Comments by "" (@pwillis1589) on "Future officers need to 'correct' the direction the military is heading: Army Vet" video.

I was a soldier for 35 years and make no judgement of Justin as was no doubt a better soldier than I was however Alan Jones did not pick him up on two obvious fallacies that he committed. First a black and white fallacy about either having a Army that reflects your society or one that can win the battle, this is simply untrue, women make as excellent pilots as men, drive trucks as well as men and actually enhance our combat abilities as opposed to an all male defence force, and no-one is suggesting our Defence Force reflect our society perfectly, but it must reflect our values otherwise it is not Australian. The second fallacy was a strawman when he implied the witnesses to the alleged crimes in Afghanistan were all Taliban, many of the witnesses to these alleged crimes are our own special forces soldiers giving statements. Overall I thought this piece was just a really poor example of journalism if you could even call it that.
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@guyfawkes5291 Mate totally agree with everything you said as you did with me. My point was the the poor conduct of the interview and if Alan Jones had questioned Justin on some of his points then Justin would of had a chance to clarify his position. We are a free, democratic and liberal society and our Defence force must reflect those values, otherwise what's the point. By that I don't mean equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity.
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@davidtaylor351 And no-one is suggesting they are. In fact the Army has finally realised this and is now in process of designing and providing body armour and load carriage equipment for the female body. Part of the reason they have suffered high rates of injury in training is because they have been forced to use equipment designed for the male body. It appears you to are influenced by ideological propaganda as well. In reality all female battalions fought in WWII in the Russian Army and were just as ruthless against the Germans as were there men, yes they suffered very high casualty rates but that was there choice.
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@nigelmaund9057 You do understand that Russia had all female infantry battalions in WWII that fought just as effectively, ruthlessly and bravely as any other Russian Army unit. Why can't we do the same?
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@davidtaylor351 Not trying to change anyone's view, just stating facts and the oblivious fallacies in the YouTube article that render it illogical and hence irrational.
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@davidtaylor351 My opinion is irrelevant, in the video Justin made two assertions that are clearly false. 1. Defence forces can either reflect a society or win wars. I can easily prove that false by just taking Australia as an example. Australia has not lost a war military wise ever, and on each occasion we have engaged with an enemy we have had a Defence force that has accurately reflected the society we were at that time, values wise, technology wise, personnel wise. Now in the future that might change but I see no reason why it should. I can only go on the last 120 years of victories and stick with a good thing. 2. Justin stated that the word of Taliban sympathisers was the only evidence of alleged war crimes, but that isn't true. We have evidence from Australian soldiers of alleged war crimes, I believe there is physical evidence as well. These two fallacies defeat his arguement or opinion. In essence I kinda agree with him he just put forward a lousy arguement.
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@davidtaylor351 Good to see through a little discourse you completely agree with me and the points I made. Just a minor point, I was deliberately specific when I said military wars as I recognise we have lost individual battles and yes Vietnam and Afghanistan can be considered lost, however in both those conflicts while our soldiers were on the ground we dominated and only withdrew for political reasons.
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@davidtaylor351 You keep strawmaning my arguement, I never suggested military force is not related to politics, it is tool of politics. What I said was when deployed we have never lost a war because of a military defeat, we lost for other reasons. Now to the point. I have shown repeatedly through arguement and evidence and if you want I can sight numerous other examples of wars fought and won by Army's that were an accurate reflection of their society. I did not suggest they could also lose which clearly than can and I freely admit a Army could be nothing like its society and still win a war, the point is the statement in the video " An Army can reflect its society or it can win a war" is clearly false not because it is my opinion it is because it is a fact.
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Sorry I will correct myself his quote is "You can have military that is a direct reflection of your society or you can have one that fights and wins. Just so there is no confusion that statement as per my reply above is wrong.
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@davidtaylor351 Cool, fair enough, now I understand you were just trying expand the discussion, no problems. A strawman is as I understood it to be is an attempt to misrepresent the arguement so as to make it easier to attack which was how I saw it. I was trying very careful to be exact and just address the video statement. As I said before if Alan Jones had of asked just the barest of questions like what do you mean by direct reflection or had not Australian soldiers also given evidence then maybe Justin could have had a chance to correct his statements or clarify them. In one of your replys you spoke about the legal process that needs to take place with the allegations of war crimes and I totally agreed with you, and if Justin had of explained it to Alan the way you did I wouldn't had a problem, but he didn't he strawmaned it, by brushing it off as just some Taliban talk. That simply is not the case. If you want to discuss the makeup of our Defence Force I'm all in. We bought a couple of billion dollars worth of tanks the other day, good purchase as I see it. Should we have a target of 25% females in the Army probably not as most volunteer armies float naturally seem to float around the 13% mark. There a heaps of issues but it is all poodlefucking around the edges.
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