FAIR FIGHT

Larvatus Prodeo's visiting military specialist has nothing but praise for the latest batch of accused terror plotters:

I think it is very high-minded of the would-be terrorists to go for army barracks instead of train-stations in peak hour. Perhaps they read about Durruti? I mean if you imagine yourself as at-war with Australia as a jihad soldier you’d take on the armed forces not the civilian population. That shows a level of senitivity a shade above Churchill, Bomber Harris and Curtis Le May, not to mention US Air Force target planners for the Plain of Jars, Laos, 1967, or even staff officers in charge of the Australian SAS in Afghanistan. So, no credit given where credit is due.

~

Second, the Melbourne group planned to attack Holsworthy Barracks which is home to 17 Signals Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR), 2nd Commando Regiment (2 Cdo Regt), 171st Aviation Squadron olus some dentists in the 1st Health Support Battalion. Worthy adversaries, except the dentists. Warrior on warrior, right?

The plan wasn’t to bomb it with mortars or rockets, which the IRA or the Palestinian insurgents would have done but to rush in through the gates in a suicide attack spraying the enemy with automatic weapons.

Unlike Martin Bryant in Tasmania, who stalked and murdered unarmed civilians, the jihadis would eventually be overwhelmed by trained soldiers bearing arms. They would probably have the element of surprise which would allow them to kill some people, but one guesses that their spree would be cut short fairly quickly.

And nothing good to say about Australian forces:

Perhaps the real plan was to get publicity in the media to draw attention to themselves and the plight of innocent civilians being killed in Afghanistan by the SAS but the information about this is sanitised by defence spin doctoring.

The “terrorist attack” thus starts to make more sense.

Very sporting chaps, indeed. I'm mean, it's not like an attack on an army base guarded by unarmed security guards, where all weaponry is kept in a locked armoury, would produce significant casualties, now is it?