In Burr’s regiment were many of Justice Brereton’s bad boys. That so many of them were able to mask their incubating psychopathology reflects badly on the psychological assessment tools Burr’s people were administering.
Last week, Chief of the Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, won the inaugural Khaki Shulztie. This award is named after Sergeant Shultz (“I know nuuuthing!”) from the TV show Hogan’s Heroes. The award recognised General Campbell’s ignorance in the face of overwhelming information.
This week the second award goes to one of his colleagues. Lieutenant-General Rick Burr, the Army chief, also knows nothing about the dark moments in Uruzgan Province.
“Oh, I was sick. I was sickened. I was shocked by the extent of the alleged unlawful acts that were described in the report,” he said on 60 Minutes last week. “I heard nothing of these allegations. If I had, I absolutely would have reported them,” he added.
A senior commander recently told me that if Burr knew so little, then his command should be in question.
In 2002, one year into Australia’s intervention in Afghanistan, then Lieutenant-Colonel Burr was one of the first SAS leaders into Afghanistan. He arrived in July with 2-Squadron.
A mixture of braggadocio and bad intelligence meant the war scene was completely misread in this period. The Taliban was stockpiling weapons, cultivating local resentment, recruiting, planning, and planting more opium poppies. Some genius in Russell Offices in Canberra advised the government to announce that there were too few tasks to warrant keeping SAS assets in Afghanistan. As a result, Burr’s 200-strong taskforce was withdrawn in November 2002 when allied operations shifted from combat missions to what was euphemistically called “reconstruction activities”.
The next month, the disgraced governor-general Peter Hollingworth awarded the now disgraced Special Air Services Regiment the Meritorious Unit Citation for the year-long deployment.
Burr then became the commanding officer of the SAS Regiment in Perth from 2002-2004. The SAS did not return to Afghanistan until September 2005. As regimental CO, Burr was responsible for force readiness. In other words, ensuring that the very best men, men of stamina, valour and honour, came into the regiment and then went on to theatres of war.
How did Burr get all that so wrong? In Burr’s regiment at the time were many of Brereton’s bad boys. Soldiers who would go on hunting trips in the Badlands of Uruzgan. One of Burr’s soldiers would commit a war crime so egregious, so sub-human, that Brereton could not allow it to be talked about publicly. The account of this soldier’s war crime is blacked out in the now infamous chapter 2.50. Brereton could only say “what is described in this chapter is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history…”
The SAS Regiment is not some vast corporation. Burr could get to know all the men under his command. He read their assessment reports. He was able to monitor their progress. He formally dined with them. Yet no red flags? That Brereton’s bad boys were able to mask their incubating psychopathology reflects badly on the psychological assessment tools Burr’s people were administering.
Burr remained close to the Afghanistan action. By February 2008 he was back in Afghanistan along with a 300-strong special operations task group. Now with the rank of brigadier, he was chosen to be the first leader of the NATO coalition’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This was a theatre-level multinational command position. As we now know, ISAF was an outstanding failure. All the coalition partners, one after the other, tapped the mat and released themselves from an unwinnable Taliban resurgence.
Brereton has controversially exposed himself to the accusation that his report favoured what some would regard as the Army’s strongest asset, the officer class. This is what he said about the Special Air Service Regiment.
“A substantial indirect responsibility falls upon those in Special Air Service Regiment who embraced or fostered the ‘warrior culture’ … Some domestic commanders of Special Air Service Regiment bear significant responsibility for contributing to the environment in which war crimes were committed, most notably those who embraced or fostered the ‘warrior culture’ and empowered, or did not restrain, the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it. That responsibility is to some extent shared by those who, in misconceived loyalty to their Regiment, or their mates, have not been prepared to ‘call out’ criminal conduct or, even to this day, decline to accept that it occurred in the face of incontrovertible evidence, or seek to offer obscure and unconvincing justifications and mitigations for it.”
Nominations for next week’s Khaki Shultzie are now closed after an overwhelming response. The front runner is current Governor-General. General David Hurley was Chief of the Defence Force in the worst killing years, 2011-2012.
Dr William De Maria is a Brisbane based writer and political commentator.
Comments
14 responses to “Lieutenant-General Burr, can you stand up. We can’t see you!”
There’s a challenging question as to where the cut-off point is for holding leaders accountable. The answer seem to be: far enough down the scale to protect the top brass and the government, the people truly responsible for this shameful behaviour. Morrison’s response to China’s taunts seem to be designed to minimise the shameful behaviour, thus portraying the same lack of leadership that enabled these egregious crimes. There are two issues to be addressed: 1. The criminal behaviour of some soldiers; and 2. The leadership culture that failed to detect and prevent that criminal behaviour. It would seem that the latter issue will be dismissed – by the very leaders who failed. Institutional and political self-protection wins again.
