Australian report on their SAS shame

MY STORY IN THE TIMES THIS AFTERNOON: The Australian report into evidence of unlawful killings by special forces in Afghanistan will cast a dark shadow over the heroism and courage of tens of thousands of men and women who have served in the frontline of battle in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two decades.The stark details of the accusations against Australian SAS soldiers will provoke widespread condemnation. But they will also raise questions about why such highly trained soldiers, elite in every sense, could have resorted to such brutality, violating, beyond any reasonable understanding of risk and danger, the accepted code of conduct in war. Soldiers with long experience of special forces combat do have an explanation but without offering any excuse for it. War is brutal and dehumanising, particularly for those who serve in tight military units involved in covert operations where maximum violence and aggression against the enemy are vital ingredients both for the success of their mission and for their own survival. “Recognising the incredible burden placed on each individual deployed to just survive through to another day isn’t well understood,” one former special forces commander said. No excuses were good enough, he said, but merely to see brutality devoid of context was to ignore the life soldiers in such units endured: “solitary, brutish and for many, short”. Small, very close military groups operating within a special forces bubble can sometimes reinforce a course of action which would seem to others outside the unit to be outrageous and beyond comprehension. In Iraq and Afghanistan over the years, atrocities and war crimes have been committed that have led to doubts about the moral, ethical and legal state of mind of individual soldiers and units within the US-led coalition. Among the most notorious was the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq in 2003 when Iraqi captives were subjected to physical, sexual and humiliating treatment by US soldiers, much of it caught on video camera. In November 2005 a squad of US Marines in Haditha took revenge after a roadside bomb killed one of their group. Twenty-four Iraqi civilians were killed including women and children. In Afghanistan on March 11 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a US soldier, went on a rampage killing 16 Afghan villagers in Kandahar province. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The spotlight put on the Australian SAS has shown that war can turn even the most disciplined soldier into a reckless and out-of-control human being. What is disturbing in the Australian SAS case is that this was not a one-off single deployment problem but rather a culture that became deeply embedded. However, the former special forces commander pleaded: “That one group of soldiers acted improperly, probably illegally and absolutely immorally shouldn’t paint all others in the same light.” Military leaders also have to share the blame. They are supposed to set the tone and moral compass for the units under their command. If they turn a blind eye to unlawful actions and decisions when they become apparent they are as guilty as the soldiers accused.