If she is as fair-minded as you are, I am confident that your marriage will be a happy one.

I was flabbergasted by Rudd on Remembrance Day in Afghanistan, with his rhetoric. Isn’t he supposed to be the thoughtful policy wonk? He sounded like a firebrand partisan, and that Afghanistan was a simple “wit us or agin us” issue.

I, for one, would like to see a world leader (I understand Obama is thinking long and hard about this, and not rushing a decision) articulate what victory in Afghanistan could possibly look like.

In lieu of this, may all of the Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan return safely.

Laughably, Rudd has simply adopted Howardite rhetoric on this question as his own.

Rudd appears to be incapable of formulating a public rhetoric that he is confident will credibly counter customary Australian rhetoric about Australia’s appropriate role in the American alliance:

1. that in return for vague promises of protection from the United States in the future, Australia will make symbolic and minimal military commitments in any number of misconceived US military misadventures.

2. that Australian decision makers will not seek to have any say in the diplomatic or military strategic aspects of these commitments. Australia will play the role of the dumb, loyal deputy sheriff in the region.

Rudd has transformed himself into Zombie Howard.

“………….The one woman in Afghanistan’s parliament of gangsters, Malalai Joya, who fled because the gangsters thought she was too uppity, says she doesn’t want the US in Afganistan:
“Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords … Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai’s own brother is a well known drug trafficker. Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans are living in destitution. The latest United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Eighteen million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Mothers in many parts of Afghanistan are ready to sell their children because they cannot feed them. Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of criminals … We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai. Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush’s wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama’s tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians. My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.”
So WTF are we doing in Afghanistan?
………….”

It has far more to do with a rigidity of mind, coupled with an ability to let ideology trump inconvenient facts.