Lest We Truly Forget

 Lest We Truly Forget...

A sincere look at the ANZACs, their Legacy and how to truly Honour their memory.

The ANZAC spirit is something which permeates with pride through out our culture.  We look to the past with a degree of admiration, respect and awe as we recall our ancestors, those none to distant and to those further back in time. Even before the original ANCACs of the First World War, Australia and New Zealand had forged a martial pride.  Our two young Nations seemed to brilliantly burn onto the World Stage in its bloodiest conflicts with a honorable star despite the misery and tragedy of those brave moments in time.

For what ever reason our bravest went into battle, whether for King, alliance, solidarity or defence they gave often every thing that they had.  We as a society claim to respect them, we conduct ceremonies in their honor and often romance the fallen with a Pagan like ritual worthy of ancient Roman tribute.  These gestures however are often self serving. Respect is about more than simple symbolism.   A symbolism which at times is often less about the fallen and those uniformed warriors but more about those using the occasion as a mere social moment or as a political power point.

The political elites enjoy our martial devotion. It allows them a bargaining chip abroad, they can wear our heritage on their hip with a certain swagger that only a spoilt nephew can who is living in the shadow of an accomplished uncle.  The legacy of yesterday is being used as a currency for today and is at risk of being misspent tomorrow.  More and more we celebrate great defeats such as Gallipoli for many of the right reasons, but ignore the many wrong reasons as to why it failed or even occurred at all.  And yet the same leader ship mentality is ever prevalent now as it was then, those who see our bravest as pieces to be used upon an Imperial chess board, to be misused in crisis often with little relevance to our defence as they often continue to miss the relevant teaching points of history.

A great many Australians and no doubt Kiwis celebrate our religious holidays for the dead, our National salutes to the fallen with a certain jingoism which is at first charming but has an underlying danger to it.  Real knowledge of history and awareness of the bloody realities of its pages is all too lacking, while a mythic idea of the past has been reinforced by movies and poetic text books.  Such mediums perpetuate a chivalry that has never been so common place as to replace actual human fear and misery that was suffered by our bravest.  How can we honour the dead and those living who served ?  How can we honour those presently abroad risking it all in our name ?  And how can we honour those yet unborn who shall no doubt bleed beneath our two flags ?

Nationalist self serving symbolism is not how it is done.  It only often fans the furnace of the potential for more bloodshed.  This is not advocating for a disbandment of such acts, no far from. It is however a cautionary warning that one should not simply invest its remembrance simply in memorials or for moments of silence.  Honouring the fallen, the living and the forgotten is more about such rituals.  It is ultimately about ensuring that their sacrifice was not wasted.  That their sacrifices should not need to be repeated for many of the same mistakes made by the ruling elites and that the freedom and liberty in which they felt that they were defending should not recede beneath the blanket of deceit and perceived security. 

An appreciation of history, actual history is a good place to start. Knowing who these brave warriors were while also understanding the moments and days that lead to conflict. Why were we they there? And ultimately was it justified to shed such noble blood? If we do not really understand our own history how can we hope to live a better future ?  How can we be sure not to repeat yesterdays tragic glory with the same fervour and loyalty that cost so much on both sides of the many wars? 

Just as an understanding of history can allow us to better understand the present, so can an understanding of the present help to save our future.  Often in our Democracy we are all too eager to go to war, however limited it may be, based upon the official declarations that it is in our National Interest.  Yet despite the courage of our past many of the Wars that we hold dear were fought for less than noble reasons. And certainly besides moments in World War Two, they were not done in our National Defence.

Contemporary politics aside, how can we hope to be secure in our selves as a nation when we are forever conducting ourselves as a trusted and obedient international partner?  If we conduct ourselves as a smaller but capable Ally we seem to lead ourselves further down a path of tragedy.  With every crisis there seems to be a call to arms,it is heard from certain elements of each side of the political spectrum and embedded within our culture is a Martial obedience to do as we are told.  A symbolic spirit that ensures that we should step up and take on each and every fight. Even if we are unsure as to why we truly should be fighting or who it is that we should face. 

With a mass of partial ignorance one can often find the Nation jerking in a direction that leads to a war footing based upon posturing and sabre rattling.  History has shown all too often that the clash of arms is far from set piece as it has been celebrated in fiction and history.  The modern insurgencies and asymmetric wars which we should find our selves in today are a slow bleed and will never be over by Christmas. 

