{"id":6997,"date":"2020-12-03T00:39:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T00:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmatilda.com\/?p=139252"},"modified":"2020-12-03T00:39:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T00:39:21","slug":"war-itself-is-a-crime-let-alone-what-our-sas-did-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/03\/war-itself-is-a-crime-let-alone-what-our-sas-did-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"War Itself Is A Crime, Let Alone What Our SAS Did in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Major-General\nPaul Brereton presented his report into allegations of Australian war crimes in\nAfghanistan as necessary for a more effective ADF. But if we\u2019re horrified when\nthe Army breaks the rules of war, we should also be outraged when it follows\nthem, writes Nick Riemer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A fortnight\nafter its release, and now fuelled by China\u2019s\nintervention<\/a> into the controversy, the Brereton report continues to prompt intense\ndiscussion of its \u2018shocking\u2019 revelations of Australian war crimes in\nAfghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shock\nhas, no doubt, been less among those who actually understand what war means. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the moment Australia sent troops to one of the poorest countries in the world \u2013 one that had never attacked us, and supposedly to \u2018deny opportunities for terrorists<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 it was obvious that innocent people would be killed in droves. And that\u2019s what happened: more than 7,000 Afghans were killed by Australian troops<\/a> during Operation Slipper, by no means all of them combatants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Australian Army soldiers from Special Operations Task Group disembark from a US Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter after operations in northern Kandahar, Afghanistan, in October 2010. (IMAGE: CPL Chris Moore, ADF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nfighting robbed countless others of their loved ones, their livelihood, and any\npossibility of a normal life. Thousands would have no choice but to become\nrefugees \u2013 for those trying to get here, they would become targets of the\nbrutal Australian war against asylum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all\nits impressive ability to cause misery far beyond these shores, the ADF is just\na minor player in the \u2018great game\u2019 of 21st<\/sup> century warfare. But in its\ncapacity for throat-slitting, kicking people off cliffs, or gunning them down\nwhile they\u2019re clutching their prayer beads in a field, Brereton has given it\nits AAA+ rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a senior ADF officer himself, Major-General Paul Brereton downplays the fact that the conditions that spawned those sadistic outrages are systemic. It\u2019s hardly surprising that such regular war crimes reflect something about the army in which they occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The depravity of ADF personnel\nnow on the public record is hard for any normally constituted person to fathom.\nWhat do we hear in that chilling Four Corners video<\/a> as an Australian soldier executes a young Afghan\ncowering in the field? No attempt to prevent a cold-blooded slaying, not a\nsingle outcry of horror, just the casual indifference of the soldier\u2019s colleague\nto whether another human is slaughtered or not. The only moment with a sense of\nurgency is when he calls off his dog, more concerned about the animal than the\nlife that\u2019s just been terminated before his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between\n2009 and 2013 alone, Brereton\u2019s report records 39 cases of murder and two of what\nhe calls \u2018cruel treatment\u2019. How much other murder and torture was done in the remaining\n13 years of Australia\u2019s longest war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Major General Paul Brereton, who authored the report into Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. (IMAGE: Rick McQuinlan, ADF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

English has a word for killers\nwho gratuitously murder civilians and non-combatants for ideological reasons:\n\u2018terrorist\u2019. The term has been noticeably absent from official reactions to\nBrereton\u2019s report. But the report precisely confirms that state-sponsored, Australian\nterrorists in ADF uniforms were on a five-year rampage in Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing the SAS deployment\nthere in 2007, Howard said<\/a> \u201cthere is a lot at stake if\nterrorism acquires a safe haven again in Afghanistan\u201d. And yet, as it turned out,\nthe safest terrorist havens of them all – the ones that would never be attacked\nby Western missiles or helicopters – were in the ADF\u2019s own bases in Uruzgan\nprovince. