Here is Australia it was ANZAC Day on April 25th, the day as a nation we commemorate our war dead. It sparked some personal reflection on the increasingly militaristic flavour to Australian society courtesy of John Howard's leadership; and then some broader reflection on the acceptability and indeed celebration of military and war themes within our Anglo culture (USA, UK, Australia).
With the unholy alliance of Blair, Bush and Howard, I feel an emphasis on the use of force as both acceptable and inherently just has cemented itself within our societies. It feels like a brutal rebuttal of the end of the Cold War, and certainly to me indicates the successful replacement of `communist' with `terrorist' as the ubiquitous, shadowy foe who is then used to justify the military-industrial complex, hegemony, hierarchical injustice and disregard for human rights, slaughter.
But rather than get caught up in the politics of war, I'd like to pose some questions about the role and place of war in our culture. If any spark your interest, pick and choose as you please.
What really got me thinking was an `innocuous' story in the local paper about an arms and militaria fair, talking in glowing terms of a `fun family day', and illustrated by pictures of children gazing in delight and wonder at an artillery gun, and a small boy being shown an army rifle by his father. One of the obvious features was that history was implicitly used to justify the interest.
Why do we think that an exhibition of items specifically designed to kill and maim is a suitable educative and entertaining venue for children? Am I the only one disturbed by this and what it indicates about our culture?
The corollary of this here and then overseas has been the recent ANZAC Day & Iraqi war coverage - not so subtly, our media has gone from commemorating the dead and pausing to pray for peace, to celebrating our dead and the bloody deeds of war.
This then links for me with a growing personal disquiet over the language and ideas used to justify a stance against the current Iraqi conflict. Consistently, our liberal commentators, ourselves, we talk in terms not of the civilian dead, but in the number of dead aggressors (coalition soldiers) as increasingly unacceptable. What this tells me is that
- we are entirely racist and capable only of truly empathising with dead strangers from our own country / ethinicity and incapable of extending that to others
- we are so afraid of being called 'peaceniks', 'pacifists' etc. that we pander constantly to the right with such language and justifications
- we have no will and are afraid to attempt to lead our fellow citizens towards a broader definition and upholding of the term 'humanity'
Am I missing something?
We talk of the cost to our economies and societies, and only secondarily of the the staggering cost to Iraq.
There is little questioning of the acts of our military, yet it now uses a system of warfare that delivers a soldier:civilian death ratio of 1:9 (and is in fact far higher in Iraq and Afghanistan).
There is an automatic assumption that are military are acting honourably. Yet a few stories I've seen documented through the Iraq conflict alone are:
a)the shooting of a 10 year old boy for trying to collect unspent munitions
b)the consistent bombing of civilian targets
c)the massacre of unarmed civilians at a protest in Fallujah
d)the shooting of several women who were 'in the way' of a 'military target'
e) a staggering number of dead and wounded journalists, including the barabic and malicious bombing of the Al Jazeera building
f)soldiers filmed shooting a wounded Iraqi soldier and cheering
So why is there an automatic assumption that our military are performing honourably, when there is ample evidence to the contrary? Why do we assume that a tool like the military, specifically designed to kill on a large scale, to dehumanise people to the point that they will kill and accept killing as a norm, will responsibly and justly police its own actions?
Why is the military history of our countries the normative factor, rather than the history of our peacetime? Why do we commemorate our military fallen above and before the untold millions of civilians who lost their lives in past conflicts?
Why has `pacifist' become a dirty word? What's it going to take to turn Anglo culture away from a broad acceptance and celebration of the `necessity' of a highly militarised government and culture?
