Meanwhile Chief of Defense Forces Angus Campbell Is Praying That He Won’t Be Held To The Yamashita Standard.
The bad news is that the charges against Ausralian whistleblower David McBride have still not been dropped. The good news is that he has now surpassed $110,000 in donations to his legal defense fund, leaving him with less than $40,000 to go before reaching the $150,000 goal. I would ask anyone around the world who believes in fighting for the truth and protecting whistleblowers to please contribute towards the defense of a man who did his duty, and also did right by freedom loving people in Australia and around the world.
Link to David McBride’s GoFundMe page.
Why does Angus Campbell still have a job?
Skirmish between Defence Chief Angus Campbell and Prime Minister Scott Morrison over military decorations will leave permanent scar
When he entered the White House in 1945 Harry S. Truman put a small sign on his desk that read “The Buck Stops Here”. Whatever decisions were undertaken by those beneath him, Truman took the final resonsibilty for those decisions whether he had made them or not. At the end of the day somebody has to be held accountable when things go wrong, whether in business, politics, or the military, and that person is the person at the very top.
As I discussed in a previous article, this actually applies in international law under the “Yamashita” standard, wherein a military commander can be held responsible for the actions of his subordinates despite not being aware of them or issuing them any illegal orders. By failing to discover that war crimes were happening and, by not acting to stop them, Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita was found guilty of war crimes committed by troops under his command and hanged in 1946.
Soul of Darkness
https://onecalgaryvoter.com/2020/08/12/soul-of-darkness/
The Brererton Inquiry released last month absolved senior military leadership of any responsibilty for the actions committed by some two dozen special operators in Afghanistan, choosing instead to strip the SAS of a unit citation and recommend a criminal investigation be launched against those few men.
NINE Aussie soldiers take their own lives as a war crimes scandal morphs into shambles, with top brass shielded & squaddies blamed
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/507894-australia-soldiers-war-crime/
At the moment Chief of the Defense Forces, General Angus Campbell, is immune from the reach of Yamashita although technically the possibility does exist that someday he won’t be. However I think that the spirit of Yamashita should be applicable to every military and government, that the leaders are ultimately held responsible for the actions of their subordinates and have failed in their duty by not investigating the matter and taking steps to correct it. Instead Campbell and his masters in government go unpunished with their carers and pensions intact. Weanwhile David McBride remains wrongfully under charge and the government has done nothing to correct this travesty.
If these men had any honour at all they would have already resigned, committing political hara kiri. Instead they expect others to pay for their crimes proving once and for all that they are dishonourable cowards.
The Advocate-Equalizer 