Posted on 12/20/2023 11:01:22 PM PST by fluorescence
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia will send 11 military personnel to support a U.S.-led mission to protect cargo shipping in the Red Sea, but it will not send a warship or plane, the defense minister said Thursday.
Defense Minister Richard Marles said Australia’s military needs to keep focused on the Pacific region.
The United States announced this week that several nations are creating a force to protect commerecial shipping from attack by drones and ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
Marles said 11 military personnel will be sent in January to Operation Prosperity Guardian’s headquarters in Bahrain, where five Australians are already posted.
“We won’t be sending a ship or a plane,” hs told Sky News television. “That said, we will be almost tripling our contribution to the combined maritime force.”
“We need to be really clear around our strategic focus, and our strategic focus is our region: the northeast Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Pacific,” Marles added.
Australia is one of the United States’ closest military allies. The U.S. Congress last week passed legislation allowing the sale of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia under a security pact that includes Britain.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
“...Australia will send 11 military personnel...
where five Australians are already posted...
almost tripling our contribution to the combined maritime force...”
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Gee, thanks, mates.
They sure broke the bank what a show of force
A maritime force with no boat? Do they walk on water?
LOL, ducks in a pond.
Australia has something on the order of 25 million people. We have 330 million people. On a per capita basis they are spending a lot more per person to have someone on duty in the Gulf than we are. What they’re doing is showing the flag and being supportive. I read the first comments, and they show a lack of understanding of the situation.
Oz is lost. Who cares what they do?
Australia has become a joke. You’re living in the pre-woke past.
11 guys in a rowboat?
Great...
“Australia has become a joke. You’re living in the pre-woke past.”
If we end up in a war with China, our forward bases will be reduced to ash in the first day. Any war will be fought from Australia. The Australians are an important stabilizing and deterrent force far in excess of what their population suggests. That’s why they are being supplied with nuclear submarines and long-range cruise missiles. We need them and their participation in the Gulf is practice for any future conflict. I don’t understand the humor in that.
I think that we look back on, say WWII and see only steely resolve and unified effort. The past looks simple, but if dig into it there was a lot of bubbling problems that might have made things turn out differently. Thus, today we look at the bubbling minutia of everyday politics and don’t see the resolve we think we had in WWII. When the bullets fly the Australians have always been there on our side. The guy who carries the water to you in the trench doesn’t have to be 6’4” and strong. He just needs to bring you the water.
11?? I wonder how they came up with that paltry number?
Australia to send military personnel to help protect Red Sea shipping but no warship; they will be throwing stones at the evil Houthis
If we get into a war with China Australia will fight on their side. If any of them resist they’ll be sent to one of their covid camps.
And crap like this is part of the problem.
COVID camps in Australia were basically made up by the media - mostly the American media spreading Chinese propaganda. And people like you swallowed it whole and continue to spread the crap two years later.
China was trying to split Australia from America and it’s succeeding because of people like you and your tendency to just believe any crap you are spoonfed.
What really gets me is most of you seem to be aware that the corrupt media lies - but then you just accept these particular lies.
If war comes with China, Australia will be fighting China. We have absolutely no choice - China wants to destroy us. And we haven’t got a hope of surviving without America’s support - but you’re now all being convinced by China that we’re somehow their ally not yours.
Australia has gone to war in support of the United States three times since World War II - Vietnam and both Gulf Wars. We host American bases on our soil. We are one of your staunchest, long term allies. And now American so-called ‘conservatives’ spout the communist Chinese crap propaganda constantly.
Yeah, the current Australian government has decided not to send a warship into the current situation, and frankly, I am disgusted at that. But I’m not all that surprised.
The conservative government we had until two years ago would not have done this - but part of the reason we don’t have that conservative government anymore, and have been saddled with a socialist government is because that conservative government was constantly undermined by idiots who believed and spread the commie crap all over their media, and all over sites like this one... useful fools for the Chinese. It made it ten times harder for Australian conservatives to fight an election when all our supposed friends outside Australia were blaming the conservative federal government for things done by socialist state governments, and worse than that, were spreading constant lies.
And it’s still happening.
Hey, forgive me. I’ll be the last to say we’re any better. I just say your Deep State is deeper than ours.
There is only one global Deep State.
Yes, but they have more control in some places than they do others
Sorry - you touched a nerve. I shouldn’t have aimed that personally at you.
But it is getting very frustrating here. China is conducting a propaganda war concerning Australia and it seems to be working way too well. Isolated incidents are being presented as the norm, rather than as aberrations.
One territory government (a territory in Australia is kind of like an ‘almost-state’ - they are self governing on a local level, but don’t have quite the same level of autonomy as the Australian states have) used an empty former-mining camp on its edge to house a small number of people who had been exposed to COVID and who couldn’t quarantine in their own homes for some reason (often because it would have meant other people in the home being unnecessarily quarantined as well) - and suddenly we have people talking about supposed COVID quarantine camps all over the country - which simply didn’t happen. There were some dumb things that happened here - my own state’s socialist government did head well towards ‘police-state’ behaviour, but we are the most socialist state in the country, not the norm - it’d be like tagging all of the US as far left because of something that happened in California alone.
This type of misinformation is so widespread now, that I genuinely do believe it has to be a state-actor behind it - and the only logical conclusion for that really is China. Australia is not their friend, and they are actively trying to undermine us on a number of levels.
We’re a small country - only 25 million people - so in an all out confrontation with China, our hopes of survival would be pretty low. We certainly don’t want conflict and so where we can reach diplomatic accommodations with them over things like trade, we certainly try. But we’re also actively working to try and stop them dominating the Oceania region which we regard as our our own sphere of influence, and are active asserting the rights to things like freedom of movement of shipping in south-east Asia, alongside our allies including the US. Only a little over a month ago, we had Royal Australian Navy sailors injured by Chinese action in waters off Japan. Speaking as a retired Australian naval officer - well, the suggestion we’d ever be likely to fight alongside the Chinese in a war with the US is... really concerning and really makes me think that the Chinese propaganda machine is of very real concern.
But - well, when it’s that effective, I shouldn’t be blaming people personally who probably aren’t being exposed to much else about my country. I’m trying to do what I can, but it’s the mainstream media that is the problem - they need more people who are willing to fight back, and seem to have way too many who want to go along with it.
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