I have thankfully never experienced combat. But I feel a great resentment at the judgement of those who fight by those who have no idea. This is not to excuse real atrocities but to those who have never been there, it seems that there are many things, when viewed outside the real, physical prism of combat filled with death, that could be easily construed as "war crimes".
Things like this should only be evaluated by people who have had to experience it, IMO. Not civilian courts.
I agree entirely. And, here, at least, that used to be how it normally was.
To be fair, the Brereton Report was headed by a senior Judge who is an Army Reserve Major General. I do think some effort was made to have a soldier in the role - but his report was noteable in that it didn't actually identify accused people.
But the involvement of civilian courts has been problematic to say the least. And some of the media have stretched what I think is any reasonable definition of public interest - naming Roberts-Smith when criminal investigators had already decided there was no criminal case to answer seems to me to have been based on a desire for a scoop more than any actual intention to achieve justice.