Can we hearken back to our past when our warriors who left our nubile national shores with pride and a sense of optimism and say with absolute honesty that what they did was a necessity ?

When on the cusp of Federation, Australian volunteers landed in South Africa to fight the Boers was this because we were defending our sun burnt land ? Or was this one colony fighting another colony against its independent will for self determination in the name of Empire?  A war of unconventional means which saw our brave Aussies beating the insurgent Boers in many battles often besting them at their own Kommando style of warfare.  A war which gave us the controversy of Breaker Morant and illustrated just how sacrificial then, we as colonists were to the Crown.  It was a war that saw the use of concentration camps by the British which would later inspire World War Two Germany in such a vile imprisonment of societal misfits and 'trash' as deemed by the regime.

And when King George V declared war on Germany on Australia and New Zealand's behalf, where was our national defence threat?  A war that our Mother Country had stumbled into, a war so futile that its post conflict unintended consequences still haunt us a century on.  Was it in securing New Guinea and the German colonies just North of us, that we saved ourselves from the Kaisers boots?  Or was it on the distant shores of Gallipoli, where alongside the French and English our ANZACs earned such a heroic reputation against the conscripts of the Ottoman Empire?  As we invaded Turkey and threw ourselves against men defending their home land, so that a romantic First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill may etch his name in history in the delusion that a victory would link the Western Allies up with the crumbling Tsars forces of Russia. Was the invasion of Turkey to aid Imperial Russia and the French Empire, in our national self interest?

Was it because we felt sincerely concerned when neutral Belgian was invaded? This vile Imperial empire which under its then present Emperor King Albert continued much of the genocidal savagery whose previous regent Leopold II had begun withe despotic  viciousness.  The mass murder and slavery of millions of its African subjects much of which was being continued in plain silence before the World? Is it in the defence of such a putrid regime that we should fight the Kaiser in the muddy death pits of Flanders?

And after this great Victory when the World was repainted in new spheres of influences, old Kingdoms died as new ones emerged. Influenza and Bolshevism spread savagely across the lands and took more lives than the war itself.  Fermenting with resentment and reactionarism Germany and Japan conspired from within and ultimately together in an effort to regain dignity, vengeance and self pride.  Japan an ally had been betrayed in her eyes after the first War, she was  subsequently dropped by the British Empire as a Pacific partner in favour of the USA.  Brow beaten by the Washington Naval treaty and other Occidental dominated treaties and misconducts, Japan's moderates gave way to its radicals and the liberalism of the Meji and Taisho era began to succumb to the Bushido militancy which would slowly lead them down a path of war with the West and Australia, or as many in Asia viewed our land down under as that racist European alien blob located deep in the Oriental sphere. 

Hitlerism and the rise of National Socialism has been well recorded but its emergence and the Worlds fasciantion with Fascism and Socialism in its many forms began to militarise national cultures in many ways. And in a less extreme case, the very reforms that the Kaiser had instituted in the late 19th Century so as to better create a martial culture and to promote a harmony between State, Industry and Labour soon began to take hybrid adaptions in even the most apparently liberal of Western Democracies.  Obedient and dependent populations slowly swelled all too easily mustered for the States self interest at time of crisis, real or perceived.

And it was after much maneuvering and intrigue that Germany would slowly expand its borders at the expense of its neigbours.  It was not a lone in its Imperial lust for new territories however.  Japan had already invaded Manchuria and China, while it was secure in its occupation and exploitation of Korea.  Italy was reforging an illusory new Roman Empire deep into Emperor Halises Ethiopia.  The British were holding firm their Empire by gassing tribesmen and villages in Central Asia or modern day Afghanistan. Murdering thousands from the air in a new form of Colonial control. The promises of an independent India should so many of her children fight for Empire in the First War had been denied as the great Moslem, Sikh and Hindi populaces began to swell with discontent beneath the savage rule of the Anglican Crown, despite Ghandi's patient protests and leadership thousands were murdered and imprisoned.

