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Old 3rd May 2003, 15:10
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Wiley
 
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‘B’ Team, (liked that one, Spad), I appreciate that it’s good debating technique, but I believe you’re (deliberately?) missing Spad’s point.

EWL, he’s asking you if had a choice of two people to carry out a task that was vitally, even terminally important to you and your loved ones, which would you choose?

(1) The one who’s displayed that he’ll go with the flow or act in his own self-interest (eg, “for the sake of his family”) when things get really tough, or

(2) one who’s shown he’ll hang in there, (maybe “on a stupid matter of principle”?), even when everyone around him is telling him that all is lost?



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I know it really upsets many (most, it would seem, in the ‘B’ Team) when military parallels are drawn to the 89 business, but, without in any way attempting to put ‘the stay out’ 89ers in anywhere near the same ballpark as our soldiers who fought and died in real wars, I believe I can still ask a question using a military campaign to give an example very similar to the one Spad has put.

Everyone acknowledges that with the notable exception of the withdrawal, the Gallipoli campaign was in almost every way a total and utter cockup, from initial planning right through to the most mundane points of execution. And I’m sure that no one was more appreciative of this than the soldiers on the peninsula, right from Day One when the Australians and New Zealanders saw that they were even put ashore at the wrong *** spot to face near impossible terrain as well as Turkish guns.

If ever anyone had the right to say “This is bloody ridiculous. The leadership’s got it all wrong. We’re out of here.”, it was those men. But they didn’t. They stuck it out despite successive mistakes made by their leadership and even if they didn’t win, they prevailed. The much larger battles in France weren’t much different until the Australian General John Monash took over the ANZAC Corps – a succession of huge blood-lettings planned and directed by Generals who had little idea of what they were asking their men to face.

There were a few, even if we rarely hear of them, who did ‘get out of there’ by one means or another, either by crawling across to the enemy to surrender or by some less direct means, like desertion. (Although none that I know of took up arms against their former comrades.) [I’m drifting off the point, but after the Armistice in 1918, it’s documented that some Australian units went in search of the deserters from their units who were hiding in bunkers in the old front lines and carried out summary justice on some of those they caught.]

My question is the same as Spad’s. If later in life, you had to trust your life or your family’s lives to one of two men and one of those two men had placed himself in category ‘1’ as above in the past, which one would you choose?

I can’t say I’m sorry if this offends some, (because I’m not), but I think most people would give the same answer to my question that they’d give to Spad’s, and those who are offended by Spad’s question are in fact affronted because, however proud they say they might be of their actions in 89, they’re very uncomfortable with the answer they know damn near every person in such a situation would give.

Over to you, Ross… Tell us again how proud you are of yourself.
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