Iraq while the country still locked in explosive sectarian conflict.


Howard now insists it will be up to Iraqi Army and police forces to look after their own security and to end the sectarian conflicts.

"Some level of (violence) will go on, yes," he said. "You can't establish, as a test of whether you ultimately go or stay, a situation where there is no violence at all.

"Some level of violence goes on in a lot of democratic countries."

True enough. But Iraq is currently the murder, kidnapping, execution, car bombing capital of the world.

"We shouldn't set ourselves an impossibly pure standard of non-violence before we decide to go.

"At the present time the level of violence is totally unacceptable, and until the Iraqis are able to contain it to a reasonable level we should stay."

Naturally Howard refused to be drawn on what actually constitutes a "reasonable level" of violence.

So the prime minister has now left himself two options for his strategy on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Firstly, he can withdraw the troops through the wide-open "in Australia's interest" option, or he can claim that Iraq is only suffering from a "reasonable level" of violence and withdraw.

Just to help out his master, Australia's defence minister, Brendan Nelson, meanwhile, has declared "There is no such thing as victory in Iraq."

This means, of course, that Howard will never have to declare victory in Iraq before pulling out Australia's troops.

That "there is no such thing as victory in Iraq" will come as something of a surprise to US President George W. Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney who were stating late last year that "nothing less than total victory" in Iraq would be accepted by the crumbling Coalition of the Willing.

"...the Iraqis who've shown enormous courage to vote on three occasions to elect their own government, they should be the inspiration for what we do," Nelson said, "but there'll be no such thing as victory.

"The most important thing that we do is to make sure the Iraqis have control of their own destiny, and have the moral fortitude and courage to see the job through until they're in a position to do it."This also puts the death-knell on Howard's previous claims that Australia would only withdraw from Iraq when "the job is done". Now it is up to the Iraqis to "see the job through".

Nelson waffled endlessly about "handing victory to the terrorists" in Iraq as recently as February 12.

If he now says that the coalition will never be able to declare victory before pulling out, then doesn't it stand to reason that the insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq would regard themselves as victorious once large scale withdrawals of American, Australian and British troops begin?

Here's Nelson's hyper-charged warnings about what a non-victory in Iraq would mean for, primarily, his own children :

"If the United States is defeated in Iraq...along with the United Kingdom, Australia and other thinking countries throughout the world, my children will face challenges that they will never overcome."

Ten days after that interview, Brendan Nelson announced "There will be no victory in Iraq" on the back of Australia committing to sending another 70 soldiers into the war zone.

The question remains why John Howard and his team of propagandists have so dramatically changed their tune in the course of just one week.

Perhaps it has something to do with the rumours infecting Britain today that Tony Blair was partly motivated to withdraw almost 1/3 of British troops from Iraq due to expected military action on Iran by the US and/or Israel in the coming months.

A sudden and unexpected announcement by John Howard that he is pulling Australian troops out of Iraq (well before the security situation improves) to deal with events related to "Australia's interest" in island nations to the north of Australia may well be the next big surprise from the prime minister.