We tend to forget that our military, political and other cultures were formed in the frontier wars of British imperial expansion in the 19th century. Because those wars were fought in the process of taking the land of Aboriginal and Maori peoples and of inflicting partial genocide en passant, they were always going to produce serious historical amnesia. Silence.
With the Brereton report we have a good idea of what has caused ‘possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history’. We see that major systemic weaknesses caused the shocking litany of political, military and moral failure that led to our alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. What is less clear is why this had to be?
What holds us hostage to the expeditionary military tradition that, in general terms, framed those war crimes and, before them, others in other wars, the tradition according to which we supported the British Empire to 1942 and have supported the American one since?
While economic arguments exist, the irrationalism of economic disruption and waste in wartime stands beside them. The immediate strategic argument is, in any case, the standard one: support for those empires is necessary to guarantee protection from the ‘yellow peril’ or, at least, potential terrorist and other threats from Asian countries to the north.
The obvious rejoinder is that, regardless of any threat, those friends will save us if it’s in their interests and capacities to do so, if it’s not they won’t. There is, in any case, no evidence that – even in 1942 – any Asian power has ever intended to invade Australia.
Still, Afghanistan adds a war crimes scandal to the long string of disasters that have come home to roost in the casualties and geo-political defeats that line our strategic history from Gallipoli, to the Somme to the fall of Singapore and of Saigon.
Joining America in a war with China, as at least some Canberra policymakers have assumed from at least 2016 we should, would certainly not be in our economic interests and could be a crowning disaster.
Today, it would be uncontroversial to sheet home our almost automatic strategic dependence on the US to the security state’s addictions to American intelligence, technology and virtually unquestioned commitment to US bases. American capital investment in Australia is also great. Yet that dependence sits more or less comfortably in the expeditionary strategic culture that greatly pre-dates it – and has always had a hair trigger.
Certain mindlessness is institutionalised in that reflex, such as historian Douglas Newton describes in his book Hell-Bent: Australia’s leap into the Great War (2014). It’s as though we don’t want to know what’s bothering us; something we feel is indeterminate and too big to grasp; something like, it is reasonable to say, the heart of darkness in our imperial past.
We tend to forget that our military, political and other cultures were formed in the frontier wars of British imperial expansion in the nineteenth century. Because those wars were fought in the process of taking the land of Aboriginal and Maori peoples and of inflicting partial genocide en passant, they were always going to produce serious historical amnesia. Silence.
Even at the time of the frontier wars, there is ample evidence that colonial society normalised the atrocious behaviour that went on in them. Since the First World War and, especially since the Second, we have forgotten more: that our expeditionary military tradition began with the sending of 24 British regiments, usually in the global rotation of them through India, China, New Zealand and, indeed, Australia, where they were involved with settlers in the wars against the Aboriginals from the 1790s to the 1930s.
Reading G.W. Rusden’s History of Australia (3 vols, first published in 1883) there can be no doubt about events that today the Australian War Memorial (AWM) officially denies: the ‘great violence’ of ‘race war’, ‘boundary war’, ‘war of extirpation’ and ‘war of extermination’ against the ‘perishing race’ in the colonial conquest of Australia.
These frontier wars are beyond dispute, as are the widespread ‘atrocities’ by what missionaries are known to have called ‘British butchers.’ Exceeding the apparent ‘throat-slitting’ episodes in Afghanistan, Rusden gleaned a shocking episode from a Formal Inquiry into events in Tasmania in 1830.
Although probably involving a convict or settler rather than a soldier, the Inquiry ‘established the fact’ that ‘a man, while capturing a native woman, killed her husband, slung the bleeding head upon her neck, and drove her thus before him to be retained by force.’
The economic as well as psychopathic foundations of settler conquest also come out in Rusden’s story. A year after the worst anti-Chinese riots by gold diggers on the Buckland River led to the dispersal of some 2000 Chinese and the killing of unknown numbers in 1857, he describes one of the worst race wars.
This was once the discovery of gold at Port Curtis caused the surrounding country to be cleared of its indigenous inhabitants.
Quoting from an eye-witness account in a Melbourne newspaper of 1858, Rusden wrote: ‘The ordinary relation between the black and white races is that of war to the knife. The atrocities on both sides are horrible and I do not believe the government makes any effort to stop the slaughter of the aborigines.’
‘It is not to be supposed that all colonists were accomplices in, or even knew of the atrocities; nor were all offenders of like character,’ Rusden continued. Indicating the ambiguity of the culture influenced by such wars to the knife – and rifle – he added: ‘Known of all, but judged by none, murders continued’ – in all the colonies.
Forgetting, denying and disremembering was not the only way colonial society had to cope with its foundation atrocity.
With the massacring of Aboriginals going on – see Lyndall Ryan’s massacre map https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php – the prosperity from gold and imperial trade preferences that accompanied and followed the continental land heist, helped to stabilise the colonial culture’s all too doubtful sense of self-importance. Crucially, illusions of British moral and racial superiority provided the ideological justification.
Intensified by small numbers in a vast continent with a daunting demography of alien others to the north, anxiety related to colonial possession also pre-disposed settler society to projection.
Greg Lockhart is a Vietnam veteran and an historian. Formerly of ANU, he has produced five books and many essays. His memoir Weaving of Worlds: a Day on Île d’Yeu, is just published.
