28 May 2012

Another ADFA cadet arrested for sexual offences

28 May 2012 | johnboy

A 21-year-old Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) cadet has been arrested following an incident at ADFA earlier this month.

Police will allege that on Sunday, May 6 the man entered the room of a female officer cadet and committed acts of indecency upon her.

On Sunday, May 27 the man was arrested and taken to the ACT Watch House where he received bail.

He will appear at the ACT Magistrates Court on Tuesday, May 29 2012.

[Courtesy ACT Policing]

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Truthiness9:38 am 31 May 12

I do not wish to depict all soldiers as horrible people, i don’t think lions are horrid, just dangerous. Obviously the ADF is quite good at training people to still be able to interact with civilians, as the collective testimony here will attest, all I am saying is that some people will inevitably crack during that training.

As for there being good people and bad people, I don’t believe that for an instant. There are very few people in this world who are “bad”, there are just different kinds of good. A muslim extremist is not evil, they are doing what seems good to them.

I put it to you that the best way to “combat” these other kinds of good is to reconcile the differences between their idea of good and our idea of good. Killing someone’s family and friends is never going to convince them that your ideas are good. Violence only ever begets violence, while it might buy some period of enforced peace, ultimately that victory is pyric, since it comes at the cost of justifying violence, which will ultimately convince others to use violence against us.

Given that globaly terrorists have killed orders of magnitude less people than the “coalition of the willing”, their idea of good seems actually to result in less deaths than our idea of good, no matter how we demonise their ideology. Furthermore, who was the initial agressor? Was it the strikes on 911? No, the british have been invading countries and overthrowing governments in the middle east for centuries. The Americans have invaded and overthrown more countries than anyone else in the past century. If “good” were determined by peacefulness, our allies would be some of the most evil empires ever constructed. So how is good determined, what makes us good?

I do not buy the line that we need violent men to protect us, if anything history has shown our violent men are the most frequent reason we get attacked. The “terrorists” don’t hate us for our “freedoms”, they hate us because we keep attacking and suppressing them, overthrowing their democratically elected governments and replacing them with puppet dictatorships, and when those puppets turn against us, we destroy them and replace them with another puppet.

Invading them again, overthrowing their governments again, killing their families again, none of that will win us peace. “There is no path to peace, peace is the path.”

HenryBG8:38 pm 30 May 12

basketofcat said :

BerraBoy68 said :

The military is full of people who are trained to stop those who seek to do nasty things to the innocent, like you.

Pre-emptive and proactive defence is such a nice policy, isn’t it?

Who invaded Poland? Whose army raped 67% of East Timor’s females over the age of 11? Who blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas?

Wasn’t us.

You basically have no idea what you’re talking about. There are bad guys, and there are good guys. If you can’t tell the difference, that makes you an idiot.

basketofcat7:09 pm 30 May 12

BerraBoy68 said :

The military is full of people who are trained to stop those who seek to do nasty things to the innocent, like you.

Pre-emptive and proactive defence is such a nice policy, isn’t it? Such a good thing DFAT, AusAID, etc don’t get in the way, and aren’t attractive places at which to work. Would be a terrible world.

bikhet7:03 pm 30 May 12

Truthiness said :

Recruits are put through a process where they dehumanise fellow humans and elevate their own value beyond that of others, and that is especially true of officers.

This is contrary to my experience dealing with the ADF as a civilian. Sure, there are some who think the sun comes out when they bend over, but they usually grow out of that or they don’t rise very far.

BerraBoy686:37 pm 30 May 12

I’m thinking ‘truthiness’ needs to change their name to ‘opinionated’.

I’ve spent the best part of my life so far working with Defence in a variety of roles, that is in uniform, as a consultant and as a pubic servant. Russell is populated by a variety of civil and Defence people with a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds. Describing all Defence people as killers does them a great disservice.

Far from being de-humanised, the majority of those in uniform (from my actual experience, and having worked in the Navy and Army) are no different to the average civilian, they just have a more action packed and dangerous job. This in uniform (especially those at Russell, Campbell Park, BP or anywhere else they work) tend to be more loyal, more driven, more professional and more trustworthy than many non-uniformed people I’ve met and worked with.