The United States had been exercising its extension of Manifest Destiny in much of South America as it secured its interests with cronyism and military interventionism.  The former Spainish possesions of the Phillipines and Cuba were now very much American colonies.  And yet this period was proclaimed as being a period of American Isolationism, all the while its influence grew.  As it invested privately and publicly in the tyrannical regimes of Stalins Russia and the Hitler dominated Germany.  While at home FDR exercised domestic policy much akin to the dictators of Europe.  The Native American peoples continued to lose their freedoms all the more and much like his fellow war time Democrat dictator, Woodrow Wilson, FDR all but segregated the country with subtle extensions of Jim Crowe.  As well as exercised greater executive control at the expense of civil and economic liberties.

The Soviet Union, was growing and dying. It was transforming through coercion from a peasant agrarian class into a modern industrial super power. Much as China would some decades later.  The Ukraine suffered a murderous period as it was starved and purged so that the West could buy grain to help pay for the industrialisation of the USSR. The smaller Nations around the Soviet Union slowly became absorbed, while the West, so bent on Hitler ignored such Imperialism.  Japan and Russian would briefly bump heads in a brief war in Mongolia leading to a short but crucial pact between the two, buying each time at varying periods during the coming war.

And now the stage was set.  The second great War was upon the World. The Unnecesary war as Winston Churchill would later go on to call it.  And like many wars it truly was.  Perhaps more so than the First.  And just like the the First, events in Europe lead to our entry.  It was with the invasion of another neutral nation at the hands of Germany that saw our young nation enter a global war because it was what a Colony should do in obedient loyalty with its Monarch.  Poland was no Imperial Belgian but it was also no liberty bearing free society either.  And yet we went to war for it.  And should the reasons of entry for Britain and France be in the defence of neutral Poland, why is it when the Soviet Union invaded the Eastern frontiers of Poland in accordance with its pre invasion aggrements with Germany, did the West say and do nothing ?  Why is it that even after two invasion attempts of neutral Finland by the Soviet Union the West sat idle and went after only Hitler? 

It seemed that the West was  determined to fight another war with Germany, which unlike the Soviet Union had not yet committed a genocide.  Which would go so far as to commit its genocide with such brutal arrogant assumption in the assurance that it would be over looked just as the Armenian genocide had been ( and still is over looked to this day)and just as the recent Holoduma in the Ukraine had been all but ignored and down played by the West.  It seemed that the West would go on to pick one mass murdering regime and dictator over the other. It seemed one depsot would become our enemy, while another a valued friend.  Meanwhile millions of innocence died regardless of our efforts.

And so the ANZACS were deployed to Egypt so that they could help fight Mussolinis inept though valiant army as it attempted to secure its own Empire.  And it was then that history would learn of the name Erwin Rommel who with his small force would wreak so much havoc in North Africa. It was here that the ANZAC legend would resurface.  Earning the Afrika Corps respect as well as that of the Italians who had a reputation for cowardice despite fighting some heroic actions with inferior weapons and leader ship.  It was not just in North Africa but in Greece and Crete that the ANZACs now found themselves forging great legacies,  even fighting a rear guard against superior numbers just as the Spartans had done against the Persians so many centuries before.  Unlike the Spartans however our brave ANZACS were far from home.

After sanctions and an indirect war in China the unpleasant back and forth between the two powers lead to the savage Empire of Japan attacking the US military base of Pearl Harbour in a bold and precise blow. It was an act of War. Bringing the USA in on the side of the Western allies after Hitler, in support of Japan declared war.  FDR now had his reason to go to war. The War was now closer to home.  And yet it was not to Australia that our professional soldiers were sent, but to the Imperial bastion of Singapore.  Fodder to the clever Japanese general Yamashita who with far less numbers managed to defeat so many British and Australian soldiers, defying the arrogance of their European supremacy in doing so.  Again it was with the political elites in Canberra and London along with the Old Boys Club of military leader ship which saw our bravest succumb to another disaster. Landing them in some of the most hellish of conditions as prisoners of a Bushido zealot military that viewed individual suffering as a distant second to ideology. In this case their obedience to their Emperor, a living God.  The brutality suffered by the POWs was beyond horrific.

