It's quite clear that SAM does not have any experience with the difference in military attitudes around the world. The Australian army has been used in a minor way while the intervention was going on; however, she seems to equate that with jackbooted soldiers breaking into hovels and stealing children. In the end, I suppose it all comes down to ones internal imaginings when picturing the actual goings on in a land one is far away from.
The Australian army, internally at least, is far more likely to build a home than to break one down.
I'm rather surprised that SAM does not see it herself; after all, she is constantly on the attack about foreigners who have no real understanding of a situation in a country they've never set foot in.
I believe her entire attitude towards this subject is summed up in her response to Asguard, here:
The army was never used in any sort of enforcement roll, that's a misunderstanding of what happens here. The army is used a lot in emergency situations acting under direction of state authorities for the most part, for instance cleaning up after cyclones Tracy and the one in Queensland and cutting fire breaks in Vic. In the intervention defense was there to Assist with logistics, admin, building houses ect. Any enforcement will be undertaken by sworn NT police (there were Police borowed from the other states and the feds but they were all sworn in as NT police)
Why ever not? If they can liberate women in Afghanistan and whoever in Somalia, why not liberate the sexually abused children from pedophilic aboriginals?
The point is clear; SAM does wish to understand what was actually going on during the intervention, any more than far too many Aboriginals or other Australians were.
This is a knee jerk reaction from someone who has no desire to truly understand, but rather a soapbox to hold forth from. In this, she displays much of the same psyche as those she supposedly hates most, all the while apparently demanding change. Perhaps she thinks if she uses the words "military intervention" often and loudly enough, she can convince even Australians that this is indeed what it was. Other people do that too. Words like "Muslim", Terrorist"... all designed to incite a reaction. Fear, in most cases.
Ah, humanity.
Here's another one:
According to James, one does not use the army for work that should be done by police, social welfare organisations or schools.
Clearly, SAM does not believe that the army was used in such a fashion.
It was, SAM. Not for much else. Take it or leave it, but crying to the world that it isn't so doesn't change the facts. Trying to understand the role of the Australian army in internal matters in the context of the Indian or American one is an exercise in foolishness. That in itself is a mistake; what makes it worse, is that when the actual role of the army is explained to you you immediately retreat into preconception rather than accept facts.
Funny, that. I've seen you devote whole threads to decrying that very behaviour. You appear to think you are the voice of reason, the sound of fairness, the mouthpiece for the exposure of hypocracy; but when push comes to shove you're the same thing you hate - from a different perspective.
I almost pity you, SAM, for the world you live in, a world that teaches you you to see things in such a way. Do you want so badly to believe that the grass isn't greener on the other side? Is it your safety blanket?
We're a huge, wide open country with a population of around 26 million, mostly centred around 8 capitals. To make the point even further, the Northern Territory has a population of around 250000, around 200,000 of which are in Darwin itself - the "capital". I live in Darwin. It's a glorified country town. On the world stage, it doesn't even rate.
Now go look at a map. Compare India and the Northern Territory side by side.
Try to picture our police force trying to carry out such an intervention - whether or not you consider that intervention to be the right course of action.
This is the thing, SAM. Australians are not afraid of their own army. Not even the Aboriginals. Australians feel quite safe using them in domestic situations like this, and know they're only there to do a job no one is logistically able to do.
If you live in a world where you are, then perhaps it is your own situation you should be looking to.
The actions of some Australians in Afghanistan are reported here and widely condemned because they
weren't normal. Not because anyone was trying to expose some greater consiracy of widespread wrongdoing.
Because our media found out about it, reported it, and people were shocked that some of our soldiers could make those mistakes.
Even though the circumstances those soldiers were in were not as simple as you attempt to make them out to be. I wonder if you have the kind of mind to imagine yourself in that situation, and could blithely ignore the circumstances and fear of war which can sometimes circumvent training. Apparently, you do not. For one who takes such pride in her own humanity, you seem to lack an understanding of it.
Can you even conceive the differences between Australia and the middle east? India? America? Not many foreigners can. For you, I suppose trying to understand Australia is a little like trying to contain the idea of an infinite universe in your mind. The idea is there... but not quite.
We're a unique lot, in Australia. We have logistical problems you can't even imagine, and yet we've somehow managed to overcome most of them - which is why your mob are arriving here by the planeload. Funny, that - all these indians in India crying about Australians and how terrible we all are, and yet they'll break their backs trying to get here when the reality of Australia actually makes itself clear to them. That reality is that it isn't a bad place to live. We have our problem children, sure - those who see the Indian or the Asian as a foreigner stealing their jobs. In the same way, you have those in who'll read a paper and think all Australians are racist warmongers.
The majority are none too bright, SAM. Doesn't matter where you were born or raised.
Your students over here don't want to go home, SAM. It's not as bad as our media likes to portray in the name of sensationalism, nor that which yours picks up and runs with because they like to think ours is telling the truth rather than trying to sell papers.
Key words, there;
like to think. Mull that over for a while. Let's see what you come up with.
Our overseas student numbers are dropping, that much is true. But the ones already here aren't going home all that often. They seek citizenship instead. They know that there is little similarity between what the media portrays as opposed to reality - and you don't.
All these years decrying the western media, and yet when you choose to, you're as capable of taking it as gospel as anyone else.
