Why Australia needs a much bigger army

So, after nearly four years, we are back where we started in the war on terror. By the end of this year the SAS will be hunting the Taliban again in the hills of Afghanistan, as they were doing in 2001. Howard's decision, announced last week, is the right thing to do, but it carries a gloomy message about our future commitments, and some important implications for our defence force. The return of the SAS to Afghanistan marks the demise of John Howard's original strategic concept for fighting the war on terror. From the time of the first decision to deploy to Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11, Howard had a clear idea of how he thought Australia should contribute militarily to the campaign against al-Qaeda. We would commit small detachments of high-quality, sharp-end forces to combat operations. We would go in early, gain credit for early successes, and then get out quickly and bring our forces home.