No Australian grows up not hearing about the exploits of the diggers along the Kokoda trail. When the Japanese army had been defeated for the first time on land in the war.  When a collection of under armed, mostly unpaid, volunteer militia from all over Australia turned back the invading professional modern day Samurai army, it seemed a turning point of the war had been subtly reached.  While the arrogant American General McArthur was crawling away from his failure in holding the Phillipines, he mocked our chocolate soldiers, these militia men who did something he was yet to do.  Defeat the Japanese. Along with the Naval victory at the battle of Midway, it now seemed the tide was slowly turning in the allied favour.

The one time in our history, when our military was truly defending the nation it would be in the thick jungles of New Guinea,  It was being done so by civilian soldiers of the AMF.  While our regulars and AIF were chasing the Desert Fox across North Africa, toughing it out in Tobruk or succumbing to terrible abuse in Japanese prison camps, our irregulars fought a pitched battle along the Kokoda trail, despite the fumbling arrogance of their political masters who were safe at home.  The Diggers prevailed.

While the union work force on the docks and in the factories went on strike, public servants did their best to shirk the sacrifice of rationing on the home front.  These under supplied and brave men fought in unimaginable conditions.  Though tourists would later frequent the tamer parts of this track  with peacetime intrigue, the conditions and enviornment that the ANZACs fought a determined enemy in was no tourist attraction.  And despite being considered scabs by those cowards on the docks at home, these brave warriors fought on with courage and a will seldom matched. 

The ANZACs fought alongside the Western Allies right up to the coast of Japan where by the Empire surrendered, though the Emperor remained.   And after the rubble of Europe and the charred Jungles of the Pacific had momentarily succumbed to the brief silence of Peace.  The World as it did after the First World War shifted into new dangers.

For the war in the Pacific which would symbolically end just after the destruction of two Atomic Bombs over Japanese cities.  The precise strategic attack of a Naval and Air Base in Pearl Harbour and then the Phillipines by the Japanese in 1941 was apparently justification enough for the Americans to 'nuke' two cities while burning down scores more with mass carpet bombing and fire bombing raids.  It seems the ruled under a despot shall always suffer the most, at the hands of their leaders and their leaders enemies.  While we celebrated the end of the War thanks to these two bombs, Japanese officials were more concerned with the Soviet entry into the war.  The massive Japanese army of Northern China was poised on the border with Russia, was vastly over run by a veteran and powerfully armed modern Soviet force which after a declaration of war on Japan smashed its way through Korea, Manchuria and China.  The Japanese decided it was best to surrender now to the allies before the Soviet forces were any nearer.  And history would prove this decision wise, as they suffered a far less cruel and even in many ways positive occupation under the Americans when compared to those terriroties occupied by the Soviet Union. 

Poland, that nation which the British and French Empires had gone to war over was still occupied.  Along with half of Europe and much of Mongolia, the Soviet Union occupied and ruled with direct savagery or through proxy's with an iron hammer and sickle over its subjugated possessions.  In the East soon after the Japanese had been defeated, Chinas long running civil war had been lost by Fascist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek and his War lords as they fled to the Island of Formosa from the Peasant army of Mao Tse Tung, soon to be the bloodiest dictator in history.  Formosa becoming Taiwan and China now becoming a new emerging totalitarian Communist regime.  It seemed that Europe and Asia had replaced one bloody and tyranial regime for another.  The War that was supposedly about freedom and liberation had ended with a compromise of oppression and new totalitarian regimes.

The Cold War had began and a new and bloody peace would emerge,fortunately this time no inevitable show down between the super powers and no Third World War inside the same Century would occur.  After a brief peace for the ANZACS the extreme communist regime of North Korea, invaded the military dictatorship of South Korea. Like most anti communist dictatorships, this one was pro American and thus an ally of the Western nations.   Supplied and supported by both the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China, North Korea all but over ran the South before a large United Nations force landed and fought a bloody and vicious war up the Korean peninsula.  In a war that saw both dog fighting jets high above the battlefield to the large scale use of helicopters it also saw the more ancient throw backs of warfare such as the mass human wave attacks of hundreds of thousands of men.  Australians armed with experience and the same shoulder arm used in both World Wars faced an ideological fuelled mass army with seemingly endless numbers.  Fighting bravely and gloriously, our ANZACS would go home after three years with the war never ending.  And even to this day it remains an ongoing simmering point.  Millions still suffering under the despotic rule in the North.

