Two points.
1).The author has built a straw-man of he believes other people think about ANZAC day: It hasn't very limited value and certainly doesn't align with my thoughts or people I know.

2).The author needs to understand that war is simply an extreme form of negotiation. It's a tool used to get a result when others means are not working.
Just as a bucks during the runt will measure each others horns and if they can't come to agreement over who has priority then they fight.

To believe we can make a world were there is no conflict is to have no grip on reality.

Anzac day might putatively be the commemoration of the first combined Australian fighting force, but today it is far more than that. It is a recognition of the young men that went to fight wars on the behalf of their country for poor pay, terrible conditions and a huge risk of being killed or maimed.

While the majority of those anti war keep their thoughts to themselves on this day, there are always those bogans that think it is appropriate to offend those mourning friends and family that died serving their country.

Yes Cobber, those who march do so to honor the fallen, not to glorify war! And but for those fallen folk, we would be speaking Japanese or german and asking (please boss) permission from foreign masters, to take a leak!

What they couldn't take by force of arms is now for sale and at bargain basement prices?

A new chum was introduced to trench warfare at Gallipoli. And standing ankle deep in human excrement, as the sky was almost blotted out by anti personnel shell fire, and as high velocity rounds cracked by, covered his eyes and wailed, "this must be what hell is like"? To which a seasoned digger remarked "yes, but at least there are no flamin flies".

Righteous war and we've been involved in a couple? Are just never about revenge, just defense of practically everything and everyone you hold dear.

Being shot at is just not fun nor boy's own adventure, nor is having to silence that fire with accurate returned fire; and the stuff of (ripped awake in terror) nightmares for some?

The Author comes across as someone who not only has never served, but has a completely false impression about the reasons a nation like ours would seek to participate!?
Rhrosty.

Yes, we do seem to be caught up in a wave of militaristic jingoism. Why, for instance is our government spending nearly six hundred million dollars commemorating the "great war", and promoting Gallipoli as a place of "sacred" pilgrimage.
Why not check out references to the book Anzac An Unauthorized Biography by Carolyn Holbrook, via the Honest History website.

Well I think the author made excellent points and I don't have any reason to argue anything that was said in his article, unlike others.

I think ANZAC day today is nothing but an excuse for politicians to stand on a podium and ingratiate themselves at taxpayers expense.

They claim to care about this country and its a day of nationalism, but that's all it is, 1 day, the other 364 days a year they are pandering to foreigners and sending our boys to fight in other peoples wars and selling our country off.

For my mind (not so much in WWI and WWII but certainly true today) a soldier is only a soldier when hes defending his country and the second he takes his foot off our soil, he becomes a paid mercenary doing the dirty business of others.
Its not that hard to understand.

Thank you Peter. Very well said.

I do sympathize with those who went to war and came back, never able to take up the life on offer before they went to war.

Our indigenous soldiers came back and got treated as they were treated before, as though they were inconvenient beings standing in the way of white settlement.

Then there were the Vietnam vets, many drafted against their will, coming back to a populace who had become anti the war in Vietnam. No glory accorded to them. No myths of bravery to be handed down to future generations. It was an unholy war - a price we paid to try to get the US, that evil empire, to remain in Asia, now that Great Britain had abandoned us.

Soldiers are trained to do one thing, one thing only, to kill - the enemy. Those who are drafted had no choice. Those who choose to join up may not do so just to be patriotic. For instance for the blacks and hispanics in America joining up is one road out of their dire socio-economic circumstances. Hyping up the sacrifice of soldiers is something politicians often do, probably so that we can have a defence force without coercion or undue bribe.

No doubt having a defence force is a necessary evil of being a nation. But that is not an excuse for the myths we build up and up surrounding ANZAC.

