Lest We Forget

... and yet every year ANZAC Day is an exercise in forgetting. We remember it as the newly federated Australia's first military campaign and we remember how proud young Australian boys were to serve. We remember that they lied about their age in order to sign up. And we remember that over 10,000 ANZACs died at Gallipoli, not to mention the casualties of other nationalities. It is only human to remember and honour their sacrifice and above all to say that they did not die in vain.

But, historically, they did die in vain. What we don't remember about Gallipoli is that it was a futile campaign, orchestrated by Winston Churchill; it is no wonder that after this, in WWII, he felt he could commandeer Australian troops against the express orders of the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin. Although we talk about this as our nation's first war, Australia had in fact sent troops to the Boer War as well. We don't regard this as such an important event because Australia was unfederated and its troops were very much Britain's troops.
So there is a terrible irony in our valourization of ANZAC Day; by sending troops to a war which had nothing to do with us we weren't breaking past patterns and asserting our Nationhood, we were confirming that we were still at Britain's beck and call, still willing to put Britain's interests ahead of the lives of young Australians.

The First World War, a war of disasters and unimaginable casualties, achieved nothing except the creation of the resentment which allowed Hitler to come to power in Germany and the onset of the Second World War. Worse, perhaps, it was fought for nothing. It was begun by the assassination of an aristocrat for reasons to do with the regional history of Eastern Europe, and the rest of the world was dragged in by virtue of treaties. Each new country obliged to join by their treaties, forced their allies to commit to war too and then theirs, until the World was at war.

So, historically, the ANZACs died in vain. We have a duty now to change that. The Australian Government under Billy Hughes allowed Australian boys, too young to know better and fired with the kind of misplaced patriotism the WWI soldier and poet Wilfred Owen called 'the old lie' to die, not to protect our way of life, but to ensure their standing with the British. Later Sir Robert Menzies put Australian troops entirely at Churchill's disposal in hopes of being given a seat in Churchill's war cabinet. The Australian Parliament at the time was horrified enough to throw him out on that basis, and his successor, Curtin, realizing the recklessness of the British attitude towards Australian troops, threw our lot in with the Americans. During Vietnam, Menzies, once again PM, again introduced conscription in order to be able to provide troops to support America in such an unpopular war. His successor, Harold Holt, whose slogan was "All the way with LBJ", once again put our troops utterly in the hands of American President Lyndon B. Johnson. And most recently, John Howard, in the image of his hero Menzies, committed Australian troops to American causes which have made the world less safe and have greatly increased the threat of terrorism to Australia, apparently for the glory of being termed a 'man of steel' by George W. Bush.

The lesson of ANZAC day, the thing the ANZAC deaths should teach us never to forget, is that the lives of young Australians should never be spent by their government except in direst need, and solely in our own national interest, not to impress our allies as though we were their poor cousins. It's a day which, of all days, should remind us of how terrible war is and how cautious we should be in committed ourselves to it.
This is the only patriotic way to honour the ANZACs and their sacrifice.