Ben Robert Smith

I can help, drop the idea that you know anything factual about world politics, and what a media company said was true

I tried to explain this to you before MSN.

We, in the West, can no longer accept the concept of winning a war. Because it means there will be losers. And losers are victims. And for us, victims are now apparently heroes because they cannot be accused of having privilege.

B-R-S is being investigated because we sent him to fight but prevented him from winning. And now we have to make sure that we have got not only victim-equal-opportunity but also victim-equality and victim-equity. We need a sacrifice to our God of introspective shallow self-flagellating wokeness, and he is it.

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Carantoc said..
Everybody does bad things in war. It is what war is, loads of people dong bad things to each other.

If you don't want it to happen then don't start a war. Otherwise you got to accept it.

Yes, that's the general understanding of war and what we expect of our soldiers. They are paid to do a dirty job. What happens in war should stay in the war, as the thin red line between right and wrong is a blur.

I don't think anyone benefits from rehashing possible crimes that our most decorated soldier may have done while serving our country during a war carried out over a decade ago.

What message does this send to anyone now serving in our defense forces?

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hilly said..
Don't kick unarmed prisoner in handcuffs off a cliff and order him killed.
For SAS to testify against him he must be very unliked.

So SAS should be trained not to kill and are further required to be liked by all their peers?

Sounds like you want the SAS to be made up of Gomer Pyle's

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hilly said..
Google "Geneva Convention" and after that "Code of silence" to understand what I was saying.

Great, we both understand the definition of what war crimes and genocide are.

Tell me.... why does Australia 'invite' and roll out the red carpet for the president of Israel on one hand and on the other choose to arrest our most decorated soldier, BRS, with the other?

I don't quite get it.

Explain that to me like I'm 10yo headmaster.

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myscreenname said..
War Crimes charges......hmmmm, cmon!

I was never a great fan of his, but something doesn't seem right with this. Lot's of things just don't add up for me. Australia is losing or has lost it's moral compass.

We invited the president of Israel to come to Australia, who In December 2023, was photographed signing an artillery shell during a visit to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) border area near Gaza. He knew the bomb was headed for Gaza, to kill civilians. In my mind we should have snubbed him.

We employ our soldiers for a reason - to destroy our enemy's and help protect our nation. BRS is one of our most decorated soldiers. How on the one hand can we decorate him with such pride and nationalism, and now years later charge him with war crimes? He's gone from our most celebrated hero to the worst of worst criminals - it doesn't compute.

I don't know what it's like being a soldier, but I do understand war is bad and soldiers see things and do things that don't fit in with practices that wouldn't exist when there is peace.

Something isn't right, it doesn't pass the pub test. Why would the Australian Federal Police spend so much time and resources hunting one of our most decorated soldiers, who has already been discredited? In my mind he should have been left alone after the various media witch hunts played out.

Brains trust.... help me make sense of this crazy world we are living in right now.

That sounds like some conspiracy theorist looking for something to complain about. We do NOT employ our soldiers to kill PoWs or civilians or to otherwise break the rules of engagement and the laws of warfare. We don't tend to forgive and forget the Japanese soldiers who tied the 9th (IIRC) Battalion to trees after they retreated from Rabaul, and used them for bayonet practice. We don't forget the Germans who shot French civilians and others. We can't pretend that our hands are clean just because we are Australian.

The nature of the allegations against Roberts-Smith weren't known when he was awarded the VC so the fact that he was given the medal is irrelevant. It's weird to claim that "it doesn't compute" when the reality is simply that some of the facts were not known earlier.

The AFP and the defence forces are spending this much time building up a case for multiple murders. That is completely standard practice. How many murders do you want them to ignore?

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Carantoc said..
I tried to explain this to you before MSN.

We, in the West, can no longer accept the concept of winning a war. Because it means there will be losers. And losers are victims. And for us, victims are now apparently heroes because they cannot be accused of having privilege.

B-R-S is being investigated because we sent him to fight but prevented him from winning. And now we have to make sure that we have got not only victim-equal-opportunity but also victim-equality and victim-equity. We need a sacrifice to our God of introspective shallow self-flagellating wokeness, and he is it.

By your philosophy it seems that you would consider that any act carried out by service people would be OK. That's not the case. There are laws in war and breaking those laws has consequences, of which our service people are well aware.