The Cold War would bring about new challenges as would the end of Empire. Indonesia and Malaysia would slowly leave their respective Imperial rulers, the Dutch struggled to hold its East Indies while the many peoples of Malaysia sought independence from the Crown.  It was with both that Australia found itself again sending its forces, though on a lesser scale.  In a precursor for our deployment to Vietnam,  the Australian forces fought a low intensity struggle against Guerilla elements.  Doing so quite successfully and pioneering many minor infantry tactics and jungle borne methods which would become a staple of modern warfare.  Such methods as roping down from a helicopter to the hearts and mind relationships with the isolated villagers.  And yet it was as a member of the anti communist pact that our bravest found themselves protecting Empire or the new Imperialism of American Hegemony.

Vietnam was a crucial point for many of the Democratic nations, it was a war of reluctance on many levels. It began under false pretenses at the Gulf of  Tonkin in 1964 and could have been avoided from the very start. The Viet Minh, former anti Japanese allies of the Americans sought independence as nearly every colonial nation did. It was with the drafting of a constitution based upon the one apparently used in United States that the Vietnamese felt assured that they could find American sponsorship for independence from France.  Certainly like many revolutionaries and independence movements of the time the Viet Minh found some resonation with communism.  It was however with the American support of the French that the Viet Minh further secured ties with both great Communist empires.  Including the Vietnamese traditional enemies, China.

After the defeat of the French, Vietnam had been divided into North and South. The Americans again supported and propped up a corrupt and vile regime in the South under President Diem.  He was the apparent free counter balance to the Communist North.  Again, North and South would be opposed in an Asian nation separated by the politics of Cold War. Despite historical differences between culture, peoples and national interests the elites in Washington and other Western capitals followed a simplistic play book based upon conclusions drawn from 19th Century  socialist revolutionary theory that suggested that Communism would spread from nation to nation, this socialist miasma was now threatening to consume Asia. A domino theory as such it was suggested.  This Internationalism of Communism had yet to be truly realised, instead Communism like other ideologies had been very nationalistic and culturally specific. 

The arrogant mindset was that Communism would potentially spread all the way to Australia should Vietnam fall.  Despite the Fabian socialism already at work in both Australia and the UK, social democracy was already softly spreading the revolutionary ideals of Marx and Engels.  While the more violent Lennin-Stallinist and Maoist thought was being labelled as the Communist threat.  It seemed Communism was bad, so long as it was in the more extreme cases found abroad.  But it was ok if exercised at home by our political elites, academics and big labour.

This paranoia of 'communism' spread and served to confuse many principles and institutions, damaging the idealsf the rule of law but ultimately harming liberty. Much as the war on terror would later go on later to furtger damage.   Australia would again introduce conscription and war time measures, many of the hallmarks of communism and fascism .  Again liberty would be sacrificed at home so that it our soldiers would go abroad to a distant nation to stop the apparent destruction of freedom.  From 1966 to 1972, ANZACS fought an inevitably unpopular war only to go home disgraced and ostracised by the public and many smug student elites.   These conscripts and volunteers had no control in their deployment and despite a degree of reluctance by many served with valour and honor, as best as they could.  Only to come home and find themselves in a political mess created by many of the same leaders who now claimed to champion 'peace'.  Even the often empty symbolism so reserved for our fallen and returning service men was over looked for the many veterans of the Vietnam War.

This generation of warriors was on the wrong side of histroy.  The ANZACS as instruments of national policy were now being blamed and punished in perhaps the worse way while many of those who so easily dance on the war drums were now throwing eggs at marching soldiers. Returning Vets were welcomed home proudly in some areas while some  RSL clubs went so far as to deny the Vietnam war vets entry and membership.   Vietnam and its horrors were no different to any other war, the myth had gone from one extreme to the other however.    Now instead of being held as gallant knights on some crusade as was the case for the returning in previous wars, many condemned the returning ANZACS from Vietnam as being baby killing and rapists.  Perhaps this was because it was a war against Communism and many in influence had a certain affection for this political disease.

After Vietnam came the International emergenices of the United Nations, our soldiers wearing blue helmets were now going abroad in an effort to fix and deter famine and genocide.  Despite this Internationalism of blue helmets,  famine and genocide was sadly every present.  The band aid of UN deployments seemed to be of little effect when greater issues were a foot that needed to be addressed. With great frustration and benevolence our warriors did their best despite half hearted policy makers and again symbolic gestures by the governing bureaucrats. 