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the \u2018warrior culture\u2019\nthat we somehow expected to \u2018bring democracy\u2019 to Afghanistan. What an edifying demonstration\nwe\u2019ve had of the Australian idea of democracy since the revelations were first\naired: journalists raided, whistleblowers persecuted with the full might of the\nstate, while the psychopaths responsible for the crimes, some of them decorated\nby the highest Australian dignitaries, were defended by politicians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, after the report, we\u2019re\nwitnessing the obligatory expressions of horror, part of a concerted attempt to\npreserve public confidence in the army and, indeed, the political establishment\nthat\u2019s so heavily invested in it. Regardless of how genuine the horror is, it\nwon\u2019t be too long before it\u2019s forgotten in the next spasm of our political\ncycle, as militaristic and Islamophobic as it is mediocre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing we can be sure of is\nthat, if a reprisal attack occurs on Australian soil, the official response\nwill attribute no part of the blame to the SAS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than 24 hours after Brereton\u2019s\nreport, The Australian<\/em> was already tiring of the widespread criticism of\nthe army. The report, its editorialist suggested<\/a>, had\ngone too far in critiquing the SAS\u2019 \u2018warrior ethos\u2019: that ethos \u2018is vital\u2019 and\nit should not be disparaged, the paper stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Away from\nthe far-right gutter, in the supposedly progressive media, we\u2019ve often heard about\nhow the actions of a \u2018few individuals\u2019 will \u2018damage the legacy\u2019 or \u2018taint the\ncontribution\u2019 of the tens of thousands of other Australian soldiers deployed to\nAfghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The casual violence of this propagandizing should be breath-taking. Regardless of the few clinics or schools it also started, Australia\u2019s role in Afghanistan wasn\u2019t a \u2018contribution\u2019 to the cause of global peace or democracy, but to the destruction of a society<\/a>. Originally promised for the benefit of Howard\u2019s re-election campaign in 2001, without the US even asking,<\/a> Australian involvement was later continued for the base political advantage and the slavish US me-tooism of the Australian political class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Prime Minister John Howard meets soldiers of the Australian Special Forces Task Group deployed on Operation Slipper in Afghanistan in 2005. (IMAGE: Sgt John Carroll, ADF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With\nBrereton\u2019s report, politicians have finally been forced to pull their heads out\nof the sand. The \u2018hear no evil, see no evil\u2019 charade that has surrounded the\nAfghan war for so long is now over, at least in part. But it\u2019s important not to\noverstate the likely consequences of the revelations, and to read what Brereton\nhimself has said about his report\u2019s purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMoral\nauthority,\u201d he writes (p.\n42)<\/a>, \u201cis an element of combat power. If we do not hold ourselves, on the\nbattlefield, to at least to the standards we expect of our adversaries, we\ndeprive ourselves of that moral authority, and that element of our combat\npower.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brereton\nsees his investigation, in other words, as distasteful housekeeping, necessary\nto allow the ADF to fight future overseas wars as effectively as possible. Moral\nreckoning is envisaged mainly as a means of improving the army\u2019s\ncombat-readiness. On that line of reasoning, if it could be shown that, in\nfact, the SAS\u2019 \u2018warrior culture\u2019 was on balance an advantage to the ADF, there\nwould be fewer grounds to question it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crimes of the SAS are the ones that Australian public culture can acceptably criticise. There is every reason for horror at the murders that Brereton\u2019s report unmasked. But once the bad apples of the Afghan campaign are tried or forgotten, the army will be free to prosecute whatever next bloody deployment politicians commit it to, accompanied by the usual comforting reassurances that, as the ABC\u2019s political editor put it, \u201cthe Anzac ideal is still worthy of veneration<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The post War Itself Is A Crime, Let Alone What Our SAS Did in Afghanistan<\/a> appeared first on New Matilda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on New Matilda<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major-General Paul Brereton presented his report into allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan as necessary for a more effective ADF. But if we\u2019re horrified when the Army breaks the rules of war, we should also be outraged when it follows them, writes Nick Riemer. A fortnight after its release, and now fuelled by China\u2019s […]<\/p>\n

The post War Itself Is A Crime, Let Alone What Our SAS Did in Afghanistan<\/a> appeared first on New Matilda<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":636,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[605,1967,1964],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/636"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6998,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6997\/revisions\/6998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}