The writer is in Australia
THE NEWS that the Australian Federal Police had arranged for a very public, humiliating removal of Australia’s most decorated soldier-hero from a plane at Sydney Airport, followed by his arrest, travelled around the globe at the speed of social media.
Even Elon Musk noticed.
It happened on April 7, 2026. The charge is war-crime murder. Times five. For alleged atrocities in Afghanistan around a decade and a half ago. The pursuit has been long, through government-created inquiries – the Brereton Report – and subsequent bureaucracies designed to get military scalps, in particular the Office of the Special Investigator.
I speak, of course, of Ben Roberts-Smith VC. It is, after all, the season of public crucifixions. Also the run-up to Anzac Day, our sacred national commemoration of our brave military men and women who sacrificed their lives in battle.
A greater example of sickening idiocy could not be imagined. Oh, the AFP also arranged for the media to be on hand to film this disgraceful act of state power.
BRS has been incarcerated since his arrest at the Silverwater Correctional Complex in Sydney’s west. Muslim country, as it happens. It has been said that the prison is run by Muslim gangs. So, for Ben, it would have been just like Kabul circa 2012, with the locals trying to kill him.
Actually BRS was imprisoned only until last Friday when, in a fit of common sense and justice, a judge released Australia’s most famous prisoner on bail.
The trial probably won’t happen until 2029. That is, when Britain will almost certainly have a new government. That far away. For a detailed academic analysis of the bail decision, see here.
Interestingly, one of the most powerful statements on Australia’s national shame has come from a Brit.
Well said, mate. It is literally unbelievable. So, this is how we treat our heroes.
One of those media figures tipped off by AFP officials about the arrest was one Nick McKenzie, a left-wing journalist who works for Channel Nine, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. McKenzie, along with his colleague Chris Masters, has been hounding BRS for years, one book deal at a time.
The public nature of the humiliation and the selective leaking of the arrest have featured strongly in analyses since. Other issues parsed have included:
- The impossibility of a fair trial for one already dragged through the legal minefield, including a lost defamation trial in 2023;
- The vexatious nature of the arrest and prospective court case for multiple counts of murder – no reliable witnesses, no bodies, no forensic evidence, no confession, a long passage of time, and the rest;
- Whether war incidents should be tried in civil courts;
- The impact of this treatment of a war hero on army recruitment – who the hell would join up now?
- The total lack of comprehension by suited civil servants in Canberra of what is involved in modern urban warfare, when your friend is often your enemy, and where combat is governed by ‘VUCA’ – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity;
- The tall poppy syndrome, the cutting down of successful men by their punier peers, some of whom – likely trial witnesses – may believe it was they who should have been awarded the VC;
- The media’s smear campaign and narrative setting;
- The astonishing amounts spent by the Australian government – some have said north of $300million – on hunting down soldiers who random Afghanis have said committed atrocities, including placing billboards in and around Kabul appealing for dobbers to come forward for money;
- Will this set a precedent?
- The creation of standards of war behaviour that are impossible to meet on the ground, and that are never adopted by the win-at-all-costs enemy, the savages against whom we are sent to fight;
- The double standards involved in punishing the soldiers who fought while letting off the hook both the top brass who gave them their orders and the politicians who sent them off to unwinnable, distant wars of political convenience – I speak of the George W Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard generation, the last of whom has had the gall to repeat the easy canard ‘no one is above the law’, a position, alas, Howard shares with the Greens, who hate BRS;
- The convenient memory lapse involved in forgetting that they were terrorists that the BRS cohort were fighting, and the duty of Australian soldiers to look after themselves first;
- The disconnect of those who have consistently justified the various Middle East interventions of the 2000s with (mostly implicit) recourse to just war theory but who fail to see that the same principles apply to on-the-ground combat.
Clearly, the Australian Government and Channel Nine have made massive investments in getting BRS. Without an arrest and a subsequent conviction, questions would be asked . . .
Yes, there are many elements to this story. Many dimensions.
One element of the BRS story lies in the broader context of creating moral panics and hunting for perpetrators, and the tactics used by the self-styled, public moralists to nail their ideological enemies. You see, we have witnessed all this before. The last moral panic (before war crimes) was priestly sex abuse, and (specifically) the government-led hunt for the late Cardinal George Pell. A man hated by the progressive class even more than BRS.
The modus operandi is familiar.
Create a moral panic. Find victims. Pay them, if necessary. Do book deals. Use the unethical, legacy media to besmirch the falsely accused. Use the power of the deep state and the politically captured police. Develop narratives for the court of public opinion, so that risible accusations come to be accepted by many, low-information citizens. Keep up the pressure, via social media, the vexatious litigant’s best friend these days. Get leaks from the cops. Hope that the target will sue for defamation, and get them that way even if the cops can’t. Rinse. Repeat.
And the media outrage continues post arrest. Nick McKenzie’s rag had a headline about ‘an alleged serial killer’ following the staged arrest. Really. The hunters of the falsely accused never give up, even after the arrests. And the trials. The pile-on is under way. The media want people to believe BRS is guilty, even if he gets off.
And does anyone wonder why BRS was arrested in Sydney? He is from Perth and now lives in Brisbane. Some believe it was because the authorities are ‘jury shopping’. Sydney is far more ‘diverse’ than either Brisbane or Perth, you see. And naïve types such as the aforementioned John Howard still believe that the ‘justice’ system here is fit for purpose, and we should just let justice ‘take its course’. Such a view is laughable in the 2020s.
This saga has a long way to go. Roberts-Smith vows to fight the war crime charges.
Will the generous benefactors who supported BRS during the defamation trial, including Gina Rhinehart, cough up again? Some very good and senior lawyers are said to be lining up to defend the accused. Like Karen Espiner, wife of the accused rapist and once predicted future Aussie Prime Minister, Christian Porter, who is another to have been hounded out of his career by the fembots.
And some of the very good guys are in his corner. Like Jackson Warne, son of the legendary Shane, who is fresh off his recent revelation that his father probably died from the covid jab, and from the state and peer pressure for him to get the jab. Jackson Warne says the arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith is an attempt to ‘crush the Australian spirit’.
Powerful words. Perceptive words. Words believed to be true by many here.
Then there is the father of an Aussie soldier, Robert Poate, killed in Afghanistan. Hugh Poate called the dramatic arrest ‘quite unbelievable’ for Australia.
Here is the Poate story:
Private Robert Poate was killed in a ‘green on blue’ attack while playing cards in a forward operating base in 2012 by a supposed ally, Hekmatullah, who was a Taliban sleeper in the ranks of the Afghan National Army.
Ben Roberts-Smith responded to the scene in Tarin Kowt, in Uruzgan province, as part of a small SAS team and gave chase to Hekmatullah, who managed to evade them.
Hekmatullah was arrested in Pakistan and stood trial in the Afghan Supreme Court. After confessing to the murders of the three Australians, he was sentenced to death.
However, four years later, as part of a US-led prisoner swap deal, he was released and returned into the Taliban fold to a hero’s welcome.
It is, indeed, a funny old world.
Very few Australian politicians have dared to express a public view. They have now been told to shut up about the case. Pauline Hanson, naturally, has been the exception. She has been told by an establishment Liberal to go quiet.
Good on brave Miss Pauline, who faces her own trial in early May, in the form of the winnable Farrer by-election, where the Australian polity will be on trial. Not least of all, in the minds of many voters, for what it has done to the bravest of our elite soldiers.
