Military analyst questions Abbott's war stance

So Abbott's discovered that a war footing is good for his abysmal polling, so it seems he's going about declaring war on all and sundry. Only problem with that is that he hasn't got a fuckin brain in his body. He's a bureaucrat, a career politician. He doesn't know the first thing about diplomacy or negotiation. He's liable to put his foot in it again, this time involving Australian lives being sent into war zones.

This from a James Brown, who unlike Abbott has actually served in the military and knows what he's fuckin talking about. He raises serious concerns over Abbott's current war footing and seeming reckless abandon in promising military support.

I think we're running that risk and I hope that it's been well thought through by the Prime Minister and his national security team. 

This is a country, Ukraine, that is on or some would say is actually at war with Russia already. 

Sending military forces to a country that is at war means you are becoming a party to that conflict whether you're fighting or not, I think, in the eyes of Russia. 

We're also sending military advisors to a country that we didn't have an embassy in a month ago, so it was unimportant to Australia's national interest that we didn't even have diplomatic representation there. 

It's unclear what our national interest is now. Fundamentally we want to make sure that it's in our interests and in NATO's interest. 

We need to be sure that if we're contributing military advisors to a NATO-led conflict that they would be willing to do the same here in our region, and it's not clear yet that we would see a significant NATO commitment in our part of the world if Australia got into a conflict. more