The article doesn’t say what arguments were disallowed: he is not allowed to cite the public interest as a defense for his actions, because the Australian military supposedly must follow orders over considering the public’s wellbeing.
They just said out loud that the military are goons that serve the ruling class.
Insert AlwaysHasBeen.jpg here.
Exactly. Armies exist to win wars. That is their purpose. Nobody has time to theorize it out from first principles about what is “right” or “wrong”, they raise them because a war has been (edit: planned or) declared and needs to be won.
Then they just keep them around to look spiffy and intimidating.
They will always serve whoever is in charge of them, though, it’s just more pragmatic than trying to serve an ambiguous moral principle. This is why we make ours swear an oath to defend a piece of paper from all enemies, to try to help resolve that challenge.
Disclaimer: I did not read the article, so my response is to your comment only.
My two cents: you just described what an NCO might say. Commissioned Officers have the responsibility to manage the violence applied by the NCOs in such a way that civilians/non-combatants (of all nations, even/especially the enemy nation(s) civilians) are not armed whenever that is possible.
That’s the whole “professional” thing. Just like a doctor (a professional) can’t pick and choose who they help, or a lawyer (a professional) can’t decide he doesn’t like his client, so he’ll sabotage his defense, etc. An officier is a professional because he makes sure the violence applied by the members of the military that are under his command do not commit immoral acts (plundering, rape, murder, etc).
Most modern military forces extend that responsibility to NCOs though, so that every members have the responsibility to not follow illegal/immoral orders. But that’s another point…
I agree. My only counterpoint would be that any view that fails to include the armies of dictators as well is fundamentally incomplete.
My view manages to apply to every army in history. This should simply be acknowledged, that’s all. We have an important responsibility to be better than that, but we do not always succeed. We are only human.
I would disagree that it’s more pragmatic. Decentralised autonomous cells are a key part of modern military strategy, and there are examples of horizontally organised militias being extremely effective against nominally superior centralised forces. Rojava and the Zapatistas are two excellent examples of societies without a ruling class that have defended themselves in spite of extreme opposition.
The centralised command structure is necessary to maintain a military that are goons for the ruling class.
The interesting part of this development is not that they are goons - you’re right that that’s implicit in the command structure - but that the government has said out loud that they should be goons and nothing else. It’s one of those moments where the mask of civility slipped.
Well said. The complexity of the modern battlefield, frankly, completely necessitates the professionalism the other commenter was mentioning, to even be able to deliver competent results.
This is one lesson that could be taken from the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Oof that is true. Turns out hardline centralised authority can result in an absolute clusterfuck on the battlefield, whereas units motivated by an intrinsic desire to do the right thing - like repel invaders - can be extremely effective despite a numerical disadvantage.
Actually one interesting thing I heard from an interview with a returned volunteer in Ukraine was that professional soldiers aren’t always the best volunteer soldiers. People with no background were easier to train, but if they trained in an imperial military like the US has for instance, they couldn’t understand why they didn’t have air support, to which the answer was, “You’re not the brass, you’re a grunt, you don’t get air support.” Apparently they tended to give up and go home when they were asked to fight without overwhelming firepower on their side.
Except now they’re saying it with their whole chest. His lawyer has been quoted saying it’s a step backwards to pre-WWII era law.
I mean I’m not surprised one bit, our country has been on this rightward slide for a long time. Some years ago Witness J was tried and sentenced in secret: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_J
We still don’t know his identity.
Yeah?
This wasn’t a secret, it’s really only American propaganda that’s got them thinking soldiers are hero’s and protector’s or something.
It was an open secret, but codifying it into law is yet another sign of the country’s rightward slide into fascism. Now they can’t deny it.
Man what the fuck are we even doing. Are the war-criminals at least going to be investigated as well? I can’t believe this country, really wish things were different.
Sadly, It’s like that in a lot of places. This guy had a huge amount of integrity and did something about a crime and he’s getting punished over it
Jesus
Ones already in court, Roberts-Smith and others are still under investigation.
And we completely axed two regiments of the SAS.
Other than going after the whistleblower, the response has been okay.
Man, awful that he is being punished for objectively exposing warcrimes.
They want to send the message that whistleblowers will be punished. They want to silence people from speaking out.
Free speech, but only if it doesn’t harm the government.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A whistleblower who helped expose allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has pleaded guilty to leaking classified information.
David McBride was due to face trial next week, but changed his plea after a legal ruling scuppered his defence.
McBride admits he gave troves of documents to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), because he was concerned about what he then thought was the “over-investigation” of troops, the court heard.
The information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes.
Months after McBride’s arrest in 2019, the ABC was raided by federal police, who were also building a case against the journalist, Dan Oakes, who wrote the reports.
McBride - who initially faced five charges - had intended to argue his disclosure was protected by whistleblower safeguards in Australia.
The original article contains 439 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
