The Australian Defence Force is one of the most secretive forces in the world. If our experience with Afghanistan is any guide, such secrecy produces moral failure. And while the much-despised media long ago blew the whistle on the behaviour of some SAS soldiers, the reward was the prosecution of the leaker.
Winston Churchill was a little better at accepting responsibility than the Australian officer class. After the fall of Singapore, he said, “I didn’t know. I wasn’t told. I should have asked.” But, he added later, “the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered into my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.”
While Justice Paul Brereton has not exonerated the officers of the SAS regiments, in focusing on moral failure, he is all too kind. Ordinary management failures caused the development of a warrior culture that produced murders of civilians, sometimes so as to “blood” new members and bind them into a team. Managers must accept responsibility for falsified reports, planted evidence and troopers who despised their leaders — none of whom was “outside the wire” or physically close to the wrongdoing.
The villains – some psychopaths – developed and enforced the culture, concealing it from their leaders. These are the ones being investigated for the murder of 29 Afghan civilians. None of the alleged murders was in the heat of battle. In no case was there ambiguity about whether the rules of engagement or even army customs permitted what happened.
But the officers should have known what was going on. Most, we can take it, would have done their duty had they realised. But their ignorance was more than a moral failure. Officer neglect or ignorance is no small thing. The shame of their failures will hang over the SAS, the ADF, and the nation for many years.
This shame must also embrace an Australian War Memorial that turned some of the players into cult heroes, and accused anyone asking questions of undermining men and women who were simply doing their duty. As a result of the accusations it must fundamentally re-order its display.
Politicians are specifically exonerated. The failure was in the ADF, operational not political. But Brereton is again too kind. The culture was nurtured by political failures: ill-defined war aims, and not telling what was actually wanted fed to a generally tame defence media. The soldiers knew that no one – least of all in Canberra – cared. It’s not easy to continually put your life on the line in such a cause.
Brendan Nelson, as minister for defence, was party to sending them there, as war memorial director was chief cheerleader for the Dirty Harry lone warrior culture, and is now a representative of the foreign arms industry that kills people on all sides. He should be the first to show his shame. He, and his enabling board, should disappear from public life.
Peppered through the reports is instance after instance of simple management failure — neglect of processes that ought to have disclosed the appalling situation at the sharp end; leadership failure — including fostering a reporting culture of sending bland, misleading reports upwards and never confronting the men about obvious breaches of discipline. Even the existence of a secret pub that could send elite warriors into action drunk.
Officers who thought they were not being loyal to their men if they asked questions, and who thought their primary role was to smooth the men’s path and protect them from intruders.
Officers who became cheer leaders for the cowboys.
Officers too low in the pecking order to be able to command, let alone walk beside, experienced and disdainful corporals leading patrols of six soldiers.
Slightly more senior officers who would chuck out (as poor leaders) junior officers who could not win the admiration of the cowboys.
And then even more senior ones resisted scrutiny, including media scrutiny. Creators of a secretive culture who hid behind alibis about national security, “operational reasons”, bland denials, and claims that “inadequate” (and sabotaged) investigations could not substantiate complaints. And an entirely false pretence that the Afghans were calling the shots, not the SAS.
The Australian defence force has long been hostile to media scrutiny – seen as a serious distraction at a time of maximum crisis. Media criticism, if informed, can undermine morale. Reporting can also unwittingly convey information, including sensitive operational information to the enemy.
No one could exemplify this broad attitude better than General Angus Campbell, Chief of the Defence Force. He coined the phrase “on-water matters” to withhold, on operational security grounds, details of how armed Australians were driving refugees from our shores. There is still no accounting, or independent review, of what happened under his command. A former SAS leader, but one allowed to blame “the culture” of non-coms for bad outcomes. Yet his culture of secrecy, or the managerial culture of complacency, was not to blame?
The ADF is one of the most secretive forces in the world. “Trust us,” lies behind the secrecy. “We know our duty, to Australia as much as our men and women.” That’s the real lie – the real shame, and the real failure.
If our experience with Afghanistan is any guide, such secrecy does not produce effective leadership. We get moral failure, whether from studied incuriosity or incompetence. We are all diminished by bland but false assurances, resistance to answering questions, and a default tendency to cover up.
Even those who eventually took action in 2016 – including Campbell – must ask themselves why it took an outsider investigating culture in the ADF at large rather than Special Forces in particular – to say what the dogs were barking.
The much-despised media had blown the whistle long before any officer did a thing. Or, to be fair, a thing that had any fundamental effect on what was happening. The reward was the prosecution of the leaker – a classic case of blaming the messenger. And the Chief of the Defence Force must take his share of responsibility for this.
