How does the War Memorial deal with a problem like Roberts-Smith? |
Imagine being the folks at the Australian War Memorial right now. What a nightmare.
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First, you've got this bloke who you've made a big deal about and who is in all kinds of crossfire, Ben Roberts-Smith. And then, you've got wealthy Australians who think that what this bloke allegedly did was A-OK. Philanthropists. Also politicians. Gina Rinehart doing what she always does. Tony Abbott doing what he always does. He said it was "wrong to judge the actions of men in mortal combat by the standards of ordinary civilian life". Supporting soldiers in theatres of war, apparently no matter what they do.
Even though 21 of those soldiers, who we also admire, testified against their former colleague.
ICYMI Ben Roberts-Smith was arrested on Tuesday for alleged war crimes: five counts of murder. The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times reported on the allegations long before the arrest this week. Roberts-Smith sued. He lost. That meant the facts were proved to a civil standard. And the High Court last year refused to hear his appeal to overturn the ruling that there was substantial truth to war crime allegations against him.
These latest charges are criminal.
So what do you do with the problem of BRS if your job is to help Australians reflect on war? I asked Deakin University's Mia Martin Hobbs what she thought the War Memorial should do. She says the purpose of the AWM is clear. It's to remember, to inform the public about Australia's war history.
"The important thing is not to run away from it. There's been a lot of talk about taking down his uniform, removing some of the glorification of Roberts-Smith as a Victoria Cross winner."
Yes, it raises the puzzle, the dilemma, of the way both the War Memorial and the general public have bought into BRS as a modern day Anzac.
"But the better option would be to add more information, more context," says Martin Hobbs. "The difficult aspects of war history should be at the centre of how the War Memorial remembers war."
That needs to be acknowledged as much as the heroism and the bravery. Ben Roberts-Smith is in the Hall of Valour at the AWM. That's a big deal.
Should he stay there if he is convicted of war crimes?
There is no question he was brave. But what if he was also a murderer?
Martin Hobbs says he was awarded his Victoria Cross even though there were already rumours circulating that he committed war crimes. She says that in many of the interviews with other SAS soldiers there were implications that those senior to Roberts-Smith knew what had happened and had turned a blind eye.
All of those complexities need to be considered and included wherever the VC recipient is mentioned.
"I'm uneasy about just removing things because it can seem like we're pretending it didn't happen and we should remember that it did," Hobbs said.
Complexities. Always a tough ask for any museum, especially when those concerned are all still alive. Well, except for the dead Afghans. How poignant to hear the brother of the murdered disabled man whose prosthetic leg was used as a trophy to drink alcohol from - he wants to know what's next. We all do.
Earlier this year, beloved historian Heather Goodall died. She was an old friend, we had kids the same age. She even proofread my thesis for me - no greater gift. What would she have made of this? Would she, with her intense focus on Indigenous history, have talked about the way the War Memorial had adapted and changed in the light of what we know about the Frontier Wars?
I asked Anna Clark, UTS academic based at the Centre for Public History and co-author of bestselling The History Wars and, more recently, Making Australian History, how she thought the latest developments might impact the War Memorial.
"It's an example of how 'unfixed' our history is and how what we commemorate over time changes, like calls to now include Frontier Wars in the Australian War Memorial," she said.
Carolyn Holbrook, the director of the Australian Policy and History network, co-editor of Australian Historical Studies and author of three books this year alone, reminds us that what we value about the idea of the Anzac legend, of heroism in war, has changed over time. Where once it was more closely related to British imperialism and white racialism, now it's changed, hurried along by Australian culture. She reminds me of the film Gallipoli, which glorified mateship more than fighting.
"Fighting had a stench about it post-Holocaust, post-Vietnam. People were very turned off anything that smacked of militarism," she said. "And the Mark Lee character stood up for Billy Snakeskin, the Aboriginal stockman."
She also reminds me that much of what we value, among ourselves and that includes our soldiers, are attributes such as stoicism and resilience, good humour and larrikinism, standing by a mate.
"It's hard to take offence against those," she says.
Martin Hobbs, who co-edited Challenging Anzac: stories that don't fit the legend with Holbrook and who has written extensively on war crimes, says: "The AWM is where many Australians learn about our war history so it should reflect on the costs and consequences of going to war."
The costs and consequences of war and how that plays out for our national identity. Are we still the good guys? Some of our leaders pretend that all behaviour in war is OK. The rest of us can't do that - and nor should the Australian War Memorial. Its approach to the Ben Roberts-Smith dilemma requires more than just tinkering with a wall plaque.
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