Fatal Error

Gillard seems to be making the same fatal error that Howard made regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

His hubris meant that he abused our parliamentary processes and sent our troops off to war without discussion or debate and all because he had been captured by junior Bush and the Republicans and the so-called "war on terror".

It was unacceptable then and even more so now after 26 of our young soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

It's particularly galling to those Australian's who believe that we are a sovereign nation - to discover that our military deployments and presumably our foreign affairs engagements are subject to the whim and control of the United States.

All of which is bad enough - but the fatal error made by both Howard and Gillard is that they haven't bothered to explain their decision and reasoning to the Australian people.

Perhaps it is necessary to send young Australian's off to war in Afghanistan. But like my fellow Australian's I wouldn't know because our leaders have chosen not to discuss it with us or to justify their actions. For ten years they have kept us in the dark and fed us BS like this.

Howard paid the ultimate political price for his hubris - will Gillard do the same?