Australia sends a team to every Olympics, and a contingent to every serious American war. We've been doing that a long time, and we'll be doing it a while longer.
Consequently our military planners have gotten doing "token support" down to a fine art, providing assistance that is politically handy for the Americans, militarily useful, and safe, in the sense of there being few or no embarrassing screw-ups where the Australians are active, at minimum cost and minimum risk of casualties.
They've gotten it down to too fine an art now. It suits politicians if the army doesn't really fight, because there's no risk of politically embarrassing casualties, but it doesn't suit the soldiers, who signed up to fight, who are trained and able to fight, who regard the Americans as genuine comrades, and who are ashamed in front of their mates that the uniforms they wear practically announce them as non-fighters. (link)
"Australian Army chief Peter Leahy has moved to reassure infantry troops frustrated that they are not seeing enough combat."
"The exclusion of Australia's infantry troops from frontline conflicts, including in Iraq, has left many feeling "ashamed of wearing their Australian uniform", Army Major Jim Hammett has written."
"The infantry, which makes up about a third of the army's combat forces, had not been assigned offensive actions since the Vietnam War and the special forces were seeing all the combat, he wrote."
"In a separate article cited by Fairfax newspapers, Captain Greg Colton, second in command of the Sydney-based 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, said infantry morale had deteriorated in the past 10 years as regular infantry units were given only "second-rate operational tasks"."
Lieutenant General Leahy responded by (in my opinion) talking down to the troops and about them, as though they were easily bored children wanting to play toy soldiers or go on an outing.
"This is no longer infantry wearing red jackets and white cross straps, taking on the army of another king."
"I know that the infantry have real basic skills, that they can do that traditional role of seek ... and kill and destroy."
"But we're not asking for that at the moment, that's not the environment we're in."
Why should we expect that troops educated to understand that they are not wanted as fighters, never have been since the Vietnam War, and not likely to be in their lifetimes are going to perform better, if they are put to the test, than the "frightened fifteen" selling their embarrassing stories to the British press?
It's easy to make light of this, but I think it's serious. Regardless of arms and technical proficiencies, fighting spirit is the difference between a tiger and a tiger-skin rug, and we are turning our tigers into rugs.
I don't think this is a purely Australian problem. I think it is likely to be a problem - not much spoken of - with all the countries that habitually provide token military efforts.
And I think it's symptomatic of the dangerously un-serious way we are approaching the jihad wars.