The biggest story in town? That all depends – it might be the Brereton Report on the killing of Afghan children by Australian soldiers. Then again, it might be a China tweet.
Brereton report
The Brereton report detailed a chilling picture of Australian soldiers committing war crimes, murdering civilians in cold blood.
Nine newspapers left readers in no doubt of the seriousness of what happened.
However, The Australian seemed more concerned with the wrongful punishment of soldiers who had done nothing wrong: with the decision, since backtracked on, by head of the Australian Defence Force, Angus Campbell, to strip from all the special forces personnel in Afghanistan of the meritorious citations.
Yet to be published in the mainstream media are the snippets that should make the blood of even the most patriotic Australian run cold.
- Clearance Operations. Dr Crompvoets was told that, after squirters were ‘dealt’ with, Special Forces would then cordon off a whole village, taking men and boys to guesthouses, which are typically on the edge of a village. There they would be tied up and tortured by Special Forces, sometimes for days. When the Special Forces left, the men and boys would be found dead: shot in the head or blindfolded and with throats slit.
- Cover-ups. A specific incident described to Dr Crompvoets involved an incident where members from the ‘SASR’ were driving along a road and saw two 14-year-old boys whom they decided might be Taliban sympathisers. They stopped, searched the boys and slit their throats. The rest of the Troop then had to ‘clean up the mess’, which involved bagging the bodies and throwing them into a nearby river. Dr Crompvoets says she was told this was not an isolated incident. In this context, Dr Crompvoets says she was told that Special Forces soldiers were committing unsanctioned killing in order to ‘get a name for themselves’ and to join the ‘in’ group.
“What is described in this Chapter is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history, and the commanders at troop, squadron and task group level bear moral command responsibility for what happened under their command, regardless of personal fault.”
China
As Australian wine joined barley and coal as sacrificial lambs on the altar of incompetent diplomacy, the mainstream media offered a rousing chorus of pro-ScoMo jingoism, and anti-China and anti-Labor sentiment. It was the perfect opportunity to deflect from the PM’s abject failure on foreign policy: another means through which to further cultivate his carefully curated image.
The fact that of all the staff he could have isolating with him, Morrison chose to have his personal photographer in quarantine on his return from Japan seemed to be lost on The Australian. As does the reflection from the AAP:
In spite of this – and, indeed, in spite of the fact that there are currently no direct communications between Canberra and Beijing to resolve the growing list of trade disputes – we were treated to succulent sycophancy from Graham Richardson and Dennis Shanahan, even as our largest trading partner continued its shut down of exports in our biggest economic downturn in recent memory.
Dennis Shanahan in The Australian
From Simon Benson at The Australian
The rest of the mainstream media were quick to rush to the defence of the Prime Minister, pointing the finger squarely at Beijing…
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Australian Financial Review
The Australian
… and, bizarrely, pointing the finger at the opposition leader Anthony Albanese.
and in The Australian again:
Besides apportioning blame to seemingly every possible scapegoat besides our actual government, the clear message from the media was that the world is on our side.
Again from Simon Benson at The Australian:
Latika Bourke, in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Again from Simon Benson:
Wow. The international community really seems to be getting behind Australia. Simon Benson assures us that few world leaders believe Scott Morrison to be at fault. A shame none is mentioned. Latika Bourke says “Countries across the world are showing significant support for Australia”.
As this article went to press, the only countries to have made a peep are our oldest allies – New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. The US and the UK have ongoing disputes with China. One has been embroiled in a trade war under Donald Trump, and the other recently banned Huawei from being involved in the roll-out of 5G.
While the “significant support” involves 200 representatives from around the world – not one speaks with the backing of their government or with any real authority. Empty statements of support are not replacement for competent foreign policy.
As for the international media?
From The Economist:
The New York Times
A straight bat from The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post didn’t even touch it.
In reality, how much substance was there to these comments from the journalists? “Few world leaders agree”; “Countries across the world”; “The diplomatic scales have tipped heavily in Australia’s favour”; and “Beijing’s position has been demonstrably weakened”. Opinions or, more accurately, hopes presented as fact. Surely that’s propaganda.
What’s more
Has to be in Sydney. If it were in Victoria, surely the headline would be screaming ‘Dan’s to blame!’
