Paul Sheehan, and simple-minded cant about stone statues ...

(Above: Colonel Blimp roaming freely, like any brave warrior, from padded armchair to bathhouse).

It being Monday, it's Captain Grumpy day, and so to Paul Sheehan in the SMH, scribbling furiously in Smith has overplayed his hand.

Such is his effort in the field, that we have decided on a battlefield promotion. Arise Colonel Grumpy, and join the hallowed Colonel Blimp in your armchair military duties.

Now how does an armchair warrior go about his business (hers, remember, are incapable of such business):

A stone soldier, wearing the uniform of the First Australian Imperial Force, has guarded Steyne Park, by Sydney Harbour at Double Bay, since 1919. He is square-jawed, rugged, the embodiment of manly courage. He is also pushing forward, holding a rifle with a bayonet attached. Many similar statues have been erected in Australia. None depicts what those bayonets are lunging towards: combat at close quarters, bellies opened up.

Indeed.

Of course some warriors prefer to plant hidden cameras and prefer to film the combat at close quarters, bellies and breasts and sexual organs jostling together, but let's not brood about that. In fact let's not actually mention any of that. It's just a splendid ritual, rather like bastardisation, and nothing wrong with any of it, and best presented in a sanitised way, sans sweat:

Our memorials to wartime sacrifice are sanitised, because they have to be. Also sanitised is the government's process of creating warriors and cohesive fighting units. These people are trained by the state to kill, and must be willing to kill for the state. Numerous freedoms that civilians take for granted are subsumed within the military's culture of control. This involves numerous intangibles: honour, tradition, rituals, written and unwritten codes of conduct, and, above all, tribal solidarity.

Indeed. It reminds me of the navy, at least at the time when I had some knowledge of it, when the upper ranks were littered with cross dressers, and nothing wrong with that. Now that's what I like to think of as tribal solidarity.

Some of what happens in this process is not pretty. It never has been. Some of what happens in combat is ugly, and always will be. Visceral fear creates is its own code of survival.

Indeed. So much so that we like to forget those long-haired warriors who helped the Vietnamese win that particular war.

Which is why the pond joins our very own Colonel Grumpy in calling for a return to the old days and the old ways, when men were men and women, well women just lay quite still in the missionary position and did their duty for god, country, and egad, any passing cadet with an urgent need and a handy digital camera or perhaps a Skype connection, much as they did in the days of Gallipoli, or the nineties ...

In 1995, a notorious line-crossing ceremony took place on an Australian submarine, HMAS Onslow. Sailors undergoing the ceremony were physically and verbally abused before being subjected to an act called "sump on the rump", where a dark liquid was daubed over each sailor's anus and genitalia. One sailor was then sexually assaulted with a long stick before all sailors undergoing the ceremony were forced to jump overboard until permitted to climb back aboard the submarine. A videotape of the ceremony was obtained by the Nine Network and aired on Australian television. The television coverage provoked widespread criticism, especially when the videotape showed some of the submarine's officers watching the entire proceedings from the conning tower. (here)

Yes, that's more like it, well played Navy.

Above all, that's the kind of tribal solidarity we need, though perhaps random killings of civilians on the battlefield, and the odd rape or murder wouldn't go astray either. After all, war isn't pretty, and it never has been, and neither has a cliche, especially when it's under heavy fire ...

Quite frankly, the pond is shocked and appalled by the reaction of Army chief Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, and his response to the scandal, which puts him quite at odds with Colonel Grumpy:

"I agree wholeheartedly . . . that the sort of activity that occurred, which has put us in the sort of position that we're in, is abhorrent," he said. He told a small group of army cadets that the "dark hours" brought by the ADFA scandal would pass. (Army chief backs Minister on academy's 'abhorrent' sex film scandal).

I say old chap, what happened to the stone soldier, the square-jawed statue, and the jutting bayonet, a giant piston, a hardened ring of steel, cutting and thrusting, deep into the enemy, plunging and ploughing, like a stallion mounting ...

Oops, sorry, the sub-lieutentant involved in preparing that part of the report has been sacked, and we now resume normal transmission ...

Smith has ... sent a legal activist from that Frankenstein of the bureaucratic process, the Human Rights Commission - which I regard as a deeply ideological, deluded and basically useless institution - into the entrails of the Defence Force.

This represents, potentially, the worst of all possible culture mixtures: conservative warriors and left-wing legal activists.

Yes indeed. It takes a Frankenstein to recognise a Frankenstein:

Despite Smith's smooth demeanour and calming persona, unleashing the Bride of Frankenstein into the warrior class is an act of massive bureaucratic intervention.

The bride of Frankenstein. Now that's so clever, and witty, and really worthy of any bastardisation you might care to imagine.

Of course all the naysayers have come out in the past few days with their typical stories of sexual misadventure in the miliary, and gadzooks, some of them - like Lynda Voltz - have actually served in the military, as she outlines in Sex scandal evokes dark days of defence.

Whether at the academy, university, or on a rugby tour, there is something about the mob mentality that takes over in institutions with a male culture. Ask women who have served in the police force or fire services and you may find similar problems. Of course, in the defence forces, all service personnel are subject to a return of service obligation so they can't just walk away.

If Australians want to continue to proclaim ourselves the bastion of "mateship and egalitarianism", then we should start grappling with the concept that this extends to women as much as men or give the terms away. The greatest tragedy is that these people drag all of those in the forces, many of whom do not deserve it, into disrepute.

Steady Ms Voltz. A couple of points to settle you down. There's actually no need to have any experience of military service or the conditions therein before prattling on about it, and frankly there's no room for your bride of Frankenstein experiences, at least if you want to endear yourself to a manly, square-jawed stone statue.

