Defence Minister Brendon Nelson is spot on with his analogy between the war in Iraq and the battle for Kokoda.

In 1942 our diggers, many of them untrained militia soldiers, faced a fanatical enemy that had not been defeated since the bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. Japanese society was led by militarists who indoctrinated their soldiers in the warrior code of bushido. They believed in the divinity of their Emperor and in their divine mission to establish a co-prosperity sphere in South-East Asia and the Pacific. (more…)