Michael Tanner is completing a Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy. His writing explores the intersection of economics, the media and public health. His writing has also been published in The Age. Michael’s Twitter handle is @MichaelTanner_
Comments
5 responses to “Tamed estate: War crimes and China tweets”
Unfortunately the response from the PM to this tweet was extremely simplistic and not thought through. This was the reaction China was aiming for. Basically, they played him like a fiddle!
Anyone who looked at that image and gave it more than 5 seconds thought, would realise it is not purporting to be a ” real ” image. It is in fact a digital cartoon, offensive and in bad taste – yes!, but also a legitimate form of political comment. The message from recent controversies about cartoons and free speech was that without the “right to offend”, free speech is worth nothing.
I agree with the poster below, The real responsibility for those atrocities lies with the politicians who put those soldiers in an impossible situation , where there were totally unrealistic explanations, was no clear definition of victory and the best our soldiers could hope for was simply to stay alive. Afghanistan was a fundamentalist Islamic state long before Australia existed , still is today and will continue to be one in the foreseeable future. So what was it all about?
In case anyone had forgotten about this or hadn’t though that deeply about ,the PMS knee jerk response has put it all back on centre stage. When the Brereton report was released, the PM warned the Australian public there would be pain, then at the first sign of pain , he starts bleating like a spoiled child!
A big thank you to Dr Michael Tanner for researching media sources around the world to uncover all the half truths and semi lies in our mainstream media! I find this really helpful, and hope we can see more of such articles here at P & I.
Before any talk of some of the shocking atrocities Australian soldiers did in Afghanistan, I think we need to ask John Howard what we were doing in Afghanistan and in Iraq in the first place.
The war in Afghanistan is an utter failure, and why did America and Australia think they could just waltz into that country and play their war games against many innocent people.
After all:
“The hijackers in the September 11 attacks were 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda. They hailed from four countries; fifteen of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and the last was from Egypt.”
But Saudi Arabia is always the darling, it buys huge amounts of weapons, has mega oil reserves, and is Israel’s de facto ally. It’s also the the source of Wahhabism, the very form of Sunni Islam that Isis follows.
It seems to me that this may be the point that China is trying to make with Australia, as pointed out by one of their foreign affairs spokespersons. The revelations of the Brereton report are being widely discussed in China, and shocking them more than us, just as the revelations on Abu Ghraib shocked us – or the revelations of “Collateral Murder” – which were effectively downplayed because of our own guilt over complicity with Iraqi war crimes.
It’s a great collection of quotes, to which one might add this from the Global Times: “Netizens throw support behind cartoonist who drew…”
China has been warning us for some time that if we were going to keep challenging them on human rights, they could do the same to us.
Unfortunately Morrison is not the right person to be challenging China, nor are many of the key Liberals in his government. He’s got blood on his hands and mud sticking to his reputation. Some of the worst phases of dealing with refugees both offshore and onshore in some of the most inhumane ways possible have occurred and still occur under his watch. So many suicided or set themselves on fire and the murder of Reza Berati on Manus Island took place during his time as immigration minister. This crime has never been properly taken seriously or resolved and Morrison lied about the event and took no responsibility as usual. The UN considered our treatment of refugees as “akin to torture”. Many stories we will never know because it was he that started restricting what we knew. This is also the guy who did not want to pay for relatives to go to the funeral after a boat sank off Christmas Island drowning many asylum seekers. Even today he seems to have no concern that the Biloel
family with two children can be locked up indefinitely on Christmas Island when they were happily integrated in Australian society in QLD. Who cares about their children? Between Tudge, Morrison and and Dutton they appear to take some sort of sadistic pleasure out of making these people suffer. This has been Australia’s Xinjiang, and cover-ups abound.
Then there is our treatment of indigenous Australians and obvious rejection of their plight and what happened to them historically. Still too many deaths in custody and delays in addressing changes to the Australian Constitution or allowing a representative group to advise government. No progress in the least. Then they persist with their Indue welfare card in Aboriginal outback regions because it makes money for crony mates yet they have been told over and over again that it does not work.
Robot debt? What a way to treat fellow Australians, and many may have died due to the treatment they got. No real apology only that he, the one who implemented robodebt, said he “would” apologize, in carefully chosen words meant to avoid apologizing.
While they criticise China they are the worst government in history in terms of wanting to monitor all Australians, introduce draconian laws that move us a step further towards fascism and totalitarianism, and then they construct secret trials for whistle blowers as we see with the East Timor case made up to protect Lord Downer.
People who live in glasshouses should not throw stones. And don’t the Chinese know it.