I was sitting at work last Monday at 11 when an announcement came over the building loudspeaker about Remembrance Day and to tell us to observe the traditional minutes silence. As I watched all the young Chinese people in the office standing round looking perplexed, for the first time in a long time, I too began to wonder, what is this all about? What exactly are we remembering here? And what relevance does this have in a country that is increasingly multi-cultural and where the vast majority of people have not experienced the ravages of war?
Like a lot of people of my generation, fortunately I have had no direct experience of war either, but I have had a degree of exposure to its horrendous after-effects. Growing up in country Queensland, I still have vivid childhood memories of the elderly World War 1 veterans shuffling around town, often missing limbs or eyes, and harbouring god knows what horrible mental demons. I also had a grandfather serve in World War 1 and fortunately he made it back safely or I wouldn't be sitting here typing this. Nonetheless, what he saw during his time serving convinced him that God couldn't possibly exist, a pretty dramatic turn of events given he came from a staunch Irish Catholic family boasting an Archbishop of Brisbane and a Mother Superior. More recently, I looked after a building occupied by the Department of Veteran's Affairs and had to help deal with the fallout from an incident where a Vietnam veteran turned up to reception, pistol fully loaded and blew his brains out in front of about 20 customers and staff. It was just simply awful, and a hideous reminder of the damage war can do to people.
This is part of the reason I have become irritated in recent years with how overblown and trivialised some war commemorations have become. In days gone by the ANZAC Day parades were appropriately understated and solemn affairs, but in the last 20 or years they have taken on more of a carnival type atmosphere with everyone rushing to take "selfies" next to the Shrine of Remembrance or turn up at the Dawn Service after a night on the tiles. Increasingly too they have been seized on by politicians to spread patronising and jingoistic messages about Australia and what a great sacrifice our servicemen and women made defending our country. Which, of course, is mostly a load of rubbish. War has never been some glorious patriotic pursuit as politicians and the movies would have you believe, it's usually a fight about resources, be that territory, oil, access to waterways or something else. Also the long-term legacy is seldom peace, but rather a heap of sad and costly slaughter inflicted on an entire generation of young people.
World War 1 is a prime example. It had been building up for years because of squabbles by the European powers over the carve up of Africa, not because of the sudden rise of a malign rogue power everyone needed to defend against. 4 years and 40 million casualties later, it ended in a stalemate, but in spite of that, the "victors" decided to impose such crippling sanctions on Germany that it led to the rise of Nazism, and another 80 million casualties 25 years on.
Does anyone also really think that the troubles in the Middle East are about some noble struggle of good against evil? Of course not, it's because a large proportion of the world's oil supplies are situated there and everyone wants a piece of the action. As for Australia's involvement specifically, the only time we've ever had to defend ourselves is in World War 2, yet somehow our governments think its a good idea to charge into conflicts like places like Vietnam and Iraq that never threatened Australia, despite the enormous financial and social cost of re-settling a heap of messed up servicemen and women when they get home.
The ironic thing is that while Remembrance Day commemorations have been scaled up in recent years, the world is increasingly forgetting the lessons of past conflicts - which kind of defeats the purpose of holding them in the first place. Instead of constructively trying to understand and engage with other countries as a means of heading off conflict, governments everywhere are increasingly descending into misguided nationalist fervour and doing things like withholding aid or imposing trade sanctions, on the justification that "we have to come first". Before they go and dump on other countries, sometimes their leaders would do well for them to have a look at how that played out for the Allies after World War 1 or more recently, how hostile Russia has become again today after the west shut them out of Europe at the end of the Cold War.
Also instead of poncing about laying wreaths on different monuments, political leaders should be making sure there is community education about the realities of warfare and why days like ANZAC Day need to be about sombre reflection and not just having a day off at the footy. When people don't properly understand history, it is doomed to repeat itself. And when that happens, we will have a whole new set of conflicts to commemorate, and a whole new generation of screwed up young people to take care of.
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