It almost goes without saying that women have offered nothing to the defence forces over the years, and women do themselves no favours by harking back to the duties performed by the nurses during the second world war in the New Guinea campaign, or the suffering and slaughter they endured. Remember there's no jutting jawed stone statues dedicated to them!

The pond is way ahead of such feeble thinking and has already thought of a solution. The ADF must look towards sport, especially rugby league, as a role model for manly behaviour on and off the field. Sure it might lead to the odd scandal (Carney's career on the line) or a whole swag of scandals (here), but do you want battle-hardened warriors ready to beat up a woman, or do you want kittens? What politicians need is a sex scandal a week, or even a day, so that ticket sales will boom, and everyone will want to join the ADF ...

Of course during the nineties, there were some problems in the ADF, and outrageous suggestions were made, and even worse, adopted by the government:

Incidents of alleged sexual harassment and assault during a deployment of HMAS SWAN in 1992 which led to an inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and the tabling and publication of its 1994 report, Sexual harassment in the Australian Defence Force. In his tabling speech, the chair of the committee outlined the recommendations which generally involved the ADF taking steps to raise gender awareness and preventing unacceptable sexual behaviour from occurring. The ADF reported back to the Senate in December 1995 with an Action Plan. (Women in the armed forces).

An action plan! Well we'll talk to Colonel Grumpy and we'll see about that. We've never heard so much nonsense yabbered in the general direction of a strutting steel jawed statue. And what do you know, it got even worse under the Howard government:

In 1998 an inquiry was undertaken after allegations of harassment were made concerning officer cadets at the Australian Defence Force Academy. A submission to the inquiry by Dr Graham Cheeseman, an academic at the University College at ADFA, suggested that one step in ‘eradicating the root causes of sexual harassment at ADFA would be to begin to reconstruct the notion of the armed forces and military service in Australia in non-gendered (and even non-militarised) terms.’ The report of the inquiry, Report of the review into policies and practices to deal with sexual harassment and sexual offences at the Australian Defence Force Academy, was published in June 1998. (ibid)

Non-gendered? Sir, the stone statue is male, fully gendered, though perhaps not revealed, and there, sir, is an end of the matter. Enough of it sir, or perhaps we'll sneak around at night, and show you how a bit of Kiwi polish applied to the genitals can fix your manners ... suh!

Oh dear, carried away again, and another lieutenant gone. Why is there such turnover?

... every new complaint reminds us of the ones that came before. Perhaps if part of the proposed review was to look at the high turnover of females within the services and ask why they left, it may be able to garner a true picture of the problem. Asking some of the men the same question also would not hurt. In an environment where you have little control over your lives, these types of questions may help the forces retain more personnel and create a better service environment.

Who put in those further remarks by Lynda Voltz?

Advance front and centre. We'll have no talk of a better environment, not when there's stone statues to consider, and the bloody brutality of war.

After all, she's a member of the Labor party, and by definition part of the problem. If you want to discover how much of a problem, you only have to read the rest of Colonel Grumpy's column. Take this for starters:

It can only get worse for the military. Appearing on Channel Ten yesterday, Smith was asked about the possibility of a class action lawsuit by alleged victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault within the armed services over decades. Smith said it was likely the government would have a case to answer: ''There is a distinct possibility … there is a Commonwealth liability,'' he said.

That cad Smith. A statement of the bleeding obvious - that victims of harassment and sexual assault might take action against the Commonwealth, on a duty of care basis if nothing else - is of course quite likely to be treasonous, seditious, white featherish, quisling, subversive or at least treacherous, perfidious and duplicitous. And it gets worse:

Meanwhile, elsewhere, three Australian commandos are being court-martialled as a result of civilian deaths during a firefight in Afghanistan. This is unprecedented.

Shocking. We all know that soldiers routinely breach the rules of engagement, and Australia has in the past actively been engaged in the prosecution of war criminals, such as the Japanese (a handy short form fact sheet here, but plenty more on the web), and has long yearned to do the same for the Indonesians in East Timor. But monitor our own brave steel jawed statues? No, no, shame, let them rape, pillage and murder on the battlefields as they like. It's the only decent Australian position to uphold.

No doubt you are anxious to discover how the Labor party is the root and branch cause of all the suffering in Australia, starting with Steven Smith positioning himself to be the next prime minister of Australia, as he successfully deploys a sex scandal to advance his field position and secure his perimeter, and for that we can only commend the rest of Colonel Grumpy's column, as he details the toxic brand, and embarks on a wild-eyed, doom laden, stoppeth one of three ancient mariner account in magnificent detail - too long to note here - until drawing himself up to a withering height, he delivers this wuthering pronouncement:

... Mr Smith, having unsheathed the bayonet for political purposes, will now find the pursuit of power has just became more dangerous, not least to himself.

Well played Colonel Grumpy, froth and bubble, toil and trouble, and helter skelter from Smith dealing with a sex scandal not of his making to a takeover of the government as prime minister.

Enough already. If you've reached this point, you realise you've wasted precious minutes of your life. How to regain them?

Sorry, they're lost forever, but how about a resolution involving an alternative?

Instead of reading Paul Sheehan next week, why not take time out to watch the documentary Restrepo, which is an embedded account of the activities of an American platoon in the Korengal valley in Afghanistan.

They establish a base, fight for it, die for it, get wounded for it, and then abandon it.

You'll learn a lot more about war, and its impact on warriors and civilians, than simple-minded cant about stone statues ...

(Below: a still from Restrepo).