Justice for Afghanistan?

Ben Roberts-Smith is a war criminal. While serving in the Australian SAS in Afghanistan, he murdered four unarmed Afghan civilians and committed other war crimes. He kicked an elderly handcuffed man over a cliff. He machine-gunned a prisoner with a prosthetic leg, then stole the leg as a trophy and used it in drinking games. He ordered soldiers under his command to murder unarmed civilians. He assaulted prisoners in his care, and ordered other assaults. These are not allegations; they are findings of fact by an Australian judge (though under a civil burden of proof, and sadly not in a criminal trial).

That judge said that Roberts-Smith had "disgraced his country" by his conduct. The Australian government gave him a Victoria Cross for it. But now, he is finally being prosecuted for it:

Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested in relation to multiple counts of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians and prisoners in what looms as the most significant war crimes prosecution in Australian history.

Roberts-Smith is expected to be charged on Tuesday with five counts of war crime - murder following a joint investigation between the Office of Special Investigator and the Australian Federal Police. The maximum penalty for the offence of war crime - murder is life imprisonment.

Good. And hopefully the same will happen to the rest of Australia's war criminals. Because the Brereton Report found 39 murders, not just four, with 25 war criminals responsible. And they all need to be held to account.

Justice for Afghanistan?

The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants against senior members of the Taliban regime on the grounds that their persecution of women is a crime against humanity:

The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice on the grounds that their persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity.

It marks the first time the prosecutor has built a case around systemic crimes against women and girls, legal experts say. It is also a rare moment of vindication for Afghan activists, who over the last three years have often felt abandoned by the international community even as Taliban oppression deepened.

[...]

Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, said in a statement that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, are “criminally responsible” for ongoing persecution of girls, women, the LGBTQ+ community and their allies.

Good. And not just because of Afghanistan. There's also Iran and Saudi Arabia, and of course the US is increasingly going full-Gilead. And while none of those countries are parties, establishing a principle in international law that gender persecution is a crime against humanity will still enable their regimes to be held to account in future under other legal jurisdictions. Members of the Republican Party might not be able to take European holidays ever again.

Australia jails another whistleblower

In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the stories, Dan Oakes, was later awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for "service to journalism" for the work.

Today, in revenge, the Australian government jailed McBride for almost six years - a longer sentence than any Australian war criminal has so far received for the offences he uncovered.

The message is clear: when the Australian government commits crimes, the witnesses should keep quiet. Otherwise they will be victimised and persecuted. Its hard to see this as anything other than official government support for war crimes and war criminals. Provided they're committed by Australians, of course.

(And, lest we feel too superior, John Key passed a similar anti-whistleblowing law here, allowing the punishment of those who blow the whistle on the defence - spy deep state, which is yet to be repealed).

Britain's SAS hosted a serial killer

In 2020, the Brereton report found that the Australian SAS had murdered 39 Afghan civilians and committed war crimes. The British government is finally reviewing the actions of its own special forces in Afghanistan, and it looks like the death toll is at least twice as high:

Eighty Afghans may have been victim of summary killings by three separate British SAS units operating in the country between 2010 and 2013, lawyers representing the bereaved families have told a public inquiry.

[...]

Afghans were often killed after allegedly producing weapons when separated from their wider family by SAS soldiers, but there were five incidents where the number shot dead exceeded the number of weapons found.

The fresh claims are cited in a document submitted by the law firm Leigh Day, based on previous Ministry of Defence court disclosures, to a new public inquiry into allegations of war crimes committed by SAS soldiers in Afghanistan.

And these are the murders they have admitted to. There'll be a lot more they've covered up and kept secret.

Appallingly, nearly half the admitted death toll is due to a single soldier, who had a policy of murdering all "fighting-age males", regardless of whether they posed any threat. Which seems both genocidal, and the actions of a straight-up serial killer.

In Australia, the Brereton report got to the truth, and led to consequences. An entire SAS unit was disbanded for its crimes, and criminal trials are imminent. In the UK, with its long history of official coverups, and with politicians trying to "draw a line" under historic crimes to prevent embarrassment to the power structure, I don't think we can have any confidence that anything will be done. Britain will not provide justice for its crimes. Instead, these war criminals and their political accessories and co-conspirators will have to be sent to The Hague.

