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When the war began, Australia was caught somewhat off guard. True, some $30 billion worth of F-35s were in their hangars, where they spent most of the time, forever on standby to provide photo-op backdrops for ministerial press releases. But other key elements of the national defence weren’t quite so poised to meet their appointed roles. As the enemy threw its blockade about the northern coast, the services answered the call.
From RAAF HQ, the order went out to unleash the Sex Change Wing, which fluttered toward the fray, bomb racks loaded with biodegradable pamphlets warning the enemy that it was facing a morally superior and infinitely more fashionable foe. This tactic had always worked in the past. At Senate hearings, all who questioned the composition and emphasis in the post-modern order of battle had been driven off with aggressive lectures about homophobia and alternative gender choices. But this new enemy was unmoved. The Mardi Gras Squadron was blown out of the sky before it could deliver its payload of rainbow condoms and safe-sex instruction manuals.
Setbacks also were encountered by land forces. After M1 Abrams tanks of the fabled Pink Panzers were loaded on their transporters for the long trip to the front from bases in the southernmost corner of Western Australia, the lead truck was stopped by a flat tyre. This delay proved somewhat extended, as none of the young men and women in the convoy knew how to change it.
A roadside seminar was convened, the diversity commissar summoned and the delay judged an affirmation of the Army’s emphasis on defending the environment. The tanks, it was agreed, were polluting vehicles and of minimal long-term utility, as they might well defeat a human foe but only at the catastrophic cost of offending Gaia. “Do we need to make another enemy of our planet?” the moderator wondered. The assembled forces agreed we did not and a vote endorsing the proposal that convoy personnel re-direct their energies to collecting roadside rubbish was approved without audible dissent.
At the front, infantry units were in full retreat, prompting fifth-columnists in Canberra to sabotage morale and the war effort. At a meeting of the RSL executive, old soldiers demonstrated their inadequate grasp of modern tactics by decrying the ADF’s long-standing policy of repelling young men infected with testosterone. These were the very people who charge machine-gun nests, take risks and demonstrate initiative under fire, the ancient warriors lamented. “That’s right,” responded Brigadier-General A. Summers, “and that’s why they had to go.” Barracks were “safe spaces, much safer spaces” now that sexist language had been banned, risqué jokes banished and all copies of Playboy shredded.
It was the Navy, however, which registered the most crucial failure of readiness when it was discovered that Captain Mona Shindy’s @navyIslamic Twitter account had gone AWOL. The much-decorated Ms Shindy, recipient of the Telestra Businesswoman of the Year award and Distinguishing Diversity Cross (with non-alcoholic bar), whose latest promotion was announced at the Lakemba Mosque, had directed not a word of criticism at the Grand Mufti, who had recently done so much to rationalise terrorism. Nor was that the extent of her admiration for great men. Following the ouster of Prime Minister Abbott, one of her since-deleted tweets expressed delight that Australia was at last in the care of “of a leader that unites.” That message was accompanied by a photo the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull.
Indeed, such was Captain Shindy’s influence that her article detailing the benign nature of Islam in United Service, journal of the Royal United Services Institute of New South Wales, was a key part of the core curriculum at Cohesion College, formerly the Australian Defence Force Academy. Such was its impact that many graduates knew by heart that the veiling of women is a positive move in that it is “a shield or protection when in public. It provides liberation from the consequent issues that come with that – low self-esteem, poor body image and resulting health disorders.”
Nor was Captain Shindy’s Twitter account any longer available to assail Australia’s real enemies, a visiting Dutchman and the party, the Australian Liberty Alliance, he had flown to Perth to launch. Assisted by the Palm Beach Cork-Poppers under the command of General Mike “Butch” Carlton, a ferocious assault on the ALA had formerly drawn blood, as per below (click to enlarge).
Yet, despite Captain Shindy’s high profile, her Twitter account was unable to be deployed, the only hint to its fate as of December 22, 2015, being the notification below:
Of all the mysteries in the War of 2015, the reason for Captain Shindy’s sudden absence from the online battlefront remains the most enduring. To this day, the brass has yet to confirm or deny that her @navyIslamic account was ordered to be deleted, leading historians to wonder if opinions such as those reproduced at the link below – the website of ALA candidate Bernard Gaynor — might finally have been too much, even for the Royal Australian Social Engineers in charge of re-constructing the national defence. Other researchers disagree. No challenge, they point out, has ever daunted those whose careers depend on making war, all wars, conform to accepted norms of university common-room decorum.
— roger franklin