Killing people who have surrendered has been considered a war crime for many years. You are utterly dishonest or completely ignorant if you do not know that killing prisoners was a war crime a century and more before "wokeness" was created, so "wokeness" has nothing to do with it.

By your standards you would be happy with the Japanese murder of Australian nurses in WW2, because it is apparent that you do no believe that the laws of war apply. How can you sleep when you are happy with the murder of helpless people?

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cammd said..

myscreenname said..

hilly said..
Google "Geneva Convention" and after that "Code of silence" to understand what I was saying.

Great, we both understand the definition of what war crimes and genocide are.

Tell me.... why does Australia 'invite' and roll out the red carpet for the president of Israel on one hand and on the other choose to arrest our most decorated soldier, BRS, with the other?

I don't quite get it.

Explain that to me like I'm 10yo headmaster.

The reason you dont get a lot of stuff is because you confuse feeling with thinking.



It feels wrong to me as well to be charging a war hero with war crimes but there are lines that should not be crossed. Like raping teenage girls at a music festival before killing or taking them hostage in then name of righteous resistance for example



If BRS has a case to answer then let him answer it before a court of law so justice can be done one way or another. Its been 10 years and apparently 300M spent to get to here. Something seems wrong with that in itself. Put him before the court and get it over with.

The criminal case has taken this long to build because the allegations are so serious and the prosecution team has therefore been exceptionally cautious. It's a pity it took so long but this is not a typical murder case.

Special forces are in a special situation. Their identifies are normally kept confidential for obvious and very good reasons, which makes the giving of testimony a special case. They also normally have a very strong esprit de corp, which sadly is often built up with things like severe and heavy hazing in the guise of initiations. These can be pretty weird but to give one example, if a member of the WA clearance diver's team invited you out for "a night on the piss" you weren't going to be drinking just alcohol.. or rather, you were going to be drinking used alcohol.

It is also alleged (to be careful) that Ben Roberts-Smith has also engaged in some very heavy threats against his former colleagues. Some of them are also implicated in alleged war crimes, which makes their testimony complicated as well. These factors don't apply in most murder cases. Most murder cases also occur on Australian soil, which is not the case here.

These "rules of war" are made by the winners.

BRS got sent to punish the Afghans for not giving up OBL. Turned out they never had OBL.

How many Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters do you reckon respect the 'rules of war' created by the west.

Their rule of war is "an eye for an eye". 2,000 civilians dead in New York is legal on their scale because some of those 2,000 believe in the wrong messiah.

You want to send the SAS and all the other armed forces to keep us safe in our western lifestyles by going to places where the same rules don't apply and do something that is impossible to do, while respecting something made up an entire world away.

MSN's point is why impose these rules on BRS but not on others who have been accused of far greater suffering and wrongs.

The entire Afghanistan war was illegal under these same "rules of war". So was the second Bush Iraq war. So is the current Iran war (on both sides). So is almost everything Israel has done since 1945 (OK, maybe not everything but an awful lot of it). So is so much else.

Of all the terrible things that happened in those wars this is one that gets prosecuted ? Yep, we turn a blind eye to those 'crimes' and instead go after one soldier, make them a sacrifice to appease ourselves of all the other sins.

So now we feel OK about how the West goes about warring these days and how we are morally superior.

It might not fit in your comfort zone (it certainly doesn't fit in mine) but the reality of life is that the rules of war are made by the winners to impose on the losers. Not the other way around.

I stand with MSN on this one.

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Chris 249 said..
By your philosophy it seems that you would consider that any act carried out by service people would be OK.

Nah mate, either I am not explaining right or you are not getting it right.

This isn't my 'philosophy', far from it. These are my observations of reality. I actually suspect I dislike them more than you. But me not liking them doesn't mean they aren't real.

By your philosophy it seems that you would consider that any act carried out by service people would be OK, if they had been ordered to do it. but not OK even if the situation they had been put in meant they had little choice.

So you reckon the Nuremberg trials upholding these rules of the victors on those defeated were invalid if all those people had received orders to do what they did ?

My point is why are we charging BRS with war crimes when we invite and welcome the president of Israel to Australia? It's a double standard of epic proportions.

Aside from the double standard I don't believe our most decorated soldier should have been pursued so aggressively and charged with war crimes. He has already been disgraced.

He was trained to kill, that's what soldiers do.

Carantoc makes a good point that it's the winners or the aggressors who make the rules. In many wars, rules are not followed. Look at Gaza, Lebanon and what settlers are doing in the West Bank: Israel made little attempt to hide that they targeted hospitals, schools, journalists, destroyed all infrastructure, limiting access to food and medicine etc. All lawful, they continue to falsly argue.