Australia's most-decorated war-criminal

Ben Roberts-Smith is apparently "Australia’s most decorated living soldier", having won a Victoria Cross for killing people in Afghanistan. But today, after a stupendous self-own defamation case, he's also been proven to be a war criminal who committed multiple murders:

Ben Roberts-Smith VC, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, has lost a defamation case in which he was accused of multiple murders of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan, a federal court judge has found.

Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Darwan in 2012, before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.

And in 2009, Roberts-Smith ordered the execution an elderly man found hiding in a tunnel in a bombed-out compound, as well as murdering a disabled man with a prosthetic leg during the same mission, using a para minimi machine gun.

It's only a civil finding rather than a criminal one, but it still raises the obvious question: when will this war criminal be prosecuted for his crimes? And when will he be stripped of his VC? Or is that now a medal Australia gives to murdering war criminals?

More British war crimes

Back in 2017, the ABC revealed that Australia's SAS committed war crimes in Afghanistan, murdering prisoners and civilians, and taking body-parts as trophies. Now, the BBC has exposed the same behaviour in the British SAS:

SAS operatives in Afghanistan repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed men in suspicious circumstances, according to a BBC investigation.

Newly obtained military reports suggest that one unit may have unlawfully killed 54 people in one six-month tour.

The BBC found evidence suggesting the former head of special forces failed to pass on evidence to a murder inquiry.

The ABC story led to a full government inquiry, which found Australian troops had committed at least 39 murders. The most guilty unit was disbanded, and prosecutions are in process. So far, the British government's response has been to accuse the BBC of putting soldiers at risk. But given their past history of obstructing investigations, while pushing for amnesty legislation to outlaw domestic prosecutions of English war criminals, an Australian-style response seems unlikely. But if Westminster won't hold its own to account, then we'll just have to rely on the International Criminal Court to do it for them.

It was always going to end like this

In July, the US officially ended the occupation of Afghanistan, slinking away in the middle of the night and not even telling their Afghan "allies" to avoid the bad PR of footage of them leaving. And since then, the Taliban - who the US ousted back in 2001, but who never went away - have been rolling up the country. And last night, it came to a head when they reached Kabul. The US re-enacted Saigon, ferrying Americans from the roof of its embassy. And the Afghan president fled into exile, probably with a container load or two of US dollars. And so the war in Afghanistan is finally over after twenty years. And the Taliban won.

It was always going to end like this. Armies can smash a country and overthrow a government and install a puppet regime, but they can't make people love that regime or fight for it. Unless underlying differences are settled - a big ask in Afghanistan - then the people you ousted, or their successors, will be waiting to take power the moment you leave. You have to leave sometime - people eventually get sick of spending billions of dollars a year and seeing their kids come back in bits to murder people on the other side of the world for no apparent purpose - and so here we are. All the money the US spent - nearly a trillion dollars, at last estimate - all the lives that were lost, all the people that were maimed or broken on both sides, all of it was for nothing. The only people who benefited from this obscene war were the arms companies and their shareholders, who made out like bandits. War really is a racket.

Aotearoa spent $300 million and ten lives sucking up to the US in Afghanistan. That was also wasted. Our involvement was a mistake from start to finish. But while we were there, we encouraged people to collaborate with us, and so endangered their lives. We have a moral obligation to those people, and a duty to evacuate them, and to resettle them in New Zealand if that's what they want. And it is utterly shameful that the government has resisted recognising that duty for so long.

NZDF gives the finger to the Burnham inquiry

Last year, the inquiry into Operation Burnham reported back, finding (among other things) that SAS and NZDF officers had deceived Ministers and the public, and that NZ soldiers had assaulted a prisoner. So will anyone ever be held accountable for that? Of course not:

Two soldiers at the centre of the Operation Burnham inquiry have escaped punishment by the Defence Force, including a Special Air Service soldier who assaulted an Afghan detainee.

Former SAS commander Brigadier Chris Parsons would not face disciplinary action after he had committed an “administrative failing” in a report, Chief of Defence Air Marshall Kevin Short said in a statement.

The SAS soldier that was found to have punched a detainee, who was not named throughout the inquiry, would not be censured because the matter was not properly investigated at the time, he said.

[That "administrative failing" was deliberately misleading the Defence Minister about whether the Operation Burnham raid had killed civilians, and then doctoring records to cover it up].

