MEDIA RELEASE
21 August 2021
The sudden takeover of Afghanistan by a new Taliban government should not be a surprise.
The NATO coalition, and Australia, had withdrawn their remaining forces in June. The Afghan forces they had supported and trained for 20 years were unable to resist.
This had been widely expected, as the ‘Afghanistan Papers’ leaked from the Pentagon to the Washington Post, showed in 2019.
The Western intervention in Afghanistan imposed enormous costs: US$6.8 trillion wasted, 240,000 Afghan lives lost, and many thousands of deaths and injuries suffered by coalition forces.
The Prime Minister has commented, ‘Freedom is always worth it’.
AWPR asks Mr Morrison, Is it worth all those losses? Whose freedom?
This disaster is a direct result of the way Australia went to war in the first place: without a clear strategy, and identifiable enemy, or an agreed objective.
This has been Australia’s consistent pattern in overseas conflict for the past 76 years. The main thing is not to do it again.
To break the succession of disastrous expeditionary wars, AWPR calls on all Federal politicians for a Parliamentary debate and a vote before any future commitment of the ADF abroad.
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