[HN Gopher] Ex-UK Special Forces break silence on 'war crimes' b...
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Ex-UK Special Forces break silence on 'war crimes' by colleagues
Author : tartoran
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-05-12 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sys32768 wrote:
| There's a fantastic documentary on Apple TV called The Line about
| war crimes and the fog of war: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/the-
| line/umc.cmc.4u53f7zokr7g40...
| axus wrote:
| The evidence presented by the BBC in 2020:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53597137
|
| And apparently Australia had already released their report and
| investigation of their own behavior:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55088230
|
| But only the whistleblower and one other were tried and
| convicted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brereton_Report
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Wow, that's crazy, the _whistleblower_ and one other person
| were tried and convicted. Essentially just punishing the person
| that felt bad enough to reveal the crime, not the many that
| committed it and stayed silent. :(
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> But only the whistleblower and one other were tried and
| convicted:_
|
| Of course, what did you expect? Murder is legal if it's for the
| government, and, exposing your government's secret dirty
| laundry is a crime against the law. Business as usual
| everywhere.
|
| I'm not aware of any government that rewards you when you
| exposed it as fool/criminal in front of their voters and the
| world. Hence why whistleblowers get the book thrown at them, as
| there's one set of rules for the plebs and another for the
| super wealthy and powerful.
|
| And do you know what's most ironic? We're rewarding our own
| soldiers for the same crimes we hanged the Nazi soldiers for.
| Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS
| evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether
| you're on the victorious side of history.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| > Another proof that the legality of right VS wrong, good VS
| evil, has less to do with morals and more to do with whether
| you're on the victorious side of history.
|
| I'd say more that "legality" and "morals" are not necessarily
| related. Morality cannot be imposed by laws, and laws aren't
| usually driven by morality. This applies to both secular and
| religious laws.
| lwo32k wrote:
| Making a dent is possible, but to take on power you need
| other powerful people/networks backing you. Most
| whistleblowers don't do enough homework. They just want to
| dump things out there and hope for the best. That's never
| good enough.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> but to take on power you need other powerful people
| /networks backing you. Most whistleblowers don't do enough
| homework._
|
| Doing your homework and having powerful people behind you
| are orthogonal. You can do all the homework you want but
| powerful people got in power and staid in power for playing
| for those in power, they're not gonna throw away all that
| to die on your hill with you.
|
| You might think you can get away by playing one political
| side against the other for your protection and rally
| support, but when it comes to national security, military
| industrial complex, the ultra wealthy elites, etc, those
| tend to be part of and fund both sides so it won't work out
| in your favor as you might expect.
|
| _> They just want to dump things out there and hope for
| the best._
|
| What's the alternative? Once you start "doing your
| homework" those in power will already find out you're
| rocking the boat and will lock you up under the usual
| $ESPIONAGE, $TERRORISM, $PATRIOT laws before you manage to
| send a text, so your safest bet is to release all info
| quickly to the public/press while you're still able to.
|
| Time works against you here. The longer you're in
| possession of dirt that can get those at the top in
| trouble, the more you risk finding yourself _" Epsteined"_.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Doing your homework and having powerful people behind
| you are orthogonal_
|
| In the way sifting flour and beating eggs are orthogonal
| steps in cake making. You need to do both, and not
| necessarily in any order.
|
| > _You might think you can get away by playing one
| political side against the other for your protection and
| rally support_
|
| "Sides" are an abstraction. The first rule of power is
| its quantum are people. You need people on your side to
| have power. Not abstractions.
|
| > _Once you start "doing your homework" those in power
| will already find out you're rocking the boat and will
| lock you up_
|
| No they won't. Even these whistleblowers were publicly
| tried to scandalous effect for the impacted agencies.
|
| The step most whistleblowers fail to take is the simplest
| one when confronting a powerful entity: consulting a
| lawyer.
|
| > _longer you 're in possession of dirt that can get
| those at the top in trouble, the more you risk finding
| yourself "Epsteined"_
|
| This is nonsense and worse, a self-defeating argument.