This is basicly NZDF saying "fuck you" to the entire inquiry, and to the public concern which led to it. They've been clear throughout this entire debacle that they don't think anyone did anything wrong, and now they're using their own coverup and years of delay as an excuse to ensure that those responsible are never held accountable. Rather than being dishonourably discharged and stripped of their honours as they deserve, the criminals at the heart of this will continue to serve, and by their presence continue to corrupt our defence force. And NZDF's senior leadership is perfectly happy with that.

That being the case, I think we need to admit that NZDF as an institution is unsalvageable. They are committed to unaccountability and deceit. And since all they actually do in practice is drag us into other people's wars, maybe we should just do away with the entire organisation, and replace it with a civilian civil defence and foreign aid corps, freeing it up to focus on its core - and valued - competencies: rescuing lost trampers, sandbagging stopbanks to limit flooding, and rebuilding schools after tropical cyclones.

Getting out

Twenty years after it invaded, the US is finally leaving Afghanistan. What's surprising is that it took them so long - its been clear for over a decade that their presence there was pointless and just pissing people off. But imperial pride leads to exactly this sort of stupidity.

Their invasion has achieved nothing. When the US invaded, Afghanistan was a failed state, riven by civil war. And when they leave, Afghanistan will still be a failed state, riven by civil war. While Al Qaeda is gone, it was simply replaced by other terrorist factions elsewhere. Those have since declined, but the continued occupation of Afghanistan didn't have anything to do with that. Instead, it was just an effort by the US to avoid admitting defeat.

The good news is that to the extent that US occupation and torture are drivers of terrorism, any decrease in the US footprint will probably make the world a safer place. Now, if only they'd do that elsewhere.

(And meanwhile, there are still 40 prisoners languishing in Guantanamo. Only two have been convicted in the US's kangaroo court "military commission", another seven have been charged but never tried, and three more might be charged. As for the rest, they have never been charged with any crime, and are basicly being indefinitely detained without trial by the US. This continued injustice is a suppurating sore, and it needs to end immediately).

Ending our unjust war

Nearly twenty years after they first arrived, the last New Zealand troops will finally be leaving Afghanistan in May:

New Zealand troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by May 2021.

The current deployment consists of six Defence Force personnel - three deployed to the Afghanistan National Army Officer Academy, and three deployed to the NATO Resolute Support Mission Headquarters.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said after 20 years it was time for the New Zealand Defence Force to leave Afghanistan.

Good. As I pointed out when combat troops came home in 2013, our presence in Afghanistan achieved nothing, other than propping up a corrupt torturing theocracy (to which we can add "misogynistic"). And the cost of that was Operation Burnham, spying on and threatening to murder journalists, decorating a child-murdering war criminal, $300 million (plus however more has been spent since 2013), countless dead Afghans and ten kiwi lives. It wasn't worth it, it was never worth it, and I'm glad it is finally over.

And now it is, we need to turn our attention to preventing it from ever happening again. And one obvious step is to forbid the deployment of New Zealand soldiers overseas without Parliamentary debate and explicit authorisation. This doesn't protect us from politicians herding us into a war, but it does ensure they do so openly rather than in secret, allowing us to hold them to account at the ballot box for it.

Parliament still doesn't care about our rogue military

It is the last sitting day of Parliament, and the last question time before the House is dissolved. So, are there any questions about the damning findings of the Hit and Run inquiry, and how the government plans to bring the military back under democratic control? Of course not.

NZDF killed a child, then lied to and misled Ministers about it, undermining the principle of democratic control. And through their actions, our representatives are saying that they're just fine with that, and that no questions need to be asked about it at all. If MPs are wondering why the public so often has contempt for them, this sort of collective conspiracy of silence is why. And we should judge them for it in September.

Parliament doesn't care about our rogue military

On Friday the Hit and Run inquiry delivered a devastating report which found that NZDF had systematically misled Ministers over civilian deaths. The report called into question civilian control of the military (and indeed, military control of the military), a fundamental principle of our democracy. So you'd expect our politicians to be demanding accountability for it in Parliament today. But you'd be wrong. There are no questions about the inquiry or the response to it in Question Time. You'd get the impression the politicians just don't care that our soldiers killed a child and lied to them about it.

Or rather, they don't care to know about it, because it can only make them look bad. The killing and lies happened on National's watch, so they don't want to know. Labour is shit-scared of being accused of being anti-military, so they're not interested either. The Defence Minister is from NZ First, so they don't want questions. And the Greens gave all theirs to National (oops). But the net result of all this self-interested arse-covering is that a major challenge to our democracy from the military is being allowed to go completely unexamined.

