The Spectator Australia piece (linked below), nails a bitter truth: if things feel bad for Australian veterans under relentless scrutiny, they're even worse in the Mother Country. Once you start treating elite warriors like defendants-in-waiting rather than heroes who did the dirty work the rest of us asked of them, the damage never stops. Both nations have opened hunting season on their bravest soldiers — all in the name of "human rights," accountability, and progressive pieties. The result is demoralised special forces, early exits, and a slow-motion betrayal of the men who kept the West safe.

The Australian Front: The Roberts-Smith Spectacle

Australia's poster child is Ben Roberts-Smith, Victoria Cross recipient and one of our most decorated SAS soldiers. What should have been straightforward recognition of extraordinary courage in Afghanistan has become a years-long legal crucifixion: arrests, civil suits, immunity deals for witnesses, and endless media framing of elite operators as potential war criminals. The message to serving soldiers is crystal clear — pull the trigger in combat, and years later you might face a courtroom replay where lawyers and activists get to second-guess split-second decisions made under fire.

This isn't justice. It's lawfare dressed up as moral reckoning.

Britain: The Mother of All Debacles

As the article linked below points out, if Australia is bad, the UK is worse. The SAS is haemorrhaging talent. Elite soldiers are applying for premature release in significant numbers because they fear the inevitable "knock on the door" from human rights lawyers years after operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria. Decades-old cases from Northern Ireland keep resurfacing. Massive inquiries (Iraq Historic Allegations Team, Al-Sweady, Operation Northmoor) burned through tens of millions of pounds, often collapsing under dodgy evidence, yet the process itself destroys reputations and careers.

The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law supercharged this. Civilian courts now endlessly revisit battlefield decisions. Even the current Labour Attorney General faces questions over his past role representing claimants against British forces. The system ensures scrutiny never truly ends — criminal probes, civil claims, public inquiries, fresh allegations. For soldiers, it feels like there's always a lawyer behind them, ready to turn combat into a retrospective trial.

The Woke Regime Playbook

This isn't accidental. It flows from a deeper ideological rot:

Moral inversion: Terrorists and insurgents get treated with kid gloves and presumed victimhood. Our soldiers — the ones risking everything in ugly wars politicians sent them to fight — are cast as the real villains.

Civilianisation of military justice: Turning war into a courtroom drama where activists, NGOs, and foreign claimants get to litigate history under peacetime standards.

Virtue-signalling over victory: Post-9/11 wars were messy. Elite units like the SAS and Australian SAS did what elite units do: close with and destroy the enemy. Now the regime acts shocked that bad guys sometimes died in the process.

Demoralisation dividend: A military that fears its own side more than the enemy won't fight effectively. Early resignations from the SAS threaten operational capability — exactly what you'd expect if the goal is weakening Western defence.

Both countries embraced the Rome Statute and international legal norms with enthusiasm, unlike the Americans who kept military justice primarily internal. The results speak for themselves.

The Human Cost

These aren't abstract policy failures. They're real men — decorated veterans with families — facing financial ruin, PTSD compounded by betrayal, and the sense that the society they defended now views them as embarrassments to be prosecuted for political points. Recruitment and retention in special forces suffer. Public trust in the military erodes. And adversaries (Russia, China, Iran) watch with glee as the West eats itself.

The bravest soldiers aren't the problem. The regime that turns their service into an endless inquisition is.

Time to Choose: Warriors or Witch Hunts?

Australia and Britain need to draw a line. Combat deserves the fog-of-war presumption of good faith. Retrospective civilian lawfare must be sharply curtailed. Protect soldiers who acted in accordance with rules of engagement at the time. Honour the dead and the living who bore the brunt.

If the current trajectory continues, the message to future recruits will be simple: don't bother being exceptional. The system will punish you for it.

The Spectator is right — it's bad here in Australia. It's worse in Britain. And unless the woke capture of military justice is reversed, both countries will keep sacrificing their finest on the altar of performative morality. Our soldiers deserved better then. They deserve better now.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/05/if-its-bad-here-its-worse-in-the-mother-country/