For a moment, think of all the men, women, & children affected by wars since the Great War of 1914 - 1918, the 'war to end all wars' - as it was called at that time in history. Then think of the subsequent wars, conflicts, and the attendant collective suffering.

Today only a few days after the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Voyager/Melbourne Disaster, (a peacetime incident) we have many of the survivors still awaiting compensation. I know several, as I was living in the Navy flats, downstairs below the family of one of the sailors killed that night. My Godfather was one of the Voyager survivors.

As I write, we have many veterans from Vietnam, 1st Gulf War, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. They & their families are still waiting for "assessments of", let alone adequate compensation for injuries, debriefings from active service, and still the families wait and suffer. The whirlwind that is awaiting harvest from inadequate, ineffective, and plainly wrong practices of debriefing or even caring for still serving and 'ex' service persons by the ADF and the Crown Government today, has yet to be visited upon the populace.

I pray that the families who are yet to be affected, & the good men and women who proudly wore their uniforms and carried out their masters bidding are looked after, not thrown away and discarded as they have been up until now.

The book 'Exit Wounds' written by one of my former comrades in arms - John Cantwell, gives a great insight into what has been the status quo, and the state in which the 'State' leaves those who gave their all. A few beers, a government paid for sausage sizzle/bbq & we are then packed off home from the front after serving our country to be told - " Well done good and faithful servant..."

You have served your country, you have done your best! There should be no gravy trains handed out to parliamentarians who are mostly looking out for their own interests on the main, until the Sailors, Soldiers & Airmen are properly looked after.

mac

I fully agree with you. That quote had me reaching round for a bucket.

Regardless of whether or not the Japanese win the prize for best-torturers of WWII, the fantasy that torturers and their victims have the capacity to become friends once they return to normal life is a sick and dangerous fantasy. It's the misguided trope trotted out by truth and reconciliation tribunals from Ireland to Bosnia to South Africa to Rwanda. All it really does is let the perpetrators, and more importantly those who gave the perpetrators their orders, off the hook.

Albie

The right of compensation for the powerless who suffer from the crimes of the powerful are always dragged out for many decades in the hope that the all the victims will die off in the process. In this sense, war-related compensation claims are treated no differently from any other.

However, those who fight the struggle for war compensation end up shooting themselves in the foot, by buying into the very rhetoric that the powerful use to justify the wars they initiate. Both parties shroud their agenda in the same saintly and virtuous 'they gave their all' nonsense. You're both singing from the same hymn book.

I am completely against the belief that Australians see history as 'brave men versus villains', that this is the way we are taught to judge the world. It makes us look at life through the prism of what should be, rather than what is.

First, this is unfair and unfounded to assume that people who were in WWII or who celebrate the lessons of the ANZACS stories etc. are all stupid and unable to make authentic judgements, otherwise why assume they learn some black and white "Hero & Villain" sense about history.

Second, has this person ever raised their head above western culture level? If Aus actually sees the world as "US" and "THEM" the "villains" then why does our nation freely (without political fuss or violence) accept millions of people from all over the world to be new citizens, so much so that Aus has changed from 95% Anglo (HEROS, the "good guys") 60 years ago to today 40-45% ANglo and the rest mostly from third-world nations?

Compare to Japan for instance, who uniquely (for a non-European culture) have extreme wealth and stability - Koreans born in Japan from WWII Korean prisoners are not allowed citizenship or land etc.

Don't you think this sounds more like a culture that sees the world as "US & THEM". Australia on other hand is so open and accepting that even when we merely murmer about some severe issue like cultural tension in our multicultural society, we scorn ourselves to be NAZIS of the highest order.

Did you forget you said that a POW “he confronts the man and they become friends”, meaning he judged the man not narrowly as a “villain” but as a “person”?