This is not good enough. Our "representatives" are simply not doing their jobs. And because they're all not doing their jobs, we don't get to punish them for it at the election. If they wanted to give people the idea that they were just there to defend and cover up for the status quo, they couldn't really do any better.

More British war crimes

In New Zealand, we've just had the report of the Hit and Run inquiry, which found that a New Zealand led raid had accidentally killed civilians, including a child. meanwhile, around the same time, the British SAS was conducting its own raids in Afghanistan, and theirs were a hell of a lot more suspicious. Civilians - all of them male, all of them "military-aged" (a military euphemism deliberately chosen to make people sound suspicious and cast doubt upon their civilian status) kept being shot and killed after being detained, supposedly after having grabbed weapons. But the stories were so eerily similar that even UK officers were forced to admit that this was probably a deliberate policy of murder:

An internal email requests a copy of the OPSUM within hours of the killings and asks: "Is this about [redacted] latest massacre!"

The reply includes a summary of the unlikely events in the official report and concludes by saying: "You couldn't MAKE IT UP!"

It looks as if the soldiers reading these reports had concerns that they were being falsified using near-identical cover stories.

A formal briefing note was passed up the chain of command by a senior member of the UK Special Forces, demanding an investigation to "put a stop to criminal behaviour". Naturally, the British Army dismissed it. Now they've been accused by a judge of withholding evidence from the courts - AKA perversion of the course of justice - and ordered to turn over evidence to their victims. As for the government, it plans to grant impunity to British soldiers for war crimes specifically to prevent people seeking justice through the courts. Its a classic case of the establishment protecting itself and its servants. But if people can't get justice through UK courts, they will simply have to seek it in The Hague. And by granting impunity, British Ministers will have given themselves a place in the dock next to their pet murderers.

Meanwhile, this is another reason why we should not let the NZDF cooperate with the UK or US militaries: because these sorts of habits spread. If we don't want kiwi soldiers to become murderers, we need to quarantine them from foreign killers to prevent memetic infection.

Vindicated

So, the Hit and Run inquiry has reported back, and found some appalling shit at NZDF and NZSIS. And while they quibble a few of the details - the name of a dead child - they basicly uphold Hager and Stephenson's version of events. The SAS went to those villages. Civilians were killed. A man was beaten by NZ soldiers and then handed over to the Afghans and tortured. And then, to cap it all off, NZDF misled the people of New Zealand and its own Minister about this, in a shoddy effort to protect the reputation of a unit of professional killers.

I have not read the full report yet. But a few things which stand out from the media coverage:

• The inquiry exonerates the killings as collateral damage in a "legitimate" military operation. An establishment inquiry which didn't even talk to the victims was never going to do anything else. Meanwhile, while they play legal games over the laws of war, the key fact - NZDF killed civilians - is swept under the carpet. But we should neither forget nor accept it.
  
• A number of SAS and NZDF officers are named as having misled Ministers and the public, or as effectively looking the other way on past deceit. Which obviously undermines the principle of civilian control of the military, striking at the heart of our democracy. These people need to be held accountable, dishonourably discharged and stripped of their honours, pour encourager les autres. Careers need to end over this, otherwise there is no incentive for NZDF not to do it again in future.
  
• The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has found a sucking moral void at the senior levels of the SIS, whose response to credible reports of torture raised with them by their subordinates was to use the "intelligence" and say nothing about how it was acquired. These people also need to be held accountable for their failure to uphold kiwi values. They need to be fired, stripped of their security clearances, and never work in government again. Because someone who looks the other way on torture is unfit to be a human being, let alone a public servant in a position of trust.
  
• Wayne Mapp's extraordinary admission that he just "forgot" about civilian casualties is absolutely damning, and shows that he should never have been a Minister. But it also highlights a problem with a culture of secrecy and oral-only briefings which enabled this to occur. NZDF and SIS love the mystique of "too important to commit to paper", but if something is important enough to tell the Minister, it is important enough to write down and give to them so they don't forget about it in future. And if an agency doesn't want to write it down - that is, document it for future investigation, not to mention comply with their legal obligations under the Public Records Act - Ministers should immediately assume manipulation and start asking pointy questions. The problem, of course, is that Ministers often are willing to collude in poor record-keeping (AKA "crime") if it keeps their names off controversial material. Which is why we need robust, independent random audits, and a few prosecutions, again pour encourager les autres. Because if we let agencies and Ministers disappear stuff down the memory hole this way, they get away with e.g. killing children, and we all lose.
  
