ANZAC Day

[miriam_e]

Shouldn't such a day be one where we commemorate how Australia and New Zealand are committed to help each other out no matter what comes?

Instead it has become perverted into celebration and glorification of a war that is the antithesis of anything good or heroic: Gallipoli.

Enormous numbers of kids got sent to the wrong beach to invade a country that had nothing to do with us in order to provide a diversion for the British who were not even really using it. The British command were so unconcerned that they didn't bother to see if it was the right place. The Australian command were so conditioned to jump when ordered to do so by their lords and masters that none of them seemed to question it. The kids who were the cannon fodder, who were slaughtered there, just blindly went to their doom.

Those who were the chain of command were such moral cowards that they didn't question the orders. They didn't ask "how does murdering hundreds of kids help anyone here?" They were apparently so lacking in understanding that they couldn't see that you can't invade from the foot of cliffs topped by machine guns -- morons!

What gets me most is that this appalling waste of life was carried out in the service of something almost evil: we were attempting to invade another country. Nobody has given me any reason why we would have been justified in invading Turkey at that point. (There probably was a reason, but given all the other stuff-ups of the situation, I don't have a lot of confidence that it would be a good reason.)

Gallipoli should be remembered as something that should never be repeated. It should be written large as why war is such a terrible mistake: unquestioned obedience to moronic commands, massive loss of life in the pursuit of a nasty error.

I think Gallipoli has been built up into a hero thing precisely because those in command can't bear to have people think about the massive stupidity that it really represents.

The worst part of it all is all the kids who were murdered, who should have been leading happy lives back home falling in love and living lives their parents could be truly proud of.

Comments

[hestia.livejournal.com]

That's what it means to me. Does it mean something else these days? I remember even at my very conservative private school it was presented as the day that Australia lost its innocence, ie the day we stopped being isolated from being violently butt fucked by world powers... just like every other country on the planet.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It is often shown as something our boys heroically went to despite the terrible error wrought upon them. But it was Australia's error. Every person up the chain of command was an accomplice in a senseless massacre -- worse, we were ineptly invading another country when it happened. We screwed ourselves.

I cringe every time the word "hero" is used to describe the kids who were killed there. They weren't heroes -- they had that stolen from them along with their lives. In another situation they might have had the chance to show that they were heroes, but they weren't given that opportunity. They were told to go out and get mowed down by machine guns. It is something we should be deeply, deeply ashamed of; that these kids were killed in the service of absolutely nothing at all. If we could publicise how ignoble and useless were their deaths then we might salvage some slight purpose from the whole travesty.

I get so angry when the politicians and RSL hierarchy use it for duplicitous and pompous purposes. They do a terrible dishonour to the memory of those who died there by making a glorious pretense out of a horrible, wasteful, and bloody event.

[hestia.livejournal.com]

Frankly the level of shame you think people should admit to will never be admitted to. It is far too much on top of the grief already felt about it. People did what they thought was right back then. They were tragically wrong but that doesn't make their intentions any less noble or naive. It makes them tragic heros in the classical Greek sense.

[cloakedblayne.livejournal.com]

Bottom line is though most of us have forgotten about war.. the World Wars were really the last big wars we may even see that doesn't involve just a few people pushing big red buttons marked "For Defence Purposes Only".

So I fence sit on it, what happened happened I suppose and it didn't have anything to do with me now (OK, protecting my freedom, got it) but in the end yeah, I'd have to agree on the fact if anything it serves as a good reminder not to be so stupid in the future, as war is and always shall be, an ineccesant wast of lives

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I think you are right. I seriously doubt that anybody connected with that war will admit how appallingly unnecessary it was and how the kids who died in it were duped. But I don't know how many of them had noble intentions. Based on what I've heard old-timers say in the past and my astonished conversations with present-day kids I think most of them went to war because they thought it would be cool and fun to beat the crap out of the other side.

That way of thinking needs to be defused if we are ever to have a peaceful future. It is that kind of belligerent niavete that politicians and military recruiters manipulate.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It will always be a danger that war might come to just a few idiots pressing big red buttons (just imagine if a religious fundamentalist moron was in charge of the weaponry of the world's only superpower... oh... damn), but for the forseeable future wars will continue to be fought with, and against, warm-blooded human bodies who need to be fooled into becoming cannon fodder.

Yes, what happened at Gallipoli is in the past, but unfortunately it has everything to do with you, and nothing to do with protecting your freedom (then or now). The current leaders of Australia and USA are in the process of propagating the same lie again that we are involved in a necessary war and that it is right and good and just. They haven't learned the lesson from Gallipoli -- in fact they hold it up as a shining beacon of what is good about Australia instead of a falsehood producing a string of errors so stupid it would make a great comedy if it wasn't so horrifying. The morons in charge are happy to repeat the whole damn invasion if they could only land on the right beach this time and slaughter more of those innocents instead of ours this time.

It is insane. Most people haven't learned a thing from it. It is generally agreed that "war is bad" but then most people will excuse it with, "except this one". That is what needs to be fixed.

"Starting a war on someone is wrong... except he deserved it."
"Torture is evil"... "except in this case."
"Arbitrary imprisonment is wrong... except we need to deter these people."
"Politicians telling lies is bad... except we need him for X."