LEST WE FORGET -- PART 2

This blog entry will be a bit of a hodge podge of random thoughts on the subject of war; but that's okay. It's what's in me today.

As far as I can determine, there is no animosity between Australians and Turks over Gallipoli. It was nothing personal, after all.

And yet thousands died -- the ultimate sacrifice. What should we make of it all?

I am proud that Australians in wars past are noted for their courage, for being monumental volunteers, for often doing the dirty work and taking the highest casualties. But it is a pride that I'd just soon derive from watching them play on the football field against other nations, not the battlefield.

The preeminent intellectual Noam Chomsky once told me that he is not a fan of emotional speeches. He believes emotion clouds rational thinking. (He even confessed he never liked listening to Martin Luther King.) War and patriotism are often the triggers of high emotions. At the beginning, when the blood is up but not yet spilled, they can seem pretty grand. But the costs can be high. I agree with Chomsky: It is better to weigh up right and wrong to make a decision about heading off to fight rather than saluting any flag that's run up a flagpole by politicians or captains of industry and profiteering.

An 18 year old might see war as adventure but governments repackage it to the masses as patriotism. Patriotism and nationalism can be very dangerous things -- although patriotically cheering on your team at the Olympics is obviously fine. But more on this another time.

I think my Dad probably qualified as what is called a "war hero." Not that he would ever have thought of himself that way. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of him many times and I often wonder what he would say about war if he were still alive. My guess is that he would be much more critical of the why's and wherefor's of it all. But I am enjoying the notion that he now has a cosmic advantage over us all.

War gives perspective to our selfishness and our petty concerns. War is Big World. We must learn from it.

I have little time for war movies, although some have their merit. Most are rather unrealistic, as far as I can tell. Others are blatant propaganda and flag waving. Remember the spate of Hollywood war movies after 9/11? That was no accident. As the comedian Bill Hicks used to say: "Your government is in control."

Which raises the issue of the difference between "wars" and "invasions." Let's mark that one down for future discussion as well.

ANZAC Day numbers were up this year. The original ANZACS themselves are all gone but the mixture of reverence and myth is as ingrained in the psyches of the two countries as ever. I reiterate: That isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as we revere the right things.

Several years ago I interviewed an American veteran of the Battle of the Bulge for a newspaper article. He was a great bloke. Friendly, self-effacing, quietly spoken. We talked about the war he experienced and he had very little good to say about it at all. And towards the end of the interview, out of the blue, he asked rhetorically: "Why are we so warlike?" It is something that has stayed with me over the years.

The final lesson is surely that we must teach peace. Not just preach it, but teach it. To every child. And we must explain it. Teaching the history of wars and their jumble of dates and battles is just so much memory testing and storytelling. We owe it to those who have died in wars to teach peace. We have seen again and again -- and we still do -- the price of not doing this.

ANZAC Day is gone for another year. But in my Aussie heart every day is ANZAC Day, in a sense. And I am grateful for the examples set and the lessons offered. We must remember history as it really happened. That is our duty.

Lest we forget.

Adrian Zupp

LEST WE FORGET -- PART 1

This is a very hard blog for me to write.

It is hard because it involves elements of my heritage and upbringing, and so there is the risk that emotion could cloud objectivity. Which is something any serious activist must be careful of.

I am from Australia and in that country (and New Zealand) April 25 is, for all intents and purposes, a holy day -- at least for the Anglo population. ANZAC Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) forces at Gallipoli, Turkey, during the First World War. 1915 to be precise.

What happened on that day, and in ensuing months, is well documented in books and on the Internet. There are many monuments in the Antipodean countries dedicated to this battle. Countless songs and poems have been written and stories handed down. It has also been the subject of various movies, most notably one of Mel Gibson's earliest efforts simply called "Gallipoli."

And every April 25 the two nations fall almost silent in a collective act of reverence almost without par anywhere else in the world.

Gallipoli was a military blunder and a foregone slaughter. These sorry elements, however, are what also turned the battle of Gallipoli into the stuff of legend. The task for the landing troops was a nightmare: take the higher ground from the Turks who were dug in with machine guns at the ready.

The suicidal bravery of the ANZAC troops -- many just teenagers -- is ingrained in the psyche of most white Australians. We were taught about it in school. Many of my own generation had fathers who'd fought in WWII and/or the Korea War, and so we were predisposed to focus on this pivotal moment in modern Australian history.

It is difficult to walk the line between reverence and criticism -- but one must remember that these things need not be mutually exclusive. I have nothing but respect for the courage of the ANZACs. But I feel compelled to question any war, any battle, any loss of life. For, too often, wars are fought by good and often naive young men on behalf of greedy men who are not concerned with loss of life -- provided the loss isn't theirs or their loved ones.

I believe that defensive wars are morally justifiable. But even in these instances, for that moral justification to exist, someone has certainly mounted an immoral offensive to begin with. So it is our obligation, as free and privileged citizens of the world, to search for root causes of war -- and to tear out those roots for all time. These causes are not generally found in the fluff of high school history books, sadly. The truth is not only harder to bear, it is harder to find.

But if we do indeed acknowledge a debt to those who fought and died in wars -- and to those who simply died -- then it is to not only pay our respects once a year, but to make the effort to learn about the true causes of war and do all in our power to eradicate them.

I have experienced many ANZAC Days and I am not anti the occasion. Far from it. But care must be taken, as emotional beings, to make sure that our emotion is spent on love and remembrance and not romanticizing the conflict. It's easy to fall into the latter and I have done it myself in the past.

But I've also seen documentaries in which ancient ANZACs were interviewed. And for most of them the romance of going off to war -- the great adventure of the time -- soon evaporated as good mates were cut down with machine gun fire at Gallipoli. The men who were actually there were likely more objective about this moment in history than anyone else. And I imagine this goes for most battles.

Something to think about. More on this very important subject soon in Part 2.

Take care,
Adrian Zupp