• Pretty obviously, NZDF would find it a lot harder to kill children if we weren't constantly involved in other people's wars. The best way to stop it from happening again is to not fight such wars. And the best way of doing that is to make them incapable of doing so. Take their toys away, and disestablish the SAS, and we'll be a lot safer.
  

Will any of this happen? Not if NZDF can help it. But to point out the obvious, there's an election coming up. We should demand candidates hold NZDF and SIS accountable for their actions. If they refuse, we should vote for someone who will.

The NZDF procured torture

Last week the Hit and Run inquiry reported back, and the report is currently sitting on Andrew Little's desk. Meanwhile, one of the subjects of the inquiry - Taliab commander Qari Miraj - has spoken out about what happened to him at the hands of the SAS. he gives an account his his detention and beating at the hands of SAS soldiers, which is backed by SAS witnesses. There's more there about how he was tortured by the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) and how he was beaten and electrocuted by them. And then there's this bit:

Miraj has told Stuff, New Zealand and Afghan NDS personnel were “working jointly” during the period he was tortured. He said on one occasion four New Zealand personnel – two of them with weapons – came to his cell with NDS officers and took him to another room to question him. Two of the New Zealanders were carrying intelligence reports about him.

He believed New Zealanders and the NDS were sharing reports.

Miraj said no New Zealand personnel were present when he was being tortured. However, he said it was “a hundred per cent” clear from questions he was asked under interrogation by the NDS that questions had been given to them by New Zealanders.

Asked if he believed that New Zealand personnel were using NDS interrogators to extract information from him that could be used in the hunt for other insurgents involved in the attack on the PRT convoy, Miraj said: “Exactly, exactly.”

This has creepy echoes of MI6's collusion in torture - essentially, hand someone to a foreign intelligence agency in the full knowledge they would be tortured, provide questions, stay out of the room themselves, but get the answers and in some cases even interview the victim when they had been "softened up" (for a graphic example see the case of Abu Zubaydah). And in the end, NZDF - who were aware of the torture - were given Miraj’s "confession".

Its unclear how much of this was put before the inquiry. For obvious reasons, they didn't interview Miraj, and so relied on NZDF accounts of what they did to him and what they knew (some of which are damning enough). But if it turns out that NZDF misled the inquiry about this, then heads should roll. but that's the least of it. Because pretty obviously, providing the questions for a torture session (and being given the answers) is conspiracy or procuring acts of torture, which a crime under New Zealand and international law. Those involved should be prosecuted. And if the New Zealand government refuses, Then they should join the NZDF and SIS in the dock in The Hague.

Another Australian war crime

Ten days ago we learned that the Australian government was attempting to prosecute Australian journalists for exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanisatan. Meanwhile, today we have news of another war crime - a massacre of civilians by Australian special forces:

Australian special forces killed up to 10 unarmed Afghan civilians during a 2012 raid in Kandahar Province, ABC Investigations can reveal.

The raid is believed to be the worst one-day death toll uncovered to date of alleged unlawful killings by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Afghan witnesses and Australian sources have told the ABC that the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) operation left a number of Taliban dead.

But both say civilians were also shot during the frenzied raid, including a group of unarmed villagers near a tractor.

This isn't just an accident - the killing is described as a "mass-shooting" of obvious civilians. SAS troops were reportedly unhappy about it. But in the usual way of the ADF, the entire thing was covered up and swept under the carpet. Now, hopefully, there'll be some justice for the dead.

Australian SAS are war criminals

Australia's SAS deployment to Afghanistan has already produced allegations of war crimes. But now the ABC has been leaked video of one:

Four Corners has obtained video which shows a Special Air Service (SAS) operator shooting an unarmed Afghan man three times in the head and chest while he cowers on the ground.

His death took place within three minutes of the soldiers arriving in the village.

An Australian Defence Force (ADF) investigation later ruled the killing was justified because it was in self-defence.

The killing was one of a series of cases uncovered by Four Corners that may constitute war crimes.

A former member of the same SAS squadron, who was on the 2012 deployment to Afghanistan and has been shown the vision, described the killing to Four Corners as a "straight-up execution".

And there's more context from an SAS whistleblower here.