| You think the people Epstein had dirt on didn't know it
| until he was jailed?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> You need to do both_
|
| How do you do that?
|
| _> You need people on your side to have power. _
|
| How do you get them?
|
| _> The step most whistleblowers fail to take is the
| simplest one when confronting a powerful entity:
| consulting a lawyer._
|
| If only Snowden would have talked to a lawyer, I'm sure
| he'd be safe in the US right now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How?_
|
| This is highly situation dependent.
|
| If you're blowing the whistle on the British special
| forces, you'd want to have copious contemporaneous notes
| referencing where official documents may corroborate your
| claims.
|
| You'd also want to introduce your claims into the
| Parliamentary record; first step would be finding an MP
| who wants to reform (not unmake) the special forces. In
| this way you can play into ambitious underlings'
| promotion dreams while dangling transformation resources
| for the agency you're criticising.
|
| > _How do you get them?_
|
| If you can't manage the basics of politics, don't launch
| a political endeavour. (This is true for whistleblowing
| and entrepreneurship, commercial and political.)
|
| > _If only Snowden would have talked to a lawyer, I 'm
| sure he'd be safe in the US right now_
|
| Chelsea Manning is out of jail. And Manning went about
| her business in about the stupidest way possible.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Well, should be easy to account, given that the same prop-weapons
| were used over and over again. Find a unique scratch or dent and
| start counting.
| harddrivereque wrote:
| It should be obvious to everyone, not just about UK, but all
| sorts of war invoke this. I mean, we all know about torture in
| Guantanamo and even on European soil, and it wasn't even that
| long ago. What makes anyone think anything has changed? Why would
| it change? Is there an incentive? Sure, there are courts and
| theoretical conventions, but the system is not perfect, there is
| no enforcement and also no incentive to enforce it. For all I
| know there is lack of enforcement for all kinds of crime - just
| extrapolate the mess with simple street crime to warzones and it
| doesn't seem as surprising anymore, does it?
| mtrovo wrote:
| I think it's deeper than that. There's an incentive on not
| going against your own military because doing so would attract
| the wrong kind of mentality and makes things worse when you
| need them. So unless there are real consequences against
| brushing it off (like burning down public buildings) that's
| usually what happens. But publicly people cannot be too
| explicit saying it because it plays on the image of the
| pristine rule of law that our politicians like so much to use
| on speeches to make sure we're above China and other developing
| countries on the moral grounds.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| War crimes have always happened. What matters is whether they
| are celebrated, ignored, or properly investigated and punished.
|
| Wars are horrible enough as-is; we have laws of armed conflict
| to try the best we can to keep a lid on the utter barbarity of
| it all, and to help our warfighters be able to live with
| themselves after.
|
| This is not a new concept; one of the first people to expound
| on the proper laws of war in the West was Saint Augustine, and
| his work is still the philosophical foundation of the subject.
| fmajid wrote:
| That's too easy. The US, British and Israelis routinely
| whitewash their war crimes. The Russians don't even pretend
| to follow the rules of war.
|
| In comparison, the French put a general in the dock when his
| soldiers in the Ivory Coast, at his implicit orders,
| extrajudicially killed Firmin Mahe, a bandit himself
| responsible for many murders, and I believe other European
| countries have done similar prosecutions of senior officers.
|
| Impunity is a choice.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How is your statement a contradiction? They said what
| matters is how governments respond to war crimes and you
| concluded much the same.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| My Lai? Prosecuted. Abu Ghraib? Prosecuted and a one-star
| relieved. Eddie Gallagher? Prosecuted, at least until Trump
| got in the way.
|
| I'll buy that all of the above were disgraces to the US,
| and I'll buy that the IDF is a little too cavalier with the
| rules of engagement. But come on. It's easy to pontificate
| from an armchair about who's "whitewashing" things when it
| isn't your friends getting shot. In wars, these things will
| happen and the best a government can do is put measures in
| place to stop it and then punish it severely when it
| occurs.
| fmajid wrote:
| My Lai was only addressed after dogged investigators like
| Sy Hersh made it impossible to keep covering up.