The overall assessment of system failure is unfair on some ex-SAS officers who were talking to each other and officers still in charge about their fear of a new culture of the warrior.
People had expressed worries long before defence machinery began to grind. That it was so slow is perhaps not surprising, given the fact that governors-general, successive chiefs of the army, and even the odd parliamentarian have a background in the SAS.
And thorough as the Brereton inquiry was, its five-year lifespan means that offences will be prosecuted, if at all, more than 13 years after they occurred. No doubt the cheerleader lobby will argue that it is too late to prosecute and that we should let bygones be bygones.
Who was it who said there are no bad teams, only bad leaders?
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
Comments
9 responses to “SAS officers failed their men and Australia”
The long drawn out time period over the which the crimes occurred, and the repetitious nature of crimes reveals a habituated and deliberate plan of action. Such things could not occur if the perpetrators were confronted with moral and ethical courage of eye witnesses to the events. How cowed subordinates were before the criminal minority, and that cowed condition, that failure to refuse illegal, murderous orders, made accessories of whole units. Did every Australian eyewitness fear for their safety so greatly at the time that they suppressed or abandoned their moral and ethical courage? For such courage and the need for it is explained in Military law training at the corporal level. Beside that, every member is and remains an individual subject to ordinary law. The early investigations by Australian command into the allegations submitted to it from about 2010 onward by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission found no further action needed. This was fully five years before the disclosures of Australian eye witnesses to the Army contractor engaged to investigate the deviant culture of SAS and commando units. And so the Brereton Inquiry comes out of, apparently, the first occasion the veteran eyewitnesses had of safely reporting the illegal and murderous events. How could it be that no veteran eyewitness was able, at the time, to safely report the crimes they witnessed, close to the time the crimes occurred and while still in the field? I do not believe however that no eyewitness did nothing at the time of the crimes. I believe that at least one or some Australian eye witnesses did refuse to obey illegal murderous orders. I do believe one or some Australian eye witnesses did report upwards to higher command. What happened to these courageous few, how they are now and where they are now are questions upper most in my mind. How many are dead or driven mad? For all the Australian investigations of Afghani complaints of war crimes received from 2010 on to have resulted in no further action, when even then the culture of the SAS and commando units were known deviate to Army norms and a cause for concern, is beyond me unless those early investigations were prejudiced or a deliberate cover up. The Army is excellent at selecting people for each of its roles. SAS and commando units are composed of individuals according to design. Such units are not accidents. Somewhere, the design specification for the units allowed for the composition which enabled these crimes. This is not to say that the moral and ethical courage of the eyewitnesses did not win out in the end. It took five years for it occur though. It did not occur until 2015. Five years after the first reports from Afghani witnesses were handed to the Australian Army in Kabul by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and five years after the first failed investigations by Australian Army command in Kabul. It is understood that resisting an illegal order presents “difficulties” for the moral and ethical courageous soldier. But there is an expectation that such resistance will, in the end result in vindication. On the face it, the eyewitnesses had no ability to report events at the time without risk to their own life and limb. And it should not be THAT hard. So, who designed these alleged teams? For they were not proper Army teams. Not lawful teams. Not morally or ethically courageous teams. Not teams I would recognise if I were still a soldier. Were I there though, what would I have done in the face of a psycho issuing a murderous demand ? Refuse and sit with the intended victim, praying together until the bullets from compliant ones silenced us both? I don’t know. I do know in the 70s I asked such questions during NCO training in military law. It’s the minimum ground state of an Australian soldier. Too many Australian have died protecting civilians and the innocent in ultimately useless wars for it not to be.
Thanks, Jack, for a very insightful piece. Thanks particularly for the reminder that General Angus Campbell, now Chief of the Defence Force, “coined the phrase ‘on-water matters’ to withhold, on operational security grounds, details of how armed Australians were driving refugees from our shores”. Your description of the failure in the chain of command raises very basic questions about the competence of our military leadership. Individual soldiers will no doubt be prosecuted quite properly for murder, but it would seem that officers will not be held accountable for their failures of leadership that enabled and effectively covered-up the scandalous behaviour. And our elected government has granted huge funding to expand the Australian War Memorial to further glorify war without facing its horror, particularly its continual denial of the facts and horror of the frontier wars. Brendan Nelson and the AWM should be condemned for their failures.
I see that my earlier comment cannot have been acceptable (maybe it was long). I have, therefore, deleted the copy of the letter sent to the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs in 2008.
It can also be argued that Governments have failed the Australian Defence Force. Twelve years ago, our school children were being told in educational material provided by the then Government that Australian soldiers committed the very same war crimes in Vietnam, as are alleged to have occurred in Afghanistan.