Then came the Invasion of Kuwait.  Saddam Hussein the Baathist dictator of Iraq was fresh from his bloody and victoryless war against Iran.  The decade long struggle had claimed millions and was fueled by the USA in an effort to punish and provide a strong counter balance to the recently Islamic revolutionary republic of Iran.  Iraq felt that it had assurances from its 'friends' that it could nationalise the Gulf State of Kuwaits oil so as to help pay for the long war with Iran.  Iraq had felt that it was fighting for all of the Arab states against the Persian threat, something that many of the Arab nations had eluded to during much of the struggle.  It seemed now however that these Arab allies would not be present when the authortarian regime of Iraq needed its reparations.

And so built on lies of violent Iraqi occupation, the Western nations again went to war in the defence of a distant neutral nation.  Australia joined in this large coalition.  All to eager to play its hand in modern post Cold War internationalism.  It was a brief and unfulfilling war. The status quo being retained and though many died, the putrid dictator remained the same in Iraq.  This time however the USA kept forces in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom which holds the holiest of sites for the Islamic World.  Infidels defending the holy land from Saddams Iraq was a bad enough insult to many Islamic followers, but occupying parts of the Kingdom indefinitely had so offended many of the varying radicals of Islam that the modern day Saraceans need emerge to avenge this presence of a Crusader army. One such Saracen was Osama Bin laden.

So after fighting one Gulf War for no gain other than to punish the Iraqi people through sanctions and starvation.  The embargoes and airborne sorties ultimately  rallied many of the people around Hussein while the Western powers starved hundreds of thousands to death through this arrogant policy.  According to US Secretary of State Albright 'one needs to break some eggs in order to make an omelet' in this case half a million were broken.  No democracy came to Iraq, just further suffering from the outside and within. 

 A new form of terrorism lashed out at the heart of the United States.  Reacting with concern for our 'friend' we felt compelled to leap into war and 'smoke out' this enemy. Though we had not been targeted. We felt an apparent 'solidarity' with our American friends.  Afghanistan would be the first place that the Coalition of the Willing deployed to in an effort to bring to justice this new face of terror.  Australia was an obedient ally as the war now spread to Iraq.  The public and political ignorance of Islam and the varying factions of it was lost in an eagerness to link Iraq's despot to the master minds of the terror attacks that had occured on that September morning.  Clumsily the Americans lead the charge and again the Crusaders returned to the Islamic East.  Only serving to ferment hatred and further expand the war on every front.

The Australians as always stood head and shoulder above their allies in professionalism, conduct and efficiency.  The controversies and repugnant disregard to the very rules of War supposedly safeguarded by these Western nations, were not caused by any Australians.  Only our closest ally. The political elites ignorant of the lessons of the past had no respect for the culture and geography of Afghanistan.  The realisation that this country had consumed and destroyed the British Lion and Soviet Bear in years past was ignored or unknown and with a swagger that was both costly and degrading to our bravest on the ground, the war still flickers on to this day.  A decade plus after the fact.

Iraq, that ancient land yet such a new and artificial state, created in the years after World War One tore itself apart thanks to the calamity caused by the invasion.  The very terror group, Al Qaeda which was the apparent principle enemy in this new war, had never existed in Iraq up until the invasion.  Now it found a new battlefield to fight and  it recruited from an ever growing legion of supporters.  With every dead civilian at the ends of the Coalition so did expand the 'terrorists' ranks.  The Hearrts and Mind campaigns that the Australians had so mastered in Malaysia and Vietnam would never hope to match the culturally insensitive war machine that tore apart this country.  And despite all of those photos shown before the World and the assurances that they existed, no strategic weapons of mass destruction could be found nor where there any evidence that any had existed.  The one nation to have used such devices on heavily populated cities twice, had begun this this pre emptive war under the fictional illusion of such a threat.  The ANZACs found themselves deployed in a coalition based on deceit and yet the mission still went on. 

The noble intentions and efforts of our military and the sincere benevolence of its members, the missions objective was never fully satisfied whether that happened to be liberating Iraq or ending the Taliban influence in Afghanistan. How does one occupy, divide, destroy and imprison a nation and call this liberation.   Iraq is still a place devoid of stability and despite falling from the main stream headlines, because 'we' are no longer there, the violent daily tragedy continues.  While Afghanistan is still a hot zone full of factions and violent struggle.

