The article explores different and contested narrations surrounding alleged war crimes by former Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on one veteran with considerable public standing, Ben Roberts-Smith. It shows how certain stories told to identify and condemn acts of extra-legal violence, work to separate these acts out as exceptional and different from wider violence in war, and thus support the normalization and justification of war violence more broadly. However, it also demonstrates how attention to the role of race and gender in shaping meaning-making around violence in war disrupts the idea that extra-legal violence is exceptional. It finally articulates a thematic reading of how allegations of war crimes are interpreted and rejected in discourses of support for Roberts-Smith expressed on Facebook. It shows how different constructions of extra-legal violence at different sites each contribute to the ways that meaning might be drawn from acts of violence into narrative formulations about liberal war and offer important insights into the political configurations surrounding war crimes and their relationship to national identity and liberal militarism. The article thus contributes conceptually and empirically to debates surrounding the politics of war crimes.

中文翻译：

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军事暴行、民族认同和战士阳刚之气的审判


本文探讨了围绕前澳大利亚士兵在阿富汗所犯战争罪的不同且有争议的叙述，特别关注一位具有相当公众地位的退伍军人本·罗伯茨-史密斯。它展示了某些故事如何识别和谴责法外暴力行为，如何努力将这些行为区分为特殊行为并与战争中更广泛的暴力不同，从而更广泛地支持战争暴力的正常化和合理化。然而，它也表明，对种族和性别在塑造围绕战争暴力的意义的作用的关注如何打破了法外暴力是例外的观念。最后，它对在 Facebook 上表达的支持罗伯茨-史密斯的言论中如何解释和拒绝战争罪指控进行了主题解读。它展示了不同地点对法外暴力的不同解释如何有助于将暴力行为的意义提取到有关自由战争的叙事表述中，并为围绕战争罪的政治格局及其与国家认同的关系提供重要见解和自由军国主义。因此，本文从概念上和实证上为围绕战争罪政治的辩论做出了贡献。