As Australia collectively ponders the extraordinary rise and horrifying fall of Ben Roberts-Smith, I can't help but think about the absurdity of military life for those who serve in active combat. To those friends who serve or have served, I have nothing but admiration, respect and gratitude for what you do or what you've done. What troubles me is the insoluble problem we expect you to navigate.
It's a pithy assertion to suggest that all wars are crimes, but just because it's a truism doesn't make it untrue. War is a betrayal of our best selves, and requires the people charged with enacting it to navigate the most impossible realities; to find a way to operate in highly traumatic situations without losing sense of their humanity. There is a need for all those who work in traumatic environments - accident first responders come quickly to mind - to find ways to compartmentalise their having been exposed to the most indelible horrors one can imagine. There are limits to human capacity in this area. Before long, the traumas observed cannot fail to be absorbed, leaving only two options: desensitisation or breakdown.
Many who serve do not have the option of the latter, because they are in the fight of their lives. The longer one is exposed to horror, the more the internal chemistry that defines one's humanity becomes poisoned. It's not a certainty of course, but it's surely an overwhelming probability. Soldiers will see - and do - things so far outside the conventional moral order, that it seems ludicrous that we expect them to think, feel and act in ways that bely their circumstances. Be 'over there’ but conduct yourselves as though you are 'here'. That is as an unreasonable an expectation as I can envisage.
And to make things even crueller, we believe in the viability of those who serve being able to live through horror - of perpetrating it, and it is horror, no matter how much it might fall within the conventional limits of warfare - only to be able to return to civilian lives with these memories somehow incorporated into the resumption of everyday life. The provisions for the ongoing mental and physical healthcare of those who serve is woefully, shamefully inadequate. These are people who should be at the front of every medical cue, never having to pay a cent, never having to wait. It is the very least that we can do.
To ask a person to cut down the lives of others, to live with the sight of horrific injuries - particularly to civilians and children - and somehow not lose a part of their soul is offensive to me. If they do not shed their most fragile parts in some fashion, they will break. If they break, they can die. And without that most human part of their best selves, they cannot be expected to act as though it's there and fully functioning. The actions which Ben Roberts-Smith has essentially been found guilty of doing are morally reprehensible, but I'd caution anyone who is keen to throw themselves onto the mounting pile of folk rushing to judge and condemn him.
I know someone who spent some time with Roberts-Smith at an event a few years ago and who spoke with him for close to an hour. He said that talking to him was like talking to a ghost. The question we really need to be asking is who killed him. As Bob Dylan once noted, 'You can always come back, you just can't come back all the way.' The same sentiment is haunting explored in the film, 'The Deer Hunter'. We don't just ask a lot of those who serve; we ask too much.
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