This new war like that one of the past generation which was fought against Communism is being waged against an apparent ideology.  A non physical entity or an idea which like a gas or a smell can not be grasped though it lingers.  Its numbers are unknown and its home land is non existent.  Yet we only feed into its growth with our widening wars and conduct.  So long as we chase after this elusive ideal and trample innocence both at home and abroad, so shall it grow and seek to spread with its pungent violence. 

So we do have a history to be both proud of an in many ways one to be wary of.  Proud because no matter the reason, the men and women in uniform forged legends and exhibited great courage.  Proud because many, if not all, sacrificed and risked because they believed that they were doing a good job.  Wary because all of that sacrifice, benevolence and intentions was often taken advantage of.  A courage which wasMis used and abused by those lacking such a quality. Disregarded or over looked by men and women who know nothing of the terrors of war.  Instead our brave warriors were instruments in political self importance and nationalism which flowed when it did not need to. 

And despite having a ravenous appetite for war we often seek to send our warriors into battle with less than ideal equiptment.  The corruption and politics of procurement is vile and disgusting. The principle consideration should be about how effective and efficient an item should perform under the stresses of conflict.  It seems however that this is a secondary consideration. Instead the first consideration is a political currency.

The political policy makers are concerned with abstracts which need not be considered in the procurement of weapons and material for our war fighters.  Satisfying friends abroad and at home, at the expense of those who put it all on the line is disgusting.  Buying expensive and over blown American hardware simply because of some less than transparent deal has been made is both dangerous and costly.  As is the ill conceived circus in producing domestic war ships and boats in the manner of our recent past.  Thinking about 'Australian jobs' and the Keynesian economic mould of large public works at the expense of a efficient and effective vessels is down right putrid.  The prime consideration should be effectiveness and efficiency for our sailors first.  If you expect men and women to lay down their lives for policy and defence then the least you can do is show them the respect by supplying them with the best material. Whether built here or purchased from abroad it does not matter.  What matters is how effective the weapon system is.  The key principle in mind should be about the best material for the job.  Nothing else matters when it comes to the lives of our ANZACs.

And yet our nation continues its symbolism and mythic celebration of the fallen and forgotten. It provides and empty lip service in tribute to these heroes.  It however fails to honour them in action.  It fails to respect them in supply and in policy.  And with every wave of the flag or self serving speach about 'battlers' by a political parasite, a fallen hero rolls in their grave.  No matter how many songs, poems or tributes are made and how far the romantic illusions spread, One can not appreciate the very real physical fear and pain that was lived by these heroic humans. So long as one continues to live in a culture that only ever finds a romantic myth of war will we continue to subject to pain and fear those very fallen which we inevitably shall go on to romance post humously.  

This ANZAC day please consider most of the above and appreciate that it is simply not a public day or a National day for bigotry, nor is it a mere social gathering by which to ride some glory of others accomplishments so as to call yourself a 'proud Aussie.'   Just as it is not a day for public servants to shirk their apparent duty to the individual or to utilise the memory of the fallen as a punchline in a speach or as a resounding piece in their sound byte.   The ANZACs are not brands or products and they are not symbols to project on the World stage as a form of realpolitik.  They are ever present in living and dead memory, just as they are those men and women who may not have to give their lives but most certainly sacrifice months and years away from home in some dirty foreign base or deep in the hull of a warship riding waves of violent uncertainty.

The true travesty is that the Canberra War Memorial over looks Parliament,  no doubt every man and woman who walks inside the highest office of law and policy making in this nation has visited or claimed to have visited this spiritual heart of our Nation.  It clearly shows however that the message from within this national tomb is lost on such selfish political animals.  For those policy makers seem all to eager time and time again to add more names up on those walls of the fallen.  With little consideration or respect for what it means to wear that uniform or to fall for ones nation.  Instead it is with absolute disregard that they regard those in uniform as expendable. The dead and fallen only ever seem to matter after war and never before it.  So shall these political elites may usher the words 'lest we forget'  for the fallen yet they never even considered them in the first place.

Kym Robinson

April, 2014