I have not watched the video, because I am not into snuff. But if the description is accurate, then this soldier needs to be prosecuted for murder. And the superiors who helped sweep it under the carpet need to be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice. Of course, that will never happen - the ADF will cover it up, as usual. And given the way Australia has been going, we'll probably see the ABC raided by federal police again, and prosecuted for exposing government secrets or some such bullshit.

And of course, there's an obvious question: the NZ SAS cooperates closely with its Australian counterpart. Have they been infected by this murderous culture? Have they committed similar crimes? And if they had, would any of them be brave enough to do the right thing and leak it?

Justice for Afghanistan?

The International Criminal Court has launched a war crimes inquiry into America's war in Afghanistan:

Senior judges at the international criminal court have authorised an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, overturning an earlier rejection of the inquiry.

The ICC investigation will look at actions by US, Afghan and Taliban troops. It is possible, however, that allegations relating to UK troops could emerge in that process.

[...]

The ICC judges also approved that the scope of the investigation should include CIA black sites operated in Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, where detainees were taken.

The latter is significant, since it squarely puts criminals like Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Yoo in the dock, alongside the murderers, rapists and torturers in the US military.

The US, of course, is losing its shit: while purporting to support international justice, they in practice oppose any suggestion of it being applied to them or their allies. The ICC is only supposed to investigate countries they bomb, not whether bombing is justified. But if it is to mean anything, then the ICC must conduct a robust and thorough inquiry into these allegations, no matter how the US retaliates. Otherwise, it will simply be a vehicle for victor's justice, and lose all credibility.

Lying about a failed war

Since invading in 2001, the US has consistently claimed that their war in Afghanistan has been going well, even when it continued year after year after year. Of course, they were lying, and thanks to the Washington Post and the US Freedom of Information Act, we get to see just how big those lies were:

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

This was a war that cost a trillion dollars and at least 120,000 Afghan lives, plus ~3,000 or so invaders and occupiers. And they had no idea what they were even trying to achieve, let alone how to do it. The sheer folly and waste is appalling. And meanwhile, statistics were manipulated and lies told to keep the public in the dark about it.

There's an obvious parallel with the Pentagon Papers, which exposed similar folly and lies about the US's involvement in Vietnam. But they had to be leaked; here, they were obtained under the FOIA - though only after the Post had gone to court twice. You'd hope that this exposure would lead to some accountability, or at least some change - but the US political system is so utterly dysfunctional that that seems highly unlikely. They won't learn anything, and it'll be all aboard for the next endless war.

Meanwhile, New Zealand has blown at least $300 million and ten lives on this shitshow, a war our "allies" knew was a failure all along. And yet, we kept contributing year after year. I'm wondering now whether NZDF ever did a similar "lessons learned" exercise, or had any assessment of their actual progress, and if so, whether it was shared with the Ministers signing off on those continued deployments. And no matter what the answer to that is, its not going to look good for anyone.

Still denying responsibility

Stuff's story on NZDF's negligence around its Afghan firing ranges has produced a result, with a commitment from the Prime Minister for an urgent cleanup. But this doesn't mean NZDF is accepting responsibility for the deaths and injuries that have occured - they're still refusing compensation. Which given that the sums involved are so trivial on a government level, just seems petty, a further effort to deny responsibility. But it is our responsibility: we accepted it when we sent troops to Afghanistan and took over those ranges. And even if it was someone else's grenade which killed those children, its still our fault for not cleaning it up, and we have accepted as much by accepting the full cleanup costs. This just smacks of the usual NZDF arse-covering and reluctance to acknowledge responsibility.

Unfortunately, its also looking like NZDF has engaged in its usual behaviour towards Ministers, their bosses. NZDF has said they received a report from Human Rights Watch about deaths and injuries on the firing ranges last year, which apparently spurred some action and resulted in a briefing to the PM on the issue. But she said on Morning Report this morning that she was not informed of any possibility of deaths. Did NZDF bullshit her, massaging the truth to equivocate away civilian casualties, as they did over Operation Burnham? I expect Stuff already has an OIA in for that briefing (if they don't already have it), so we'll find out eventually. Unless NZDF tries to hide it under "national security", of course.

But I'm also wondering why Ministers continue to tolerate NZDF, given that all they seem to do is leave these stinking messes around for people to tread in. Whenever they go overseas, they fuck up, and Ministers are left to deal with the fallout. Which suggests keeping them on a short leash, at home, is necessary to keep them under proper supervision.