OPINION
Whether or not Ben Roberts-Smith murdered unarmed Afghan civilians is now up to the court – but why should the court have to rule on this in the first place?
To be completely clear, I don’t condone the actions of which Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith is accused. Shooting unarmed prisoners, including those already injured and missing legs, is not a practice that should be condoned, encouraged or allowed to become commonplace.
But I think pursuing these allegations through the criminal courts, between 17 and 14 years after these acts allegedly occurred, does nothing to help anyone.
The Federal Court had already found, as part of defamation proceedings and to the civil standard on the balance of probabilities, that Roberts-Smith committed war crimes.
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But recriminating it all again through the criminal system will do nothing to prevent that kind of behaviour in the military, nor will it prove any point that hasn’t already been proved to the lower civil court standard – except that if he’s found guilty, we can say we’re even more sure he did it. So what?
Of course we should expect integrity from our soldiers. Any sense or suspicion of wrongdoing should be reported immediately and dealt with internally by the ADF.
But running a trial for show, to really prove that we don’t like war crimes, only serves to further wound a man who has already suffered enough reputational damage – and who will remain a war hero for putting himself in danger to protect his mates, regardless of what he did or didn’t do otherwise.
It damages the federal police, too.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett has had her feet under the desk for six months, and she’s already landed what will probably be one of the biggest criminal trials this country has ever seen.
Instead of visiting him at his home or calling him in for an interview, officers arrested him in front of his children at Sydney Airport as they were set to enjoy a family holiday, parading him in front of passengers and across the tarmac with cameras stationed to record the ordeal for distribution to the media.
The AFP wanted it to be as public and dramatic as possible.
Nine seemingly had a tip off. In its 6pm news bulletin on Tuesday, it ran images of the arrest and interviews with passengers that were marked up as exclusive.
Perhaps one of the network’s reporters was coincidentally on the plane at the same time and decided to spring into action, or some enterprising passenger had the presence of mind to turn freelance journalist for an hour and managed to sell the footage to Nine. But it does seem rather convenient that the same company that originally broke the story of Roberts-Smith’s alleged crimes happened to have someone on hand at the arrest.
This seems to be far more about the show and the parade than anything else.
I’ve been both a court and police reporter. I get why they do this with pedophiles and drug dealers – because it acts as a deterrent to the wider community – but what is the AFP hoping to achieve by doing it with Roberts-Smith?
This behaviour is beneath the AFP. It is a national disgrace that our most decorated living soldier was used to create a media circus.
It also abrogates the country of its responsibility to the men it sends overseas to fight in wars.
We wind them up and point them in the right direction. We didn’t send Roberts-Smith or any other soldier to Afghanistan for tea and bickies. We sent them there to fight – to kill.
We create a binary situation of good guys and bad guys. Our fellas are the good guys and they’re there to kill the bad guys.
You can’t just pluck any old bloke off the street and expect him to operate on a battlefield at a high level or simply be able to deal with the fact he’s there to kill people.
Soldiers – especially those in the SAS – are highly trained for war. They are trained to kill and feel no compunction in doing so.
Having trained Roberts-Smith to kill, and sent him overseas to kill, we will now prosecute him for his alleged actions because the police think he might have killed the wrong people.
How are we, in the safety and comfort of Australia, supposed to understand or judge the actions and frame of mind of people we have charged with the job of killing other people?
For his service, Roberts-Smith will now be repaid with a protracted criminal trial.
Do you think the Taliban is tying itself up in knots about whether or not it contributed to the deaths of a few unarmed people?
If this is what you get, why would you want to serve your country?
