How many times is the Australian War Memorial going to amend its text for the display of memorabilia of the war criminal and murderer Ben Roberts-Smith?
Its latest change is to recognise that Roberts-Smith lost his final effort to overturn the result of his spectacularly failed attempt to sue Nine for defamation.
But the amendment only relates to the physical memorabilia of Roberts-Smith. As of writing, the War Memorial’s website contains no mention of Roberts-Smith’s crimes or his efforts to deter the media from reporting on his crimes, instead offering lengthy, detailed descriptions of his valour. There is no mention of his murder of unarmed Afghan men, including disabled and elderly people, and his encouragement of other soldiers to do the same. (Since Crikey mentioned the above to the AWM, it may have updated the website.)
Given that the memorial’s role is to “commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war or on operational service and those who have served our nation in times of conflict”, continuing to maintain a Roberts-Smith display is blatantly at odds with the institution’s purpose.
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Roberts-Smith’s crimes are a stain on the honour of the Australian Defence Force and emblematic of a culture of lawbreaking, thuggery and tolerance of atrocities within sections of the Australian military that, despite extensive evidence, has yet to be properly investigated and prosecuted by federal authorities.
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Even if you accept that the rejection by the memorial of journalist Chris Masters’ book on Roberts-Smith as coincidental, the War Memorial’s position seems to be that, absent of a successful criminal prosecution (and presumably the finalisation of all possible appeals of it), the dark history of Australian atrocities in Afghanistan should remain the stuff of footnotes and caveats in displays, and ignored online.
That the memorial doesn’t seem keen on highlighting the downside of our imperial ventures isn’t particularly surprising. It is only slowly implementing its commitment to recognise Australia’s Frontier Wars, one made in 2022 — against Coalition opposition — after years of hostility to the idea of commemorating the resistance of First Peoples to invasion and dispossession. But more than three years after its commitment, it has yet to start planning a display and no curatorial team has been appointed.
Moreover, the memorial’s intention is that the Frontier Wars will form just one part of a pre-1914 gallery involving the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion and colonial interventions in New Zealand and Sudan. That Indigenous resistance to imperialism will be surrounded by the commemoration of Australian colonial involvement in 19th-century wars of imperialism suggests either a profound ignorance on the part of the War Memorial or a particularly strong streak of irony.
Meanwhile, the transformation of the memorial into what retired Admiral Chris Barrie rightly described as a military “theme park” continues apace, with the massive, conflict-of-interest-riddled expansion of the memorial proceeding. The largest part of the project, a giant new display hall, is intended to commemorate Australia’s role in the disastrous US-led War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
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How far the experience of Afghan families whose loved ones were murdered by Australian soldiers isn’t clear, nor whether there will be recognition of the at-least 200,000 confirmed civilian deaths in Iraq that led to a six-year slump in life expectancy, or the convulsive dislocation of that country that led to rise of Islamic State, or the terrorism that those conflicts unleashed on the Western countries that participated in the war.
Instead, the memorial will focus on displaying military hardware like helicopters and jet fighters, a demonstration of the Western technological supremacy that brought only misery to the people it was inflicted on.
The reluctance to acknowledge Roberts-Smith’s gruesome record, the dumping of Australia’s Frontier Wars into a collection of imperialist ventures, and the fetishisation of Western military might in the new imperialist ventures of the 21st century are all consistent with a relentlessly white-armband view of Australia’s military history.
That history was founded on and then explored through imperialism and the slaughter of First Peoples at home and, usually, of Muslims abroad. Our defining military myth of Anzac is based on an unprovoked invasion of a Muslim country, and so it continues into 2025 with the celebration of our incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. At least there’s a small note about the crimes we committed. Though, as the memorial hastens to add, no-one seems particularly interested in criminal charges.
