Calls are growing for senior officers to be held accountable for the alleged war crimes carried out by some of our special forces personnel during our decade-long deployment to Afghanistan. The more we know about what occurred on some patrols, the more the public demands accountability. The fact that a pattern of behaviour seems to have been established over an extended period fuels that demand, as the egregious actions can’t be dismissed as errant behaviour that occurred in the fog of war. The Brereton Report went through in forensic, if redacted detail about dozens of incidents where war crimes may have occurred. Even more detail is contained in Justice Besanko’s voluminous judgment in Ben Roberts-Smith’s ill-fated defamation action. The verdict was damning.
One soldier has been charged by the Office of the Special Investigator and it is hard to imagine that other personnel won’t be charged with war crimes in the months to come. The Australian public, for whom the military has long held a special place in the national psyche, are entitled to answers as to how this sad state of affairs came to be. Media commentators, veterans groups and others have raised questions about the accountability of those “higher up” the chain of command. And herein lies the difficulty – none of those commentators can define what “higher up” means, while few understand the nature and definition of military command and control. Neither do people have a good idea of what they mean when they want people “held to account”.