In fact they also tend to be devoted to their families and are, surprisingly, less quick to temper instead relying on reasoned arguments to make their point. Sure, a high number of very junior servicemen live with weapons within arms reach, but that’s life on operations. Try being caught out by insurgents, rebels etc. when your weapon is 50 meters away… it won’t end well. The fact that these guys very rarely fire off a round accidentally (that’s what we call a negligent discharge, Truthiness), despite their weapons being loaded speaks to their discipline and professionalism. The punishment for such dangerous incidents is high for the individual concerned.

I also encourage you to look back through newspapers and count the incidents where service personnel have helped catch criminals, or saved life’s of innocent people and even delivered babies, due to their excellent first aid and life-saving training. It’d be hard for you to hard to argue these folk are de-humanised.

As for your wild generalisation that “compared to the average non-combatant, they aren’t all that nice, primarily because they shoot people and non-combatants don’t”. Go to any prison in Aust and count how many of those in there for murder, assault with a deadly weapon or any other anti-social crime are ex-serviceman. Chances are they are almost exclusively ‘non-combatants’.

Prisons are full of people who were never trained to do nasty things but do them anyway – argue that one. The military is full of people who are trained to stop those who seek to do nasty things to the innocent, like you.

LSWCHP6:09 pm 30 May 12

Truthiness said :

I didn’t say the ADF policy was boots on necks,

I am saying things are only as nice as what they do. Its all well and good to say Australian soldiers are nice, and compared to other country’s soldiers that may be true. But compared to the average non-combatant, they aren’t all that nice, primarily because they shoot people and non-combatants don’t.

A pair of boots might be lovely, it might be the nicest pair of boots ever made, but if they are stepping on your head, they aren’t really all that nice are they?

Now Australian troops don’t typically stomp on heads as much as say the yanks do, but the role of soldiers is essentially to stomp on heads. So saying soldiers are nice is like saying a lion is nice, maybe compared to other lions they are nice, you might even get a cuddle, but when it comes down to it, they’ll rip your face off, and that is not very nice.

All of this leads back to my initial point, which is: You can’t train people to do nasty things and then be surprised when they do nasty things. Recruits are put through a process where they dehumanise fellow humans and elevate their own value beyond that of others, and that is especially true of officers. So you get a bunch of young people, elevate them above everyone else, teach them to treat human life as a commodity, and then wonder why they treat others like shit.

It should come as no surprise when they then dehumanise and objectify others, and while we can try to limit it, ultimately they will always go through the dehumanisation process, because thats what we want them to do, without that disconnect from their humanity they can’t be truly effective killers, or leaders.

Well I saw the bit where you said “saying Australian troops are nice is like saying Australian boots are nice, it doesn’t mean much when they are standing on your neck.”, which was exemplified by the yarn about Soldiers Behaving Badly. I interpreted that as describing the ADF involvement in East Timor as a brutal occupation with “boots on necks”, supported govenment policy in that direction. Maybe that’s not your intent, but that’s how it came across to me.

If you’re intent was to point out that getting young men to spend their formative years learning to be cold-hearted ruthless killers will distort their personalities and make them “interesting”, then you’ll get no argument from me. I spent some time in the game, and I was given praise, accolades and promotion because of my excellent killing abilities. That may sound weird, but that’s what the armed forces are about – killing people.

The experience changed me enormously, and probably not for the better, but it is what it is. However, like most ADF members (returning to the OP) regardless of the changes to my personality brought about by my military training, I’ve never, ever felt the urge to molest women.

I spoke recently to the guy who runs the ADF personnel department – a RAAF officer whose name now escapes me. He acknowledged the difficulty of recruiting people into the killing trades, but said that most recruits are able to rationalise it one way or another and almost all of them operate within the normal bounds of our society throughout their lives. But it’s very important that they weed out those who really, really, really want to Kill, Pillage and Plunder. His point, which I agree with, was that people who behave badly in the ADF are generally people who will behave badly anywhere, regardless of their military training. Everybody else is pretty normal, apart from some unusual skills that they don’t use in normal life.

