Although this is a defamation trial there is no doubt what is also on trial are the actions of some members of the Australian army.
The biggest defamation trial of the modern era opened in the Federal Court in Sydney this morning. To a packed courtroom, counsel for Ben Roberts-Smith, Bruce McClintock SC, quoted Winston Churchill: “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
McClintock is the country’s leading defamation barrister and this is his last case before retiring — he’s making sure he goes out with a bang. There could be no bigger one: Roberts-Smith, the country’s most decorated living soldier, is suing Nine’s newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, and their former stablemate The Canberra Times over a series of stories detailing his alleged gross misconduct in Afghanistan against both fellow soldiers and unarmed civilians.
This morning, in low, deliberate tones, McClintock laid out the elements of the case: that war is hell and that civilians cannot judge the actions of soldiers because we were not there. What are the “rules of engagement” in war and what do they justify? How far can soldiers go in a country where the enemy can’t be readily identified?
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