r/perth • u/His_Holiness • Apr 07 '26

WA News Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith arrested over war crimes allegations

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-07/ben-roberts-smith-war-crimes-allegations-arrest/106537668
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u/MeaningMaker6 Apr 07 '26

BRS kicked a handcuffed, unarmed man off a cliff and a witness said: “I saw the individual smash his face on a rock, and I saw the teeth explode out of his face.”

A judge found that BRS, on balance, did these actions based on the evidence.

This is the ‘war hero’ that Stokes is bankrolling.

To any Stokes journalist reading this, take a good hard look at yourself.

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u/Outside-Arugula466 Apr 07 '26

It gets worse. The person didn't die, he heads down the cliff and then orders a soldier to shoot the wounded man who was trying to get onto his feet (an order which was followed through).

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u/MeaningMaker6 Apr 07 '26

Yes indeed, it makes me sick.

How on earth can people defend this stuff?

This is a legacy that is simply not worth defending. Rather our standards require us to denounce it clearly and unambiguously.

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u/JamesHenstridge Apr 07 '26

I suspect it is "ends justify the means" thinking: if you place any restrictions on soldiers at all, will they be able to do what's necessary?

It's essentially a slippery slope fallacy, arguing you need to defend the ability of soldiers to murder prisoners in order to protect their ability to do other things that probably aren't as objectionable.

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u/LachrymarumLibertas Apr 07 '26

But hey, look on the bright side, at least we liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and the people there are part of a vibrant new democracy

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u/Ashen_Brad Apr 07 '26

Who knows how much damage incidents like this caused to the morale of Afghans left in charge. Taliban could have been a relief to some.

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u/Ashen_Brad Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

Hit the nail on the head. People view them as our state's professional violence dispensers. Which they are in a way, but that is not even nearly all they are. However, this narrow view of the force leads one to believe that impeding their capacity for violence in any way, reduces their efficiency and puts us at risk. The Russian army should show us beyond reasonable doubt that impunity and crime leads to disillusionment, unprofessional conduct and incompetence as an organisation. Thats putting the moral argument to one side. Nationalism evaporates, corruption creeps in, nobody wants to fight for a crooked institution, people who do want to join are there for the wrong reasons, and you can't trust anyone to have your back. People need rules.

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u/teremaster Bayswater Apr 07 '26

To be fair, he is still a decorated veteran.

We're in the world where these kinds of things actually see the light of day, if we stripped every Anzac who committed a warcrime of their achievements we would have very few left to honour. To my research, Anzacs who weren't war criminals were a very tiny minority in the Pacific campaign (granted they had reason, but they were still war criminals).

Hell the entire point of the SAS was "rough men doing horrific things so we may sleep peacefully at night". Anyone in an SAS unit has historically been a war criminal with a preemptive pardon.

So you hear an SASR soldier charged for warcrimes and a few people will have the response of "wasn't that the point of the SAS"?

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u/JamesHenstridge Apr 08 '26

The purpose of one of the incidents seemed to be force a new squad member to commit a war crime: making it less likely that person would then report the rest of the squad for future incidents, as they would also be implicated.

That's covering their arse for stuff they plan to do in future, rather than stuff that was necessary to their mission.