Tuesday 11 November 2008

The Wisdom of Youth

Tom Miller - the age of the fallen, the age of those now fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the age of Clinton and Bush when they dodged the draft - writes:

A lot of what's heard on TV and the radio with regard to remembrance is the notion that those who heroically sacrificed their lives in past conflicts did so for the cause of freedom. I'm not sure that really applies to the biggest of all, World War I. I won't fight Lenin's battles for him, but at the end of the day, aren't we talking about 18 Million dead for 'King and Empire' rather than any kind of freedom, in particular? By the end of WWI, Ludendorf was pressing for the democratisation of Germany anyway. Further, freedom and democracy wasn't the issue. The issue was revenge for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Yet still families in their millions were blown to smithereens as great powers struggled over meaningless yards of territory and the right to use trade routes.

It is likely that history would have been little affected by the absence of WWI, except for the fact that many more would have lived, and Hitler would probably have ended up as a successful landscape artist. These deaths, far from being for some nirvana-like state of liberty, deserve remembrance even more by virtue of their utter pointlessness.

Isn't it ironic that at my local remembrance day celebrations, the chief contributors were from the military?

I am of course in awe of those who are willing to put their lives on the line for any cause, especially if that cause, like the war in Iraq, is difficult to defend politically.

But doesn't the fact that we still live in a world choosing to require marching men, rifles, bombs and uniforms mean that remembrance is a smug and hypocritical exercise, on most people's parts? Had I died on the fields of the Somme, my favoured mode of being remembered would probably be that the uniforms were taken off, and that future leaders desisted from aping the arrogant and callous mistakes of their forbears.

If you want to remember our butchered fathers with dignity intact, work in opposition to war itself. Fight for peace.

A pity about the "King and Empire" bit, though. The Crown safeguards democracy both here and in every former Empire country that retains it.

Still, he'll learn.

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