Comments
9 responses to “Heart of Darkness: Our expeditionary imperial culture and alleged war crimes in Afghanistan – and elsewhere”
Sir,
There should be a national plebiscite to decide whether Australia should go off to war against another country that hasn’t done us any harm purely on the basis of our alliance with the US. The plebiscite should be preceded by an idea of the cost to human lives and resources. This will make people with children of conscription age very careful in deciding whether the matter is important enough for us to make that sacrifice. Up to this point in time, the decision to go to war had been made by duplicitous politicians and sold to the public on a bed of lies. e.g. that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Vietnam would be the start of a Domino Theory come true. People should be made aware that our main ally, the US, can abandon us like they did to the Kurds recently, the Mujahideen to get Russia out of Afghanistan, or the Hmongs in Indochina. Without a plebiscite, we will continue to be pawns in other people’s wars.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I agree with you. And in fact our ANZUS PACT, ie. the defence agreement with the USA, only covers the Pacific region, so what on earth were we doing in Afghanistan and Iraq? We also went against the wishes of the UN, but many other times criticise other countries for not abiding by the UN’s rules, or rejecting their views on how we treat refugees for example.
Citing Switzerland again, they held a referendum after a petition in 2014 where they stopped the government from making a large purchase of jet fighters. Imagine if we had that right here with the absurd purchasing of bad military equipment with submarines and fighter jets etc.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-vote-gripen-idUSBREA4H05920140518
Thanks Greg, and I can’t agree more
Notable other war endeavours we were a part of also include the Boer Wars and suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China.
During the Boer wars the British built concentration camps where over 30,000 Boer women and children perished due to lack of sanitation, rampant disease, and starvation. Herman Goering used this as a way to remind the British that they also had constructed concentration camps like the Germans had done in WWII. It is fair to say the British did not execute the prisoners like the Germans did, but they achieved the same results through neglect, as was the case in Hitler’s Germany as well. There were similar camps for black Africans where many more died but numbers of black deaths were ever tallied – some were mass executed in the country verified by the archaeological existence of mass graves. The British only became interested in the Boer regions of Transvaal and Orange Free State when gold and diamonds were discovered, it was the motive behind the war.
I was horrified to see a memorial built to this atrocious war in Canberra on Anzac Parade in front of the AWM. Excellent work by the sculptor, but should we be remembering one of the most ethically devoid wars in history and be proud of it? Read any British school text book up until the 1960s and you’ll find glowing renditions of the campaign to cover up what really happened.
A Boer War concentration camp victim:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps#/media/File:LizzieVanZyl.jpg
The Boxer Rebellion which occurred around 10 years later, saw Australian troops sent to China to be part of the repressive coalition force of imperialist countries that were profiting mainly from the illegal opium trade. The Chinese had had a gutful of opium being forced on them, were sick of the European and British Christians proselytising their religion, and simply wanted Britain and the European parasites to get out of their country. China was the richest country in the world before the British arrived but like India, it as left in poverty when they left.
63 years later the US made a film called “55 Days at Peking” which was pure propaganda meant to vilify the Chinese and make the imperialist countries look like saints fighting for a good and’ godly’ cause. The Chinese were depicted as barbarians.
Here’s a line up with an Australia soldier featured with the other countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion#/media/File:Troops_of_the_Eight-Nation_Alliance_(except_Russia)_that_fought_against_the_Boxer_Rebellion_in_China,_1900._From_the_left_Britain,_United_States,_Australia,_India,_Germany,_France,_Austria-Hungary,_Italy,_Japan._(49652330563).jpg
Malaysia & Menzies Incursions into Indonesia are never raised yet was riddled with War crimes.
The Incursions into Indonesia by Australian Special Forces were not even admitted until 1996.
The Files may still exist in the Bowels of Dept Prime Minister & Cabinet.
They were there in 1975-6.
We should not forget the massive killings of Indonesians (estimates 0.5 to 1 million people) by US supported coup in 1965. The US was pleased with the mass murder! https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/ Quote: “… the U.S. was part and parcel of the operation, strategizing with the Indonesian army and encouraging them to go after the PKI.”
Exactly
The [[[five liars]]] hands were drenched in blood in the 1965 genocide…
MI5 supplied the propaganda…
“We therefore agree with the [above] recommendation… Suitable propaganda themes might be… Chinese interference in particular arms shipments; PKI subverting Indonesia as agents of foreign communists”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101108060411/http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/us-and-british-complicity-in-the-1965-slaughters-in-indonesia/
CIA planted the ‘evidence’…
Marshall [coup master] Green..
““We have bonanza chance to nail chicoms on disastrous events in Indonesia,”
https://monthlyreview.org/2015/12/01/the-united-states-and-the-19651966-mass-murders-in-indonesia/
A disaster indeed. China’s weapons are more numerous, modern, and powerful than America’s and its SCO alliance encompasses four nuclear powers.
Thanks for this, Greg. We need to keep focused on these issues, despite Christmas, the cricket, the tennis and recovering from Covid. Particularly liked ‘Today, it would be uncontroversial to sheet home our almost automatic strategic dependence on the US to the security state’s addictions to American intelligence, technology and virtually unquestioned commitment to US bases. American capital investment in Australia is also great.’ Yet many in the military-industrial-commemorative-media complex avoid those issues.
More on the Afghanistan fallout and how it links to Anzackery and Anzac: http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/stephens-david-getting-beyond-our-heroes-a-war-memorial-angle-on-possible-war-crimes/