Bands of men in Australian uniform, roaming distant fields, led by individuals hand picked for the job, rare, clothed in mythos, but imbued with the methods of the enemy, seeking out and hoping for innocent boys to order to be killed. The relatives reporting to HQ in Kabul sit through flaccid investigations during which the murderers and their loyal subordinates stay silent and in denial. Five years or more pass. Some, now with corroded painful souls, report to a civilian the crimes buried in the parched dirt of a battlefield no one was going to win. That is not courage. Muscle courage is only one of three. Ethical and moral courage enables warriors to hold that which their muscles gained. Australian soldiers are expected to resist murderously illegal orders. And there is no excuse for cowardice in the field. How could repeated investigations by Australian Army in Kabul into the murders continuously find no case nor cause for further action? From 2010 at least. The habit of murder and torture was thus enabled from the centre of military control in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission first formally reported war crimes committed by Australian forces to Australian authorities in Afghanistan in about 2010. The former AIHRC presently lives in Adelaide SA. As a result of the AIHRC reports the Australian Army in Afghanistan conducted investigations into each reported case. In all a cases, according to the former AIHRC, the Australian Army found nothing to be actionable. The Brereton Inquiry was borne out of 2015 eye witness accounts by Australian Afghanistan veteran reports of war crimes given freely to an academic contracted by Army to investigate “cultural problems” in SAS and commando units. In the five years between the first reports of war crimes to the Australian Army (Afghanistan) and the initiation of the Bereton Inquiry, murders occurred and torture was committed. Whereas had Army done its duty in the first instance in response to 2010 and later reports. Had Army done its job in 2010 the Brereton Inquiry would not have been needed. But that begs the questions who gave these murderers uniforms, guns and a battlefield? and from 2010 on, did Army act with prejudice toward the Afghani reports? Were they covering up? and How come no one, apparently, disobeyed the illegal commands to murder civilians and restrained prisons? How come no Australian eye witness reported directly to higher command from 2010 what they had seen? How many refused to murder? What happened to them? How many reported the events to higher ups in Afghanistan from 2010 onwards and what happened to them? How hard was it to post a letter to Army HQ in Kabul reporting murder in the field? Did anyone do that? Kilcullen of the Australian newspaper claims you need drones to know the truth. No, you need eyewitness and Army coms. That’s all. I cannot believe no Australian eyewitness reported the events at the time. I cannot believe so many men were so lacking in moral and ethical courage that they had to wait five years to spill the beans. Not that i would be surprised to learn that those who did spill the beans from 2010 on were either dead or locked in an asylum. Moral and ethical courage. It used to be taught. Better late than never I suppose. Still it is a cover up. Someone high up, and his companions, did not want the truth to come out. I believe. Sorry, this is as brief as I am.
22 people in total stood in the dock at the post WW2 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. None of them were other ranks nor corporals I believe. None of them trigger pullers, all of them string pullers. “1948
War Crimes and Their Motivation: The SocioPsychological Structure of the SS and the
Criminalization of a Society” by
Leo Alexander The Australian Army is very very good
at selecting individuals for chosen roles. And that’s a fact. The designer in question is probably highly skilled. The psychological attributes of the Australians to be in the dock, the ones chosen for their special roles, will make a forensic read which will attest to the design philosophy for the entire team. Will that link between trigger puller and team designer be made ? We shall see.
“I mean, they’re not unique – there have been stories over the last couple of decades, really, about Australian Special Forces,” she told ABC RN Breakfast.
“But I think it’s the extent of it that will be shocking, and the deliberate and repeated nature of it that will be disturbing.” : Dr Crompvoets. end quote. Had the Australian Army HQ in Afghanistan properly investigated the complaints of war crimes committed by Australians, submitted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission from about 2010 onward, the crimes would have not become embedded practice, the cultural deviance enforced on units by criminal field leaders would have ceased and the deviant culture would have been fully examined, challenged and defeated after the first murder, instead of persisting and normalising for years. Crompvoets was commissioned only to study culture of the SAS and commandos, because it was known deviant. What she found was lines of veterans desperate to make witness statements regarding the war crimes. The deviant culture came first, then the war, then the crimes. So who created the deviant SAS/commandos? That’s as brief as I can get.
“The Aussie entanglement with the usa is to our absolute detriment.” Too true!
Hey William, Wage Peace has been calling Hurley to account for over a year. We have been asking how a general overseeing WAr Crimes can get the top job.
Why has no one discussed this till now. I simply do not get it. We have been tweeting it for a year. Why won’t people touch it? No one in the peace movement… Only one of the whistleblowers actually…why is it seem as untouchable? Or irrelevant?
Margie
If the management arm of the Army had no idea what the ground troops were doing they are either criminally negligent or lying. Either way they are not earning their pay. They were very happy to pursue, and enthusiastically sort to punish, those people who did blow the whistle and these people are still facing charges. We should be questioning right there, the way the Army sort to cover these atrocities up with internal so called investigations. Why did these not discover what was going on?
Did they still believed, at the top level, there would be no repercussions and they were going to get away with it? Trying to blame non-commissioned officers for this is both shameful and unbelievable. Can we ask what the damned commissioned officers were doing while they were supposed to be leading their troops? This Government department never seems to have to justify huge expenditures and incredible project cost over runs that would be an absolute scandal in Health, Education or Social Services. I ask again what are we paying these people for?
The execution of General Yamashita, the commander of the Japanese forces in the Philippines in 1945 for war crimes, is surely relevant? Yamashita had given a specific command for Manila to be evacuated. He established a defensive line of north of Manila. A regiment of Japanese marines defied his order and fought the Americans to the death and massacred civilians. Yamashita was executed because although he had no knowledge of the atrocities, had given an order that had been disobeyed, nonetheless was held responsibile because he did nothing to prevent the crimes of Japanese troops under his command. The fact that Yamashita could have done nothing under the circumstances was irrelevant to the charge and conviction. This judgement was upheld in appeal majority verdict of the US Supreme Court in 1946. Who are our Yamashita’s in the ADF?
The ‘officer class’ has always and forever will remain immune.
The truth is there though – none of the war criminals were promoted. None of the war criminals were invited into the Seargeant’s mess or the Officer’s mess. They were ostracised and everyone knew why.
Hastie, following his public statements, invites a KS
KS?
A Khaki Shultzie (I know nothing!)
Crimes against humanity – again! What the * is Australia doing in Afghanistan? Bring all the troops home and all military specialists and their civilian hangers on. Rebuild Australia’s post covid economy and give uncle sam the shove off from our lands too. The Aussie entanglement with the usa is to our absolute detriment.