It is a Government, on behalf of the Australian people, that sends its nation’s soldiers to war. It is the same Government who is responsible for ensuring that training is appropriate, not only to confront the battlefield challenges, but also, the moral challenges that are to be faced. The Government has turned a ‘blind eye’ to breaches of ROE in Vietnam. The responsible action would have been to investigate, identify systemic weaknesses and institute and validate training to ensure such things couldn’t occur again. I asked if the Minister could give such an assurance to the Australian people. This assurance was given. It proved ill-founded.
I’ve copied below a letter to the Minister of Veterans Affairs in April 2008. The last question was: “Do you agree that one of the fundamental tenets that Australian schoolchildren should be taught is that: Although the horror of the reality of war is worse than anything that can be imagined, Australian people and their Government condemn the abuse of military power in any form whatsoever—proof of this is provided by the thoroughness by which each and every alleged atrocity is investigated”? I received no response to this, nor the earlier questions I asked.
Thanks Jack for your pungent analysis, it is greatly appreciated. From it I note 3 things in particular:
(1). That a soldier’s very life can be fraught by “ill-defined war aims”, lack of an effective strategy and like matters that are so crucial to an operation’s success. I firmly believe that similar political and executive failure lies behind the bitterness and despair of some Vietnam vets and others since.
(2). The truly awful performance of Dr. Nelson, former director of the AWM, who “..is now a representative of the foreign arms industry that kills people on all sides.” Apart from boosting the myth of the digger hero and seeking wholly inappropriate funding for the AWM, “He [had] no right to appropriate the sacrifices of civilians to his own ends, or to pretend to channel the thoughts of men and women in the services.” (P&I 19/06/19).
(3). “..instance after instance of simple management failure..” Simple, and yet with such terrible consequences. Bishop George Browning had earlier noted that the “…inadequate supervision and leadership from the top down…” in part had led to “..the development of a known ‘warrior culture’”. But even so, it would be grossly unfair to expect NCO’s only to shoulder the responsibility for what happened.
The trouble with blaming individuals or groups is that once they are dealt with, the culture can go on. What we are basically faced with here is the application of laws that crystallised 75 years ago, partly as tools to bash our defeated enemies over the head! Our culture is unsuited to them. Our culture is more barbaric than one that can live up to those laws. We need to wake up to the fact that we are now more like Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. We are now (we are again?) the habitual aggressors who regard people of other cultures as subhuman.
What makes us like that? One cause is our ancestry in the forests of Germany. Another is that we have so much stuff. What protects “our stuff” is the laws of our land. Our property urges us to ram the laws of our land down the throats of any foreigner who might take a second glance at it, or who might be able to buy it from us an anything less than top price. The more we have, the more frightened we are, and the more prepared we are to sign off on any barbarity the protectors of our stuff may commit against others. The more we as individuals rely on our property to keep our heads above water, rather than relying on the usefulness of our shared knowledge to humanity, the more barbaric we become.
‘But the officers should have known what was going on’. If my memory serves me, was there not an incident when SAS troopers cut the hand/s off dead Taliban for fingerprint purposes and this was reported to their immediate superior, one Captain Andrew Hastie. Mutilating the corpse of an enemy combatant is considered a war crime, but in this case was deemed OK. Surely there should have been alarm bells at the time.
A near relative who was in Afghanistan around a decade ago has spoken to me of the bullying going on all around from officer level and NCOs both – that the Dutch Forces (then still alongside) were more the “enemy” than the Taliban…it made no sense to me then than now. A US cousin who was in Iraq when I was in Japan teaching Ian Serraillier’s classic anti-war novel The Silver Sword to my university prep. class in 2003 sent me photos of his time in Iraq – ancient ruins – and so forth – no secrecy once he had exited the country. Unlike the paranoia with Australian Forces and secrecy (all designed to serve the string of cowboy PMs we have had – one that infamous suppository-of-wisdom – diving in secretly to bases for photo ops with the lads and lasses – ugh! Such frauds – and traitors to our nation. And Brendan Nelson and his Disneyification of the Shrine/War Memorial – what an ugly smug self-serving traducer of all those sent to fight – to be wounded, become prisoners of war – to survive or to die – on behalf of the vested interests of others! Surely there is some mechanism (if we are a democracy, that is) to get these little men into a gaol cell for some years – for as long as asylum-seekers have been mistreated at least! Or a year for each Afghani murdered by the SASF?
The Dutch personnel have been shamed for decades for their appalling lack of performance at “The Srebrenica Massacre”.
They deserve it. That was a truly disgusting performance.
They should never have been there in the first place. The failure rests with the Australian politicians and security state apparatchiks that bow down to their masters in the US empire.