{"id":8025,"date":"2013-07-31T12:10:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T02:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=8025"},"modified":"2013-08-07T14:15:44","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T04:15:44","slug":"visiting-the-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/visiting-the-troops\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting the troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frustrated<\/a>Visiting the troops deployed overseas has been a tradition for Australian politicians at least as far back as June 1916, when Billy Hughes travelled to the Western Front and met soldiers shortly before the appalling battles of Fromelle and Pozires. It is remarkable that so much of Australia\u2019s political culture has been shaped by the interaction of politicians with the military. In Canberra, Parliament House and the War Memorial face each other across the lake, both institutions dug-in to the hills around them, reminding us of the cost of political decisions to go to war.<\/p>\n

Strategy may start with ideas about alliances, Anglospheres and Asian Centuries, but such planning is made reality by soldiers carrying guns in remote locations. So it\u2019s utterly appropriate, in fact deeply necessary, that politicians should visit the troops overseas, look our deployed military and civilian personnel in the eye, and seek to understand what it really takes to promote Australian strategic interests abroad.<\/p>\n

What a pity then that so many visits of senior politicians take on the same character of the media performances we see from all sides of politics every night on the evening news. Be it visits to kindergartens, schools, factories, building sites or malls, the purpose of these visits are identical: to provide a congenial back drop for announcements and the opportunity to film politicians interacting with \u2018normal\u2019 Australians. With Defence personnel there\u2019s the added attraction of being surrounded by people from one of the most trusted professions in the country. The ADF ranks 12th\u00a0in a recent Reader\u2019s Digest poll<\/a> on \u2018professions we trust\u2019, while politicians ranked 49th\u00a0out of 50.<\/p>\n

While the positive media payoff of photo-opportunities with the troops is assumed to be high, the penalties of getting the look wrong can also be substantial. Indeed striking the right tone becomes a critical political challenge when engaging with soldiers. John Howard\u2019s rather wayward bowling action during a visit to the troops in Pakistan in November 2005 will long be remembered and replayed by Howard detractors, even though the reason for his visit\u2014to meet troops involved in a major flood relief operation\u2014has been forgotten. By contrast, Margaret Thatcher\u2019s visit to the Falkland Islands in 1983 produced one of the most iconic images of the Iron Lady\u2019s Prime Ministership\u2014all goggles and gritty determination<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his previous Prime Ministership, Kevin Rudd made a number of visits to Australian troops based in Tarin Kowt, Southern Afghanistan. He visited in December 2008<\/a> for some two and half hours to wish Australian troops a merry Christmas. It was a freezing winter and, bizarrely, he handed over a cricket kit and delivered an expletive-filled pep talk to some rather stunned soldiers describing the region \u2018as \u2018a hell hole\u2019 and a \u2018Godforsaken place\u2019 with \u2018shitty weather\u2019. Tony Abbott also received criticism as a result of a comment caught on-camera during an October 2010 visit to the troops in Afghanistan. As described by the Sydney Morning Herald\u2019s<\/i> Philip Coorey<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tony Abbott’s \u2018shit happens\u2019\u2014in response to being told in Afghanistan in October that Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney’s death in August was not due to any single factor\u2014was just another example of a political leader resorting to bloke talk when in a war zone.<\/p>\n

Not so much one for bloke talk, it was striking that Julia Gillard gave so much emphasis to her interaction with military personnel in her speech after losing the Prime Ministership<\/a> on 26 June this year:<\/p>\n

One of the things that has most delighted me as Prime Minister and before that as Deputy Prime Minister has been getting to know our Defence Force personnel. I can’t claim that I came out of opposition with any great experience in Defence or any great exposure to Australian Defence Force personnel. Now I have had both experience in Defence and that exposure. And whilst there are issues to address in our Defence Force about the treatment of women, overwhelmingly, the men and women of our ADF are great Australians and getting to know them has been a real privilege.<\/p>\n

I have, either as Prime Minister or as acting Prime Minister attended 24 funerals for soldiers lost in Afghanistan. I am very aware of the courage and the sacrifice and part of being Prime Minister has been being there for those families in their darkest moments.<\/p>\n

For Gillard, as indeed for many in Parliament, it\u2019s been the deaths of Australian military personnel and the interactions with their families which have been the defining moments of political engagement with defence over the last few years. Appropriately, those moments have been mostly off camera.<\/p>\n

Mr Rudd\u2019s most recent visit to Tarin Kowt has received coverage most prominently because he was accompanied by his wife<\/a>, Ms Therese Rein. There are obvious security concerns inherent in bringing spouses into combat zones, but Ms Rein\u2019s visit isn\u2019t unique: Prime Minister John Gorton\u2019s wife Bettina accompanied him to Nui Dat<\/a> in Phuoc Tuy Province, Vietnam for a five hour visit in June 1968. Wars may change but politics is immutable.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s is any lesson to be drawn from these encounters, it\u2019s surely that politicians and military personnel should engage each other with a respect due to each profession and a willingness not to engage in too many pre-cooked photo opportunities. It\u2019s vital that our Government leaders walk the ground of deployed operations, but not in ways that turn troops into props for media consumption back home.<\/p>\n

Peter Jennings is executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Image from the collection of the Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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