|
| Compare this with the US during the Philippines War in
| the 19th century, an exceedingly dirty colonial conflict
| with no meaningful press involvement to blow the whistle,
| yet a major was court-martialled for waterboarding a
| prisoner:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#During_the_Ph
| ili...
|
| Ultimately these practices are either a sign of rotten
| leadership, or poor discipline. Once you let the rot
| fester, it's only a matter of time before the entire army
| is gangrened.
| aatd86 wrote:
| then yhey criticize the wagner militia but they are not any
| better apparently. Maybe it's even hearsay.
| nemo wrote:
| making excuses for the Wagner Militia really is not the
| takeaway you want from this one
| aatd86 wrote:
| Where am I making excuses? The point is you can't criticize
| others when you do the same exact thing you are criticizing.
| Beyond that it's also legitimate to doubt the info one gets
| from people who are obviously hypocritical. That's all.
| nickff wrote:
| You're engaging in 'whataboutism'; if you'd like to discuss
| the Wagner Group, you should post something about them
| instead.
| croes wrote:
| Seems like Kurt Tucholsky was right
| tiahura wrote:
| It's hard to know what to make of an article like this because of
| the lack of context. Killing the kids of your enemy is bad, but
| was happening long before humans showed up. So, the question is,
| given comparable conditions, how did SAS perform vs others? Are
| they 1/2 as cruel as the French and 1/4 as cruel than they used
| to be? If so, we should be happy they're improving. We don't
| know.
|
| This seems like a systemic problem with war fighting and requires
| system improvements. The Heinlein in me is uneasy with a
| prosecutorial focus. Improve the culture, make it easier to take
| a couple of weeks off, whistleblow, whatever--but telling someone
| who volunteered to fight for their country to go get shot at and
| dodge bombs for a few hours, watch their friends get their faces
| blown off, and then flip a switch, seems unreasonable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Killing the kids of your enemy is bad, but was happening long
| before humans showed up.
|
| What does this mean, and why is it relevant? Some animals eat
| their weaker young. Would you include this in an argument
| defending a child cannibal? Did he eat fewer or more children
| than others?
|
| I think this is how you reason when you have no values. "I know
| it's probably bad or whatever, but it's 5% fewer than the
| French!"
|
| "Who are the French?"
|
| "An excuse to kill 4% more kids. If we need to kill even more
| kids, I'll find another country that at some point in the past
| could justify a few more basis points."
|
| "You know, some invaders in the past killed all the kids _as a
| matter of policy._ Who are we to say they weren 't great or
| moral? It's culturally insensitive."
|
| "Lets consult Heinlein. I know he has a lot about sleeping with
| your children, but he's got to have something about killing
| them."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >What does this mean, and why is it relevant?
|
| It depends on the question you are asking, and what you want
| to learn. If you want to know if you should lock up an
| individual child cannibal, it doesn't.
|
| If you want to know if the government is doing a good job at
| catching and preventing child cannibalism, then the trends
| and comparators matter.
|
| Are there more child cannibals than 10 years ago? Are there
| more or less than in other countries like France?
| huhkerrf wrote:
| When I read about terrible things done in a group like this, my
| first thought is: would I have done the right thing?
|
| I like to think I'm a good person, but these people probably do,
| too. It sounds like there's something rotten in the culture of
| the special forces that encouraged or at least overlooked these
| actions. What would I have done if I had been there? Would I have
| stood up against people I saw as my brothers in arms?
|
| Before anyone gets this twisted, this is not an excuse of their
| behavior or saying that it should be discounted.
| exe34 wrote:
| > something rotten in the culture of the special forces that
| encouraged or at least overlooked these actions
|
| I suspect it's the price of having the best killers on Earth.
| They necessarily have to compromise on something else.
| beloch wrote:
| Soldiers are not trained to do police work, yet that's what
| many are asked to do. An informant provides a tip that someone
| is manufacturing IED's, so soldiers are sent to investigate.
