Australia�s most decorated war hero has delivered a scathing attack on the Australian Defence Force�s top brass for their �disgusting� treatment of veterans and �staggering� lack of direction.
Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith said military commanders had run Australia�s longest-ever conflict in Afghanistan from the safety and comfort of Dubai without ever having a campaign strategy. And he thanked the Australian public for pushing for a royal commission into veteran suicides in the face of �resistance from defence force chiefs afraid �because we�re going to uncover systemic failures and systemic flaws��.
�That is the point of this royal commission � it�s what we need to do to protect the future of the military and more importantly, the people that are willing to sacrifice everything,� he said.
Mr Roberts-Smith is suing Nine newspapers for defamation over articles alleging he was being investigated by the Australian Federal Police for killing six Afghans outside of combat and was a war criminal.
The expensive legal battle is set to start in June and on Friday former governor-general Quentin Bryce was named as a reputation witness for Mr Roberts-Smith, who now runs Channel 7 in Queensland.
The 42-year-old former SAS corporal would not talk about his own experiences but said the treatment of his colleagues when they returned showed that a Royal Commission was desperately needed.
�It is a giant step forward for the prime minister to make this announcement and commit to a royal commission,� he said.
�It is something that is very much needed given the disproportionate rates of suicide that we see in Australia. We really need to address it.�
Mr Roberts-Smith said the person running the commission needed to be independent of the Australian Defence Force and �should not have ever been a service member or indeed anyone who potentially has ever worked in the same forms of government.�
He said the problem of veteran suicide lay squarely at the door of the top brass.
The �first flaw� in taking care of veterans was that �the psychological screening was a farce�.
�It was mostly an exercise designed to cover the senior leadership. It did not create any effect that would be conducive with protecting soldiers, sailors, airmen and mental health,� he said.
�We have been let down by our own military. We didn�t have as many casualties as perhaps we could have because the men and women that serve were bloody good at their job.
�And yet now a lot of these issues are stemming from the fact that veterans feel that their own military family is taking that away from them.
�It�s disgusting.�
Mr Roberts-Smith said the public had learnt from the treatment of Diggers returning from Vietnam but military chiefs had not.
�We�re very lucky to have a public that�s so supportive,� he said. �In Vietnam people came home and society didn�t understand the conflict.
�That was a black stain on our history � but we learnt a lesson from that.�
However, he said many soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan were not given an explanation of the reasoning behind the 20-year conflict.
�I mean, can you imagine being a 20-year-old man and sent to war, sent to Afghanistan?� Mr Roberts-Smith said. �You don�t really know why you�re there.
�And then your mate gets vaporised by an IED because you moved your left foot too much. You come home having not even been in a proper gunfight because you weren�t allowed to get out and do your infantry job as you�re trying to do. And then you sit there wondering, what was that about?
�It�s staggering to me that so many people didn�t understand why we were there.
�But it�s not because they were ignorant or that they weren�t great. We actually didn�t have a campaign strategy. It�s pretty staggering.�
Mr Roberts-Smith said the SAS were given a better understanding of their mission because they were targeting senior enemy figures.
But a political aversion to seeing regular soldiers coming home in body bags meant the special forces were sent back on high rotation.
�I have observed that the senior leadership of the military does not accurately report to government the physical position of the force elements of their units,� he said.
�I think that�s because people obviously are more worried about their jobs than actually letting people know that you don�t have the right amount of people to do the job, that you�re working your special forces into the ground, that they are deploying too much, that your infantry soldiers are not being utilised in correct roles and tasks.�
Mr Roberts-Smith said he was �very proud� of every service man and woman who is �prepared to do something bigger than themselves.�
But an inquiry was vital because �we don�t demonstrate enough that we truly care about the individual� and a royal commission would look at caring for the �the health and wellbeing of (those) prepared to � put their lives on the line and put their bodies at risk�. �Every soldier is coming out of Afghanistan with some kind of physical or mental issue,�� he said.
This article is from Matthew Benns and Josh Hanrahan as reported in The Courier Mail 26th April 2021