I could go on and on about this, but I’m already in the seventeen post nutbag zone, so I’ll let someone else have a go.

HenryBG5:41 pm 30 May 12

PBO said :

Just back on the original topic, he was not even an Australian service-person.

This may or may not change the bearing of this discussion.

I vote we invade whichever country he came from and make them pay.

Truthiness4:27 pm 30 May 12

I didn’t say the ADF policy was boots on necks,

I am saying things are only as nice as what they do. Its all well and good to say Australian soldiers are nice, and compared to other country’s soldiers that may be true. But compared to the average non-combatant, they aren’t all that nice, primarily because they shoot people and non-combatants don’t.

A pair of boots might be lovely, it might be the nicest pair of boots ever made, but if they are stepping on your head, they aren’t really all that nice are they?

Now Australian troops don’t typically stomp on heads as much as say the yanks do, but the role of soldiers is essentially to stomp on heads. So saying soldiers are nice is like saying a lion is nice, maybe compared to other lions they are nice, you might even get a cuddle, but when it comes down to it, they’ll rip your face off, and that is not very nice.

All of this leads back to my initial point, which is: You can’t train people to do nasty things and then be surprised when they do nasty things. Recruits are put through a process where they dehumanise fellow humans and elevate their own value beyond that of others, and that is especially true of officers. So you get a bunch of young people, elevate them above everyone else, teach them to treat human life as a commodity, and then wonder why they treat others like shit.

It should come as no surprise when they then dehumanise and objectify others, and while we can try to limit it, ultimately they will always go through the dehumanisation process, because thats what we want them to do, without that disconnect from their humanity they can’t be truly effective killers, or leaders.

PBO4:08 pm 30 May 12

Just back on the original topic, he was not even an Australian service-person.

This may or may not change the bearing of this discussion.

LSWCHP3:48 pm 30 May 12

Jim Jones said :

PBO said :

I’m going to sit back and watch this one as LSWCHP and Thumper are doing a grand job of nailing down reality.

Curiously, what was your role in East Timor Truthiness?

I support Australian military action in East Timor – but do you really think that there aren’t any d***heads in the military? That public relations can’t be improved?

The dude has related one instance where there were jerkwads doing what jerkwads do, and it’s being denied because ‘it’s a rifle, not a gun’, ‘they’re soldiers, not flower arrangers’ (WTF does this mean? It’s okay to be a jerkwad if you’re in the army?)

How about a dose of actual reality – in which the black and white view of the armed forces is recognised to be a little more grey.

Or are we all gonna keep fawning over the immortal diggers who can do no wrong and are the eternal guardians of freedom?

Standard tactics, hey Jim? Dump on people for saying things that they never said. Goebbels was a master of that sort of nonsense too, but it doesn’t always work.

I never said there were no dickheads in the military. I’ve known heaps of them. I believe ADF PR can certainly be improved. I never stated anywhere that diggers can do no wrong (quite the opposite) or that they’re eternal guardians of freedom. Whenever you attempt to put words in my mouth like that, I’ll clarify your obfuscations before I continue, so it might save us all a lot of time if you don’t do it.

Anyway…

The first para of what Truthiness wrote was a little yarn about drunk obnoxious soldiers stirring up the locals in a pub while armed with machine guns and live ammo.

In my response, I acknowledged that there may well have been some drunk diggers behaving badly. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But the “machine gun” bit was very important because it was simply impossible. Groups of Australian soldiers aren’t armed with machine guns, so it seemed very likely that there was a little poetic licence at work there, to make the story sound better. After all, a story about a group of drunks at Mooseheads doesn’t sound nearly as interesting as a group of drunks at Mooseheads carrying machine guns, does it?

More importantly, the theme of what Truthiness was writing about was summed up in his last, offensive, para about Australian boots on other peoples necks. Going from a bunch of individual diggers behaving badly in a pub (with or without machine guns) to boots on people’s necks as national policy seems to be drawing a pretty long bow.

We seemed to have travelled quite a distance from an ADFA cadet behaving badly.