Above hero image:  David Kilcullen (left) and Clinton Fernandez (right)

David Kilcullen (born 1967) is the subject of the story here.  He was chief strategist in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, from 2005 to 2006.  He's certainly no lightweight. He's been a member of the US deep state, yet still appears to be an independent thinker, or so it seems.  He came out as highly critical of the decision to invade Iraq, saying "There undeniably would be no ISIS if we had not invaded Iraq."  Kilcullen has written six books: The Accidental Guerrilla, Counterinsurgency, Out of the Mountains, Blood Year, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West and The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan.

Clinton Fernandes (born 1971) is professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, part of the Australian Defense Force Academy.  Prior to becoming an academic, he spent 15 years in the Australian Army and served as the Australian Intelligence Corps Principal Analyst (East Timor) in the final years of East Timor's independence struggle. See the Fifth Estate Press story about his book The Independence of EAST TIMOR - Multi-Dimensional Perspectives - Occupation, Resistance, and International Political Activism published in May 2011 (see here).  I know Clinton is a good guy who supports the underdog.  He told me when he interviewed me in 2009 to get material for that book: "To understand how international relations work, you need to understand how the Mafia work" - or words to that effect.  Around that time, Clinton had organized and co-hosted the trip to Australia by Noam Chomsky. Here is is talking about his activism for independence in East Timor and his mentor Noam Chomsky.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIkwu8Lprj4 

Clinton Fernandes and David Kilcullen are academics that conduct the Contemporary Strategy Course at the Australian Defense Force Academy.  I'm assuming Kilcullen is a good guy like Clinton, if they share the same worldview.   

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The subject of this story is David Kilcullen's commentary published in The Australian newspaper on March 7, 2026:-

I want to publish the whole article (below) for future reference, to see how it ages with time, as the catastrophe in the Middle East unfolds.   

Kilcullen's opinion piece struck me as breaking the mold of the newspaper's staunchly Zionist and Islamophobic line supporting the US-Israel war of aggression against Iran, and the demonization of the Iranian government.   We wrote about this problem in this Fifth Estate Press story headed Powerful forces coerce Australia to criminalize antisemitism published on Jan 21, 2026 (see here).

It is very difficult to get around the censorship of comments posted to the Murdoch national daily.   I did post a comment but it was rejected for publication by their moderation system, contracted our to Mossad operatives. 



My rejected comment (in italics below)

This is excellent hard-headed reporting.  I commend terrorism expert David Kilcullen and The Australian national daily for publishing this report. It is entirely devoid of war propaganda and tries to tell us how it is, from a hard-headed military & strategic perspective. For this reason it is a controversial commentary.  We need more commentators like this that appear to have compassion for civilians caught up in this war, and don’t repeat the psychopathic hubris of leaders like the USA Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth (I have read his book, he’s a Christian Zionist).     

A facsimile of the article for future reference.