Afghanistan

The diseased orchard

Item: Veiled Valour
Author: Kevin Foster

Australia’s collective moral failures in Afghanistan

by Kevin Foster •

September 2022, no. 446

Veiled Valour: Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan and war crimes allegations by Tom Frame

UNSW Press, $49.99 pb, 456 pp

Afghanistan

The diseased orchard

Australia’s collective moral failures in Afghanistan

by Kevin Foster •

September 2022, no. 446

Soldiers from Australia pose with their Christmas presents at Multi National Base Tarin Kot December 25, 2012 in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan (photograph via US Army Photo/Alamy)

Almost fifteen years ago, struck by the paucity of information in the media about the ADF deployment to Afghanistan, I edited a short collection of essays that posed a modest question: What are we doing in Afghanistan? (2009). I wish I had known then half of what Tom Frame reveals about the ADF’s activities in Central Asia in his new book, Veiled Valour.

Kevin Foster

Kevin Foster is Head of the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. He has published widely on the representation of war, military–media relations, the cultural history of the military, national identity, and combat photography. He is the author of a number of books, including Don’t Mention the War: The Australian Defence Force, the media and the Afghan Conflict (2013) and most recently, Anti-Social Media: Conventional militaries in the digital battlespace, which was published in 2021 by Melbourne University Press.