When will we ever learn?

A reminder to Australians about young men who venture overseas to support a cause in another countries conflict .

Four  young Australians have been killed in the Ukraine since February this year but ,let’s take a stroll down memory lane to remind you of a different conflict and the different treatment of David Hicks.

It seems that any Australian who ventures to the Ukraine and is killed in action is treated as some form of hero .

In 1998 I was in Kosovo at the height of the Serbia / Kosovo conflict which saw the brutal killing of innocent women and children,the Serbian atrocities were as brutal as any murders carried out during the war on Bosnia.

I visited a school just outside of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, to witness the aftermath of 6 children killed by Serbian police their bodies removed but the wall of the school house was still dripping with their warm blood. Why wouldn’t the people of Kosovo want to be free!!

It was during the Kosovo war that David Hicks came to prominence with the photo of him with a rocket launcher that was to travel around the world and continue to demonized him as a terrorist,he was at the time fighting for the Kosovo Liberation Army( KLA)

I supported the liberation of Kosovo as did he.I was working as a journalist for Radio 3CR but I’m still allowed an opinion

Every media outlet continued to show that photo and it was used against him in his trail by the Americans to prove that he was a terrorist resulting in his jailing for 4 years in the brutal Guantanamo prison without trail.

David Hicks is now a free man and the charges against him not proven.

During his incarceration he was abandoned by his Australian Government, and only the efforts of his father Terry and supporters saw him freed under extremely harsh conditions.

It was because of the support of most clear thinking Australians that eventually led to him being released from the tortuous conditions of Guantanamo while both Liberal and Labor parties hung him out to dry.

Now we have Australian citizens (Jihadists) traveling to Syria to fight for the Free Syrian Army.

To the best of my knowledge war has not been declared in Syria by the United Nations and any Australian traveling to kill Syrian civilians can only be described as terrorists such as the label unfairly placed on Hicks.

The Australian Government and in particular Foreign Minister Bob Carr supports these terrorists and must be held accountable for some of the destruction and deaths caused by these Jihadists.

The sting is in the tale here because our Government has been convinced by other powers that we must impose our will on a secular government that we have been convinced is corrupt and needs to be other thrown.

Remember Libya and Iraq we imposed our form of democracy and Imperialism on them yet they continue their tribalist killings on a daily basis.

We listened to the lies told by Condelissa Rice and Colen Powell that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction they were about to inflict on the world. That has now been proven to be a pack of lies,yet our government sent our troops to die on what was proven to be mass disinformation

It seems we don’t learn!!

Our form of democracy is not theirs yet we continue to impose our will upon them.

If any Australian is involved in fighting to overthrow any foreign Government before war has been declared they deserve to be declared terrorists and face the full brunt of Australian or International law

The front pages of our mass media show photographs of these jihadist yet say nothing about their involvement and the people they may be killing.