THREE more diggers dead, seven wounded -- and for what? This national interest both Gillard and Abbott go on about, what is it? The need to defend a corrupt government which has neither means nor intention of introducing Afghanistan to the most basic of Enlightenment values? To further destabilise Pakistan? To safeguard a kleptocracy quite happy to see a blogger sentenced to death for the heinous crime of "questioning Islam"?
This is why three more Australian lives been squandered. What a sick, stupid, obscene joke.
We were right to oust the Taliban in the days after 9/11. That was the mission and it was achieved with courage and competence. Now it is touchy-feely soldiering -- building roads and attempting by gentle, culturally sensitive means to persuade an insane, inbred smear of flyblown villagers and boy-buggerers that there might be some advantages to following the rest of the world's lead and leave the seventh century behind.
Osama is dead, finally. Now is the moment to throw up a cordon sanitaire around Afghanistan, patrol it with drones and if the place shows the slightest sign of re-establishing terrorist camps, blow them up from a safe, stand-off distance.
In the meantime, let's declare victory and go home.
Some people like to wallow in filth. Let them. Leave them to their fun before another drop of Australian blood is squandered.
