Mr Howard’s initiative on Aboriginal sexual abuse has aroused a passionate response. Those who support the action generally see any questioning of it as damaging the children who have suffered. They accuse their opponents of just sitting there rather than doing something. The sentiments are noble, but they also reflect a moral anxiety. Experience suggests that when everyone wants to do something, the appropriate response is often, 'Don’t just do something. Sit there'.
The most telling questions about the Prime Minister’s plan focus on the involvement of the police and military in the absence of any broader strategy. It evokes the image of a war on sexual abuse and memories of Australia’s recent attempts to address evils. Intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, and the Solomons come to mind.
The image of warfare is attractive to politicians and to the public. We have seen wars against poverty, against AIDS, against pornography, against religion and against atheism. The image of war identifies clearly an enemy that must be destroyed, evokes a vigorous and organised campaign to deal with it, and summons a nation to a shared national purpose in struggle. It banishes ambiguities and brushes away complexities.
The image of warfare also suggests strategies. For warfare you need soldiers, a command structure, a plan to identify enemy strengths and to neutralise them. You must send advance forces to take key positions, take and hold territory. The population for whom the war is waged must be made secure, and order restored. Finally, the army must withdraw, leaving in place an administration with sufficient strength to govern the occupied territory.
This metaphor of war is seductive, but it has two limitations. It is often invoked to endorse actions that form only the first and easiest steps of a strategy, and it is an inappropriate means to understand what is involved in many social evils.
The war against terrorism has illustrated both these limitations of the war metaphor. It provided the formula under which Afghanistan and Iraq have been overrun and occupied. The initial stages of the military strategy seem to have been effective, based on overwhelming military superiority. The opposing forces were routed and the nations occupied by the invading armies. The invading armies have physically held the ground they took.
But, as in so many invasions, little thought was given to the crucial later strategic steps. In neither country has the population been