A PYRRHIC VICTORY

David Dale, Clovelly

A violent assault. 
An unsafe city in lock down. 
The "diversity bollards" could only do so much. 
As could the official lies. 
The parasites had locked on hard. 
They would very much like him dead, and whispered his demise on a daily basis. 
They were heart attack specialists, but there were many other forms. Thin the blood. Contact, contract. They were ceaseless now, the bullies and the shallow whims. 
There were times when they thought of threatening him through his children.
They would happily see him swing.
The ASEAN Conference was being held in Sydney.
A major security headache, without a doubt. 
But at least, unlike New Year's Eve, they could dispense with the crowds. 
But nowhere was safe, truly safe, not anymore.
They had transformed the country into a polyglot nation, and imported the threat. 
They had imported the world's crime gangs and jihadis, and were now forced to spend billions combating them. A secret war, conducted away from the public eye, and journalistic scrutiny.
Just as now, no one dared speak the truth about Australia.
This outpost of the civilised world which had invited the world in. Indiscriminately. Without a plan. Without foresight. Without any consideration of the residents, their culture, their traditions.
How they would feel when trampled or displaced by the hordes of other nations.        
Peter Dutton, head of Homeland Security and the heir apparent to the Turnbull throne, gave the welcoming speech at ASEAN. 
It was surprising, really, that Turnbull, who hogged the limelight on a daily basis, as if the government was solely about him, and who had tried to eliminate Dutton with the poisoned chalice of Immigration Minister, would allow even that much. 
Old Alex had a soft spot for Dutton simply because he had been very good on separated dad issues when Alex had done a volunteer community radio program on the subject, back when, back then. A small town policeman. A voice of common decency in a sea of conformist, whitewashed bullshit. At a time when almost no politician dared to speak up for fear of the Canberra femocracy, and the fury of the ceaselessly one-eyed feminist advocates at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, all of whom saw the broken hearts and suicides of men as an indifferent consequence on the path to a greater feminist nirvana. 

I would like to begin by officially welcoming you to Australia and in particular to Sydney. I know many of you have travelled great distances to be here and I do hope you find time over the weekend to discover what this great city has to offer.
Protecting our nations from the scourge of terrorism is an ever increasing challenge. Terrorists and violent extremists are becoming increasingly ruthless, adaptive and creative. They operate transnationally–increasingly using the internet and encrypted communication to extend their reach across borders.
Advances in communication have given terrorists a truly global reach. Violent extremists can operate in a clandestine fashion, all the while thriving in the shadows and growing their spheres of influence.
Extremists cultivate resentment and discord among the disillusioned, the vulnerable and the disengaged to spread the threat of terror into our communities. They use technology to recruit, radicalise and inspire attacks from within. They use indiscriminate violence to engender fear among the innocent.
These vile individuals have no respect for the rules-based, integrated communities that we strive to achieve. Small groups driven by twisted ideology and supported by evolving technology have the capacity to seek out and exploit vulnerabilities. Peter Dutton, Transcript, Opening Address to the ASEAN Counter Terrorism Conference, 17 March, 2018.

But who were the most vile in this situation?
it was Australia who had bombed the narrow medieval streets of Mosul. 
It was Australia who would not even provide an estimate of the numbers they had killed, mujaheddin, women, children, the elderly, in these brutal and essentially indiscriminate acts.
It was not Australian bodies that lay to this day under the rubble. 
It was bombs paid for by Australian taxpayers which had polarised the Muslim world; and led to the ever increasing radicalisation and disassociation of the local population.
And it was Australian politicians who had silenced all dissent by passing outrageous anti-free speech legislation, who had blatantly manipulated the media, and who had largely kept the wars being conducted in their name secret from that very same public. 
Afghanistan was a secret war. 
Iraq, Syria, apart from a rare puff piece by a tame journalist, were, also, secret wars. 
No politician ever expressed regret for those dying under their bombs.  
No politician ever explained the purpose of those billions of dollars hemorrhaging towards America's failed wars. 
Nobody had the courage. 
Silenced, the soldiers could not speak out. No one dared speak the truth.

The threat from hierarchical cells remains, but the insidious influence of ISIL on vulnerable people within our communities has increased the risk of lone actor attacks. The fragmentation of threat vectors is only leading to an even more dangerous security environment. There are now more individuals within our own communities who wish to do us harm than ever before.
On 12 September 2014 the Australian national terrorism threat level was raised to 'Probable' for the first time. This means our security agencies have assessed that there is credible intelligence to indicate that individuals or groups possess the intent and capability to conduct a terrorist attack in our country. Since September 2014, 85 people have been charged as a result of 37 counter terrorism related operations around Australia. There have been six terror attacks and 14 major attacks have been disrupted.
In July last year, our national security and law enforcement agencies disrupted a group attempting to carry out an attack on a plane departing Sydney. If successful, that attack would have resulted in an immense loss of life, affecting the nationals of many countries represented in this room today.
The collapse of the self-proclaimed ISIL caliphate and the liberation of around 7.7 million people is an incredibly positive development, but it poses new challenges.
Around 220 Australians have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the conflict since 2012 and one of the greatest challenges to Australia and the Southeast Asia region is posed by those individuals returning to our shores.
Foreign fighters returning from the Middle East have had extensive exposure to extremist ideology and are hardened to the everyday violence of armed conflict. They have the potential to bring experience, capability and connections to the global extremist community into existing onshore networks.
To mitigate the risk of returning foreign fighters, the Australian Federal Police, working with domestic and international partner agencies, has obtained 21 first instance arrest warrants relating to persons suspected to have been in the conflict zone and subject to counter terrorism operations.
Peter Dutton. Transcript.

Elsewhere, old blood seeped through an old heart. 
Sluggish. Slow. 
A conscience that would not pass on. 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman, 1865.

THE BIGGER STORY:

The beginning of the end for Ghouta came first with a trickle. Desperate, hungry and scared, Syria’s newest displaced people walked a journey into the unknown, past Russian military police, towards loyalist soldiers who started checking names.
The same anxious ritual of the vanquished had been carried out before, in Homs, Aleppo, Qusair and most other places in the country, where seven years ago today the first spasms of open defiance began to rattle its ruthless rulers.
Those heady early years of insurrection are long gone now. Anticipation has been replaced by resignation, hope subsumed by fear.
The empowered Syrian street that had once exposed the fragility of a regime long thought omnipotent has retreated to the rubble. Splintered and battered, the anti-Assad opposition inspired by the protests can no longer win the war.
The state, too, is a shadow of what it was when popular uprising gave way to insurgency. Unable to hold its ground, Syria’s leadership seconded its defence to Russia and Iran, who have clawed its military to a winning position, destroying much of the country in the process, and regularly striking deals with factions without informing their patron.
Bashar al-Assad’s claim to have restored sovereignty has left him like the emperor without a proverbial thread.
Across Syria, the clean battlelines of early on have been replaced many times over, as the war has metastasised like no other conflict in the past 50 years. A national military, a shadow army, Islamists, jihadists, proxies, regional heavyweights and global powers are all deeply embedded, trying to shape the conflict to suit their interests.
Whoever prevails in what remains of Syria will achieve a pyrrhic victory.