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cammd said..
He's presumed innocent until proven guilty,
that's a law you may like to remember.

Chris249 has not said he's guilty. Only hilly has been silly enough to suggest he's guilty.

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myscreenname said..

cammd said..
He's presumed innocent until proven guilty,
that's a law you may like to remember.

Chris249 has not said he's guilty. Only hilly has been silly enough to suggest he's guilty.

When?

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myscreenname said..

cammd said..
He's presumed innocent until proven guilty,
that's a law you may like to remember.

Chris249 has not said he's guilty. Only hilly has been silly enough to suggest he's guilty.

BEN ROBERTS-SMITH: Why Australia's Richest are Fighting to Save an Accused War Criminal

The recent arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith at Sydney Airport has finally stripped away the hero veneer that corporate media has spent years polishing. Now facing five counts of war crime-murder, the man once celebrated as the 'ultimate Anzac' is sitting in a cell at Silverwater Prison. For the majority of Australians who value a 'fair go', this isn't just about a fallen soldier; it is about a legal system finally catching up with actions that a Federal Court judge already found were "substantially true".

As a former SAS member who served during the same period put it, "Most of us went there and did the hard yards and came home without losing our humanity or breaking the rules."

There is a carefully crafted myth being pushed across social media that Roberts-Smith is a 'battler' being hunted by a 'woke' establishment, but the reality is the exact opposite. He is perhaps the most protected defendant in Australian history, shielded by Australia's 'billionaire's club'. With Kerry Stokes having already pumped an estimated $40 million into his defense-including a staggering $13.5 million court order-and Gina Rinehart contributing over $1.6 million to the funds supporting him, Roberts-Smith is no 'underdog'.

The case for Roberts-Smith being a war criminal was established beyond any reasonable doubt for many when the High Court ended his defamation appeals last year. The evidence accepted by the courts-including the 'calculated brutality' of kicking a handcuffed man off a cliff and ordering executions-doesn't fit the 'fog of war' excuse often used by his supporters. These weren't split-second decisions made in a firefight; they were reported as cold-blooded violations of the Geneva Convention.

"It's a bit rich calling him an underdog when he's got the billionaires' club paying his way while the rest of us struggle with the cost of living," says one local veteran support volunteer.

What is most insulting to our national identity is the suggestion that we must 'protect' Roberts-Smith to support our troops. This narrative ignores the thousands of Australian soldiers who entered armed combat, faced the same 'impossible' conditions, and managed to complete their service without murdering detainees. By throwing support behind a man accused of such 'grave breaches', Rinehart and Stokes are essentially telling every honest digger that their discipline and morality didn't matter. Justice should not be a 'purchasable commodity' reserved for those with friends in high-rise boardrooms.

As the criminal trial looms, Australia faces a choice between the 'Anzac myth' manufactured by billionaires and the hard truth of accountability. If we allow wealth and media influence to dictate what constitutes a 'war crime', we lose the very values our soldiers are sent to defend. The evidence from his own comrades and the victims in Afghanistan has already painted a picture that no amount of corporate PR can erase. It is time to stop treating a man backed by the nation's wealthiest as a victim, and start treating the victims of his alleged actions with the dignity and justice they deserve.

#Justice #Accountability #BenRobertsSmith #NoOneAboveTheLaw #AustralianNews

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hilly said..
You are not making sense. I suppose you think Trump won his Iran war as well.

Clearly something ain't making sense if that is how you read my posts on the matter.

We sent BRS and others to instill fear into the hearts of the Taliban. That was their mission. That was their orders. That is what they did. In war the soldier becomes the judge, jury and executioner. I don't like that, I don't support that, I don't want it, but that is what war seemingly is.

If we believe that the war in Afghanistan was going to be fought to some noble Queensbury rules of Eton and Harrow old boys then we have to be dumber than Trump. How did you want the ADF to instill fear into the fanatical and generationally war experienced insurgents of Afghanistan ? Write them a very stern review on Trip Advisor ? Report them to the moderator for being suicide bombers ?

So many apparent crimes associated with those times. The biggest I'd suggest being starting another war without much of plan about what that actually means.

So what do we gain by pursing this one ? Some sort of self-belief that all our other sins are cleansed because we've made a sacrifice ?