Page 12 - Luce 2020

P oint of View

Anzac and War Crimes for soldiers who might thrive, short term, on operational
adrenaline but at long-term cost to physical and mental
health. In a telling reflection on this lack of integration, SASR
From 2011 the Principal
demarcated its own compound within the confines of the
served on cultural reviews larger Tarin Kot base.
into the Australian Defence
In such a closed culture, lack of objectivity is always at risk: the
Force. Here he offers his soldier to your left is at once your therapist, emotional crutch,
thoughts on revelations of brother-in-arms, and the oftentimes damaged arbiter of right
and wrong in a space demanding a clear, fully-formed moral
SASR war crimes (more compass. Such a self-referential universe demands external
fully discussed in input. Selected through recruitment courses to stand out and
stand alone (even from the Commandos who shared the burden
‘The Conversation’).
of war-fighting missions behind the lines), SASR badly needs to
reflect on how it relates to the Army of which it is a part.
The conviction of Australian soldiers for war crimes is virtually
unprecedented. The 1899-1902 Boer War saw the successful It’s telling that the courage of a number of Australian journalists
prosecutions and executions of Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and and SAS and Commando whistleblowers, rather than any
Peter Handcock, whose fate was angrily described by their internal demand for proper investigation, pushed these crimes
surviving co-defendant George Witton in Scapegoats for the into the national consciousness. Again, in this we can be
Empire. disappointed but should not be shocked.
We should be careful that we do not scapegoat thousands of Over the last few decades a strong orthodoxy has evolved,
ADF personnel who have served on the ground in Afghanistan. wrapped in the mystique of ‘Anzac’ nationalism, that any
And while past and serving members of the ADF will be criticism of our Defence Force is taboo. Beyond popular
disheartened as their public reputation comes under question, politics, such orthodoxy serves as a convenient cloak under
they should not be defiant: in seeking justice for Afghanis which to hide politically-driven procurement deals, failed
killed in cold blood it is clear, from the images and testimony design specs, and massive spending overruns that would be
which has emerged, that the crimes under investigation were subject to harsh public examination if related to, say, education
completely outside the laws of war. or health care. In helping politicians, an absence of forensic
analysis has also served the Defence Force well as the war
Australians have been shocked and saddened by revelations in Afghanistan has played out, for the majority of Australians,
of war crimes committed by our Special Forces soldiers in largely out of sight and mind.
Afghanistan. But they should not be surprised. The demands
placed upon the Special Air Service (SASR) and Commando Often defensive in the face of constant cultural reviews,
Regiments have stretched our soldiers to the point where some Defence needs to face up to the fact that the failure of even
have failed themselves, each other, and the Anzac tradition. a small number of its most highly-trained troops is ultimately
They may not deserve our sympathy, but we do need to a failure of leadership from the top. It needs to think openly,
understand what brought them to this point. urgently and honestly about whether these crimes are an
aberration, or part of a systemic cultural problem in how it
In Afghanistan, Special Forces soldiers were fighting a war trains, debriefs, deploys and then redeploys soldiers into
within a war. A small body of soldiers – drawn from around war zones.
two battalions (or two thousand) from a sixty-thousand strong
Army of full-time and part-time personnel – were selected Calls for the disbandment of Special Forces are misguided; we
for relentless ‘kill and capture’ missions. They fought with will continue to need, and to deploy, tier one special forces into
the constant reality of death or maiming through close- the future and indefinitely. But a thorough examination of unit
quarter combat, IEDs, and ‘green on blue’ attacks by Afghan command and delegated authority is vital – extending to the
allies. Special Forces saw the very worst of their enemy, and actions of those highly decorated senior officers who provided
eventually of each other. command during the Afghanistan campaign.

Other Australian service personnel were constrained by Each year as we approach Anzac and Remembrance Days
strict rules of engagement, in projects ranging from school we will, we tell ourselves, ‘remember them’. But remember
construction to counter- intelligence operations building trust them how? By definition, fighting in war is a murderous
with local warlords. Meanwhile, SASR and 2 Commando business. Sending (mostly young) women and men on active
returned again and again to combat. This regime desensitised, deployment takes a toll on each and all of them, often
then dehumanised, the soldiers themselves. It cultivated sublimated or expressed in some measure of anger, fear, social
psychological strain in what might be described as a kind of dislocation and disrupted relationships within families and the
military petri dish. wider community.

Army command offered too little by way of integration It is one thing for Australians to gather for commemoration
of SASR and 2 Commando with other units: too little by services. It is another thing altogether for Australians to
way of rotation away from the battlefield; no significant or acknowledge the real costs of war. In this sense, Australian war
complementary support from other units (such as regular crimes shine a light not just on Special Forces culture, but on
infantry battalions). There was no mandatory rest and renewal all of us.

12 LUCE Number 19 2020