RANT
“The pride of our nation was forged at Gallipoli.”
(Speaker at school Anzac Day ceremony, 2008)
Say what? I hope we have better reasons for pride than that!
Honour. We do right to honour our servicemen and women and remember that death and suffering are real, personal experiences. We observers have no right to attribute any other meaning to them. We have no right to take credit for their choices.
We should also honour the campaigners against conscription, the objectors, pacifists, deserters, communists and relatives who – for good reason or bad – opposed the obscene wastage of men, despite uncertainty, opprobrium and risk.
Shame. We should remember that war sets even the best men to do foul deeds. The pointless deaths (including 86,000 inflicted by our army in Turkey) were the product of personal qualities (courage, initiative, tenacity, loyalty) alloyed with colonial values that we surely can now see as perilous (tribalism, elitism, militarism, racism, obedience).
We should remember the findings of the 1917 commission of inquiry, and repent of trusting military leaders or attacking foreign ground.
Consequences. We should remember that dangerous demagogues exploited the resentment of the vanquished; we should not offend the dignity of another nation even in war. We should remember that industrialists profited enormously in World War I while the deaths, injuries, illness and economic distortion laid the ground for the great depression; 
we should never expect war and its sequelae to be affordable.
A fruitless, bloody WWI campaign at Gallipoli is now studied every year, Year 4 to Year 9, in NSW schools. Even so, in 2001 our then Prime Minister offered our troops to an ally before they were even requested, for an invasion that is now known to be illegal, ill-informed, ill-conceived and internationally abhorred.
I am not proud.
References
- McSmith, A 2007, The big question: what are the precedents for holding an inquiry into the war. The Independent, 12 June 2007. Online at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-what-are-the-p.htmldents-for-holding-an-inquiry-into-the-war-452720.html