The Australian soldiers in Afghanistan should withdraw from the battlefield By Selena Wang West Campus

The Australian soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting the Taliban and trying to protect the locals with their own lives.  They should be withdrawn from the war and out of danger.  The reason that they should come back is because of the fact the Aussie soldiers are not being appreciated by a large amount of the locals.  Also, the fact that there are young soldiers getting wounded every day and even killed.  The reason that the Australian soldiers are in Afghanistan is all the doing of the Americans. Australia followed America into the battlefield and the main question that we should ask ourselves is: ‘Why should we follow them?’

Despite the fact that the Aussie soldiers are not being acknowledged by the local Afghans, our soldiers are still fighting there.  A large percentage of the locals think that we should not interfere with their business.  There are also local civilians sending their children to war to join the Taliban, and hide ammunition for the Taliban in their houses.  Just recently, 5 young Australian soldiers got killed in one day. What’s outrageous is the fact that they were killed by an Afghan soldier!  The person who should help those soldiers and fight off the Taliban actually ‘back stabbed’ them. This shows how unreliable the Afghan soldiers are and how we should not help them.

One of the main reasons that the Aussie soldiers should retreat is that there are so many young lives taken by this cold-hearted war.  Almost every month, we hear the news that yet another Aussie solider has been killed in action. There are also people getting wounded in the war.  Some soldiers might come home with a missing leg or missing eye, this is so unfair for those people, not just them, their family as well.  Imagine one day you are talking to your solider son or daughter on the phone, the next day you receive a phone call saying he or she is dead.  This is something every mother or father would not want to hear. With soldiers dying, this great waste of potential is unbelievably upsetting to all Australians. 

One of the reasons that the Aussie soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan is because of the Americans.  The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, decided to follow the Americans into the war sending soldiers there.  What she doesn’t understand is the fact that we are being used by the Americans just like what happened in the Second World War.  Soldiers on the battlefield not even being appreciated by the locals and just staying there for the sake of the American soldiers. If a war actually breaks out, the chances that Americans will help us is undoubtedly low.  Why should we follow them? Would we get anything good out of it?  Soldiers are dying and injured for NO GOOD REASON. When those five soldiers died in one day, our Prime Minister said “This is not my fault.”  This shows how less she actually cares about the soldiers and how she tries to push her own fault on to someone else.  The New Zealand soldiers made a smart choice by sending their soldiers home earlier.  Why don’t the leaders of this country do the same thing so that fewer lives are lost?

Australian soldiers should come home from Afghanistan.  Not being appreciated by the Afghans and the loss of lives on the battlefield is truly upsetting.  The Australian government is doing a wrong thing by following the Americans.  Why don’t we do the right thing by bringing them back home?  With lives lost day by day, all this comes down to one question: “Are wars really necessary?”