Is anyone else following the Afghanistan special forces meritorious unit citation issue?
The coverage seems very one-sided to me. That one guy, Heston Russel, seems to have a very loud voice in the debate and is successfully paining the special forces as the victim. The real victims, the murdered Afghans and their families, do not have a voice at all.
The cynic in me suspects that this is exactly what the propaganda machine in the ADF wanted. Rescinding medals is a difficult issue for all, but compared to war crimes, it is a softball issue. So the ADF would probably welcome it as the distraction.
On Monday this week, Defence Minister Peter Dutton overturned the decision of Australian Defence Chief Angus Campbell to strip a Meritorious Unit Citation from more than 3000 Australian men and women deployed in Afghanistan as punishment for the actions of a small group accused of serious war crimes.
The timing of this is interesting - announced in the lead-up to ANZAC Day, but in the shadow of some serious allegations against one of our most decorated soldiers (and potentially others).