Tag: war

If we are going to adopt an imperialist artefact
to enforce remembrance over all these years,
then let us be clear what it is
that we remember.

It was the war to end all wars …
… as long as we don’t count
Hitler and Europe, Japan and the Pacific,
Ireland, Spain, Korea, Vietnam, Sierra Leone,
Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq,
Libya, Syria, Rwanda, Nigeria,
Somalia, the Yemen, South Sudan,
and multiple iterations of aggression and conflict
in Israel and the Palestinian Territories

It was the most futile of wars …
… started by the assassination of a little-known member of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire
… marked for the ANZACS by the most stupid strategic deployment to Gallipoli, with no backup support, and a massive death count
… stalled in the trenches of the Western Front for years as generals, from the safety of distance, moved men amd salons like expendable pawns on a chessboard
… resolved by a conference in which the powerful made arbitrary decisions that benefitted themselves
… bequeathing a legacy of distrust and hatred, which itself gave birth to a second war, and from that, a cold war

So it is not the sacrifice or the courage
that I most remember
—although there was sacrifice aplenty,
and courage in abundance.

What I most remember is
the outright folly and the sheer ineptitude,
the deep pain and the prolonged suffering,
the massacre of innocents and the inability to learn lessons,
the inefficiency and inadequacy of using warfare
to settle accounts, build nations, create the future.

Yes, that is what I remember, and will not forget.

11 Nov 2023