| They're not trained for that. Worse yet, they're the targets of
| the crime they're investigating. Police are not typically asked
| to investigate an attempt on their own lives for good reason.
|
| Even with appropriate training and when investigating crimes
| that do not target themselves, police are often guilty of
| abuses. In an occupation, the sheer numbers involved would
| guarantee abuses even if it were police operating under ideal
| conditions.
|
| It is usually not feasible to conduct military operations with
| a huge force of trained police officers. However, even with
| people of the wrong background investigating without
| detachment, there _should_ be an expectation for a culture of
| conscientiousness. That 's the truly shocking thing about this
| article. Soldiers were put into a situation where things were
| expected to go wrong, but the attitude from command was to let
| it go wrong _gleefully_ and to help cover it up afterwards.
| There was a complete surrender to inhumanity, on the part of
| command, before the conflict even started. That 's what is
| truly reprehensible. Perhaps we must forgive people for doing
| bad things in the moment and under duress, but there should be
| no forgiveness for those who do it happily, daily, and without
| complaint.
|
| This was a failure of command even more than it was a failure
| of the soldiers who committed crimes.
| tartoran wrote:
| I don't buy that, nobody with a shred of humanity shoots
| handcuffed kids in the back of their heads. Something is
| wrong with these people as well as with the ones who are
| protecting them.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| People used to murder their own children undesired a
| children as a form of population control.
|
| It was normal and expected.
|
| Murdering defeated enemies, and their children was equally
| normal and expected.
|
| We live in such a wonderful age that we can easily forget
| many "unthinkable" things are the default of humanity.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > They're not trained for that.
|
| Not even special forces?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Keep in mind that a good part of the reason why this came to
| light is SAS troopers doing the right thing and testifying
| against the accused.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Is there anything you could blow the whistle on right now? If
| yes, and you are not blowing the whistle, then then answer is
| no you could not do the right thing. It also means you did not
| come forward to do the right thing then either.
|
| If you can't think of anything that you could blow the whistle
| on, then chances are you were the one who did wrong and were
| found out about it.
|
| If neither is the case, then you are either oblivious or you
| are a snitch who didn't let anything slide.
|
| Come up with a list of reasons why you did not come forward.
| Don't belittle your crimes either.
| Tronno wrote:
| Jobs attract workers for many reasons. For some, it's sheer
| passion for the work.
|
| The boss loves a passionate employee. The team loves an
| overachieving colleague. The people love a strong hero. You
| wouldn't have said anything, because nobody wants to hear it.
|
| I do sometimes wonder where these folks direct their passion
| after the work dries up.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Australian SASR already had a major scandal. There's been open
| reporting in the past about some bad actors over the years in
| USSOCOM. It'd be interesting for someone to do some serious psych
| research on how many of these people were psychopaths who slipped
| through the cracks as opposed to people who broke bad after
| several combat deployments.
|
| The general public never payed much attention to GWOT as it was,
| but one of the consequences of it was that the special operations
| forces as a community were "rode hard and put away wet" as they
| say for 20+ years. Take someone, put them through a grueling
| selection process to become "the best of the best," which can
| cultivate a corresponding ego. Then pound the hell out of them
| over a full career with combat deployment after combat
| deployment, raid after raid.
|
| It doesn't excuse what happened by any means, but is there
| legitimately a limit that needs to be known about how much
| violence someone can take before they give in to the beast
| within? Military aviators have crew rest limitations because it
| was discovered that beyond a certain level of fatigue, you are
| literally killing people. The experience of Vietnam POWs forced
| changes to military training for being taken captive, because
| they found out that if you torture anyone enough, they will
| eventually break.
|
| So is the solution here that the SOF communities are attracting
| too many psychopaths and screening needs to be changed, or is it
| that people were being broken by war, which is a totally
| different problem?
| Yeul wrote:
| Western countries should never send their citizens into the heart
| of darkness.
|
| I will never forget the footage of Serbians chaining Dutch
| officers to lampposts to act as living shields against NATO
| airstrikes. The poor bastards were time machined into the dark
| ages.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Cobra effect.
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