This is one of the better places to live - for Indians, and especially for Aboriginals - on the face of the planet. I know, I've been around. It's hard for me to feel a pride in my own country - I'm rather against anything that smacks of organisation, or tries to impose limits upon me. Yet I do, for this place I was born in. Because I've seen the alternatives - including yours.
One day, you're going to have to take off the blinkers and deal with that.
Still, I'm digressing a little.
The Aboriginals.
You, like so many others, are quite prepared to step back and let people suffer as long as it coincides with your own idealism. In the view of the Howard government, intervention was necessary. I'm not going to go into the right or wrong of it, nor offer an alternative to how it was carried out. That much has been covered.
Most Australians not only agreed with that view, they didn't need any reports to enable them to see it - particularly not the ones living here in the NT or northern Queensland. Most people had seen it long ago, grown up with it, and been able to do nothing. We're dealing, here, with a government run department (DOCS), so hampered by laws and regulations born of guilt and fear, memories of the stolen generations, that they often did nothing when action was clearly necessary. The girl in the case Bells mentioned is a example of that. The unnofficial line is, basically, don't interfere - you'll end up being accused. They chose to send her back rather than make a stand.
I suggest you read about that case - it is not, as so many of these reports are, an exaggeration of an isolated event. It has become commonplace.
Fear. Guilt.
You don't understand that, either. You think Australians are like Americans - we're not. No more than Saudis are like Iranians. We share some common ground, of course - we are allies for a reason. But don't make the mistake of believing we're all the same. I thought you hated that? Does it gall you, sometimes, knowing you are just like those you rant on about?
Australians, by and large, feel rather guilty about events from times past. The latter generations had nothing to do with it, of course - and in fact it is the attitude of those generations that led to the Aboriginals being recognised in the first place. That is why DOCS won't intervene in Aboriginal cases, and why these reports - true, by the way - were ignored for so long that child abuse became almost the culture in some remote communties. Actually, those reports weren't ignored. They were read. They were read again. They were passed around. Finally, they were put aside.
Few knew what to do. Those who did know were too afraid to do it.
Ghosts from the past.
That the Howard government was well-intentioned seems to have escaped you. That they didn't really approach the problem in a suitable manner at least partially because of uncertainty and the spectre of times past also seems to have escaped you. Fear and guilt, SAM, are tools only used by the foolish.
This is not some conflict on the other side of the world reported on TV for those who live here, SAM. It's just there... down the road a little.
Are you adept at reading people's demeanour? Try observing Aboriginals here in the NT sometime. They can be brash, brazen like the stereotypical black Americans we see on TV. They can be shy. Drunk. Angry. They can be anything on the surface; But in far too many, you'll see the one thing underneath it all they nearly all have and go to varying lengths trying to hide:
Hopelessness.
The answer is not to give them their own country. Forget the boat people - Australia, or what was left of it, would be faced with a rather sudden case of dark skinned illegals jumping the border.
The old ways aren't as romantic as you seem to believe, SAM. 40,000 years in harmony with nature? Of course. Much like those entranced with the American Indians, seeing only a noble savage with the ten Aboriginal commandments, a poster on the wall. A vision of beauty and harmony - forget the raids, the intertribal wars, the damage to native animal species, everything else. Just concentrate on the poster.
With all the programmes, the intiatives, the incentives to help them make their own way - the vast majority do nothing. It is no longer the white man who is keeping the Aboriginal down, SAM. It is the Aboriginal himself who is just as much to blame. He is far too entrenched in his own hopelessness to see that it isn't real anymore. He's no longer an object of oppression, but of pity... and that particular posion, he's bought into of his own free will.
Know something else? Many of them know it. I work with a few. They know who the real enemy is, now. It's just a terribly difficult thing to admit - particularly when you have the odd Indian up on a soapbox handing out free hugs and the dream of having their own land.
Oh yes, regarding that - go have a look at a map sometime of the portion of Australia which is under Aborigina control. Approximately 50% of the Northern Territory alone is under the control of Aboriginal groups by law. This was granted in 1976, long before the feted Mabo case. It is, by and large, up to the Aborginals now on how they choose to use it. So far, they don't appear to be using it wisely.
One is left to wonder how many other countries have done as much.
Guilt achieves nothing, SAM. You achieve much, here, in making fools see things from your perspective. I wish, sometimes, that you were here to see the results of the very thing you seem intent on pushing. In clearer times, of course, common sense prevails, and it's obvious that the less of the likes of you here, the better off everyone - including the Aboriginals - will be.
And that, to make an extraordinarily long post compared to my usual even longer, is the crux of the matter.
You, and everyone like you, are not helping them.
Your kind haven't for a very long time, and it's quite conceivable that without those like you the Aboriginal would be further along in his road to recovery.
What makes you worse, though, is that I don't believe you really care much at all. You have an axe to grind, and you're using a people you know nothing of, a situation you have only read about, to make a tired and belaboured point... probably because you're tired of being accused of being myopic regarding Americans and are trying to pick on someone else for a change to regain your credibility.
Rather false of you. Rather unsympathetic. Trying to pretend you care about something you don't, in order to make others care about your political agenda - or religious. Not quite sure if there's a difference yet, for those like you.
But still, these preceeding pages should have shown you the result by now.
Fuck off, you fake.