Australia's most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith was recently arrested in connection to war crimes in the Afghan War. ---- Conservative media is clearly relishing the opportunity to turn this trial into a culture war issue, with "real Aussie patriots" supporting Roberts-Smith and "terrorist sympathising lefties" against him. Right-wing militarists, like Pauline Hanson, demand that the prosecution of Roberts-Smith should end. Not so much because they think he's 'innocent', but because they believe civilians have no right to judge the military. They believe that soldiers should be able to commit war crimes with impunity. The right-wingers who push for this are backed by major Australian capitalists like Gina Rinehart, John Singleton and Kerry Stokes-the Channel 7 billionaire who bankrolled Roberts-Smith's initial disastrous defamation case.
But there's a bit more to their spin. One conservative line that carries some truth goes something like "The government cannot send a man into war and be shocked at the consequences".
Firstly, Roberts-Smith is charged with the killing of detained, unarmed men. He has personal responsibility for his crimes.
But it is hypocritical for a government to declare an unjust war, train people to be killers, and arrest soldiers when the inevitable happens. There's no arrest warrants for the politicians in charge, who are responsible for far more deaths.. There's no trial for the corporations who lined their pockets throughout the war.
The Australian state boasts that its war crimes investigations go beyond looking at a few bad apples, to looking at systemic issues. The Labor and Liberal parties support this kind of thing because they think it's necessary to protect the reputation of Australia's military. That was the motivation behind the 2020 Brereton Report into war crimes committed by the ADF during the Afghanistan war.
The truth is that imperialist war is always unjust and inherently produces people like Roberts-Smith. When a foreign power aims to overthrow a local government, innocents are always targeted. People are murdered, driven from their home, sexually assaulted and robbed. Whether the imperialists admit it or not, these crimes are accepted tools of imperialist war: the point is to beat people hard enough, so that they agree to the demands of the invading power.
The invasion of Afghanistan was criminal. But more importantly, it was unjust, and fought only in the interests of the ruling class. Had the United Nations approved every bomb dropped, and every bullet fired, we would still have opposed sending Australian workers to terrorise innocent Afghans.
The arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith will be no justice for the people of Afghanistan, even if he were to share a cell with George W. Bush, John Howard, Barack Obama, and all the other imperialist leaders. Arrests won't stop war crimes, because it is an entire system that is guilty.
A day after Roberts-Smith's arrest, Trump threatened Iran by declaring that 'a whole civilization will die tonight'. The arrest and trial of Roberts-Smith is small fry. The real struggle is against imperialism, and the capitalist system that generates it.
To put a stop to imperialism, we have to take the fight to the ruling class. That starts by building power in our workplaces. Without workers, nothing in society functions-including war. Peace is union business, and industrial action is our best weapon. From there, we must make connections with fellow workers across the globe. Together, from Afghanistan and Iran, to the United States and Australia, our class can put a stop to war.
We have a world to win. And only in that new world-one without bosses or politicians-will we be free of the likes of Ben Roberts-Smith.
For more on imperialism read our feature from the latest issue of Picket Line https://ancomfed.org/2026/04/imperialism-is-not-history/
https://ancomfed.org/2026/04/ben-roberts-smith-the-rot-comes-from-the-top/
_________________________________________
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten