There are good reasons for looking hard at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's pledge to withdraw Australian servicemen in Iraq from active participation in the fighting. It will have an impact on the fight against terrorism. It will have an impact on Australia's notable ally, the United States. It will have an impact on the morale of the serving Australians.

For the sad fact is that cowardly national leaders make cowards out of brave men willing and able to serve their country. We don't talk much about the consequences of John Curtin's wartime leadership, and who could blame us? It is shameful.

Those events have now been subjected to close scrutiny for the first time by a British writer on military affairs, Max Hastings, who seems a worthy successor to two other great military historians, Basil Liddell Hart and John Keegan.

The AIF forged a reputation second to none in the Mediterranean during 1941-42. The 9th Division was renowned. It fought with distinction at El Alamein, when General Bernard Montgomery's 8th Army forced the Axis powers into retreat. Curtin then got his way, and the 9th came home.

Militia battalions fought with distinction in Papua New Guinea on the Kokoda Track and at Milne Bay. They performed as splendidly as Australian troops had at Tobruk.

Thereafter, according to Hastings, the nation was overtaken by a trauma which divided its people and demoralised its forces, casting a lasting shadow over its memory of World War II.

Australian airmen served with distinction in every theatre, and the navy made a valuable contribution, but most soldiers chose to stay at home languishing idly in militia units. The war minister, Frank Forde, told Curtin that the morale of the fighting forces had deteriorated because of their enforced stay on the Australian mainland, with no indication when they might make a contribution to the war. Troops on Bougainville refused to fight.

American and British officers were stunned by Australia's industrial anarchy. Wharf labourers refused to work in the rain or handle refrigerated food. They would not use mechanical equipment. The Americans kept troops on hand in case of stoppages. Absenteeism in Townsville averaged 18 per cent. Some wharf labourers would only work weekends, in order to get penalty rates.

Almost a million days were lost in 1942 and the first half of 1943, many on the wharves or in the mines. Hastings says Americans were disgusted by Australian pusillanimity. The Supreme Commander of the South-West Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur said, "Australians won't fight."

He wrote to Curtin asserting the Seamen's Union was directly obstructing the war effort, and wondering whether a fifth column was at work. When an American crew mutinied, the Seamen's Union stopped another crew boarding the ship until the mutineers were released from confinement. There was apathy among large sections towards the war effort.

Hastings writes, "It is hard to overstate the contrast between the superb performance of the 9th Australian Division in the Western Desert in 1941-42 and the shameful condition to which the national army was reduced two years later, absent from any significant land battlefield." In September 1944, The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story from India which said British and American servicemen were wondering whether Australia was pulling out of the war. In October the Sydney Daily Telegraph editorialised that industrial strife in Australia had reached the point of civil war or very near it.

While the Americans fought their way north to secure the defeat of Japan, Australian troops under their hugely unpopular commander, General Thomas Blamey, were engaged in mopping up the Japanese garrison which the men knew was unnecessary, that those impotent pockets of Japanese could be bypassed until the Japanese surrender.

"It seemed perverse that having won so much honour far away in the Mediterranean, Australia's share of the Pacific War ended in rancour and anti-climax," Hastings writes.

The US ambassador said the embassy had no record of receiving a call of congratulations after any American victory, either from an official or a private person.

The nation's 691,400 conscripts languished in barracks, in an almost intractable condition of indiscipline. Finally, MacArthur refused to use Australian troops because he said they were unreliable, and began the re-conquest of the islands with only Americans. Curtin made cowards of us all. It was a sorry time.

There are points that should be made. Those wartime honours were won in North Africa under prime minister Robert Menzies, who was tricked out of office in 1941 by Curtin.

In the present case, at least partly, the Australian forces in Iraq were expanded beyond the commitment of the SAS because of their discontent at being left behind in Australia. The members of the ADF are brave men who volunteered to serve their country. They are not asking Rudd to be relieved of active service.

Curtin's prime ministership is an impressive example of the ability of the Labor Party and of left-leaning academics to rewrite history to serve contemporary political requirements.

Until the Germans invaded Russia, Germany and Russia were allies, along with communists everywhere, including Australia's 20,000 party members.

And finally, what are the strategic and political reasons that would justify Rudd in pulling out of the war in Iraq against terrorism?

How does it serve Australia's interests?

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944-45, by Max Hastings (Harper Press).

David Barnett is a Canberra writer.