There is another good essay, in the Conversation: https://theconversation.com/in-remembering-anzac-day-what-do-we-forget-57629?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2020%202016%20-%204702&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2020%202016%20-%204702+CID_52cdb749dafc652a4c4c6fce58d7d54d&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=In%20remembering%20Anzac%20Day%20what%20do%20we%20forge

Speaking of strawman arguments where are the real life examples of so called "bogans" somehow dishonouring or interrupting the solemnity of ANZAC day?
We've had Feminists and Anarchists try to interrupt ANZAC services on occasion but the last examples of such behaviour, Women Against Rape In Wartime for one were easily 30 years ago.
Australia's two explicitly nationalist political groups have a policy of immediate stand down and withdrawal of all Australian troops from foreign countries and a shift to neutrality and an independent foreign policy which serves only our interests. In fact nationalists are the only people actively pursuing anti war and anti globalist line, all other parties in the fake left-right status quo support the U.S and E.U. program of endless war, imperialism and imposition of universal neo-liberal values upon all peoples.

Chek,
Nope, the poorest Blacks and Mexicans in the U.S are the least likely to be able to pass the fitness, intelligence and character tests required of a modern infantryman and therein lies the reason Blacks were excluded from most frontline units until the 1960's.
Initiatives like "Project 100,000" in 1966 were a disaster, only 40% of Black inductees were fit for duty and because they were treated more leniently in training the graduates suffered horrific casualties in battle.
It's the same today, find some U.S veterans on Facebook who are willing to open up about it and you find out that though Blacks and Mexicans may be deployed in forward units it's mostly in rear echelon jobs, cooks, drivers, mechanics, clerks etc. They are under represented in combat platoons and almost absent the top tier special forces units and specialist military trades.

Gee Jay Of Melbourne, it must have been a terrible shock to you to see an African American become President of the United States?

When everyone is commemorating the fallen on Anzac Day, no one will care what colour, race or creed they were...except you and your Nationalist white comrades of course.

Thanks Jay.

My meagre knowledge was from a doco I saw on ABC TV a while ago, showing how these poor blighters found it so attractive to join up from high school.

The point I was trying to make is that not all who join the fighting forces do so out of patriotic calling. Therefore to mythologise that aspect of soldiering is to me less than ethical

Chek,
Your point while true for the US, doesn't apply for the ANZACS.
I'm not sure they were ever conscripted in WWI, they volunteered to fight for the Commonwealth and for us.
Lets not forget that.

Anzac Day, Christmas, Easter - they are all targets for pathetic creatures to pontificate on every year, a few days before the events. Year in, year out, we are sujected to their boring ear-bashing. Who gives a toss about the opinions of bores. It's not their place to instruct others on what are purely personal attitudes. People will always think and do what suits them. The only thing they achieve is an excuse for online nutters like Cobber and Rhrosty to vent their spleens against anthing decent and Australian.

Hi Armchair.

Sure, no conscription for the Great War. But according to my wife's grandmother there were white feathers homing in on letter boxes where the male sons were still at home, in rural northern Victoria.

No conscription but the social pressure was on the boil. As well a lot went for the adventure. No jobs, a drab life in the sticks, and the stories which got back from those already in Egypt, ... The myth making these days do not apply the same pressure, but they condition the populace for blokes like Howard to be able to send our troops to Iraq to face their fate, with no oversight from the Parliament.

The myth making around ANZAC is probably no less harmful to our society than the myths which surrounded the manliness of smoking, and perhaps the goodness of sugar.

It might be a long bow, but it is the sort of mentality that would make some zealous Aussies to feel that it is all right to send a few would be-heroes to Lebanon to abduct those two Aussie/Lebanese kids

Suse,
Obama isn't an African American, he's not descended from slaves but speaking of warmongers...

Chek, I'd disagree.
The only mythology used to justify the most recent Iraq, Libya and Syria adventures are the myths of equality, parliamentary democracy as a social good and a universal set of values applicable to all people.
The ANZAC myth doesn't even enter into the debate at present the more potent narrative is the Western position on the religion of Islam and their attempts to moderate the permanent civil war within the faith and mitigate it's effects on non Muslim societies.
That's the core of the issue, ever since Islam appeared Europeans have been providing aid to some factions and tribes and warring with others, it's true the Ottoman empire was our adversary in 1915 but in 1853 Turkey and it's satellites were allied with France and the UK in the Crimean War.

The hyprocracy and deciet of the military tradition.

The military forces recruit entrants by selling careers and learning new skills. I am aware that many courts offer young men a sentence in prison or a term in the army as an alternative, many offered that choice, choose the army. Many of the people who join the military have no real intention of going off to war during their time in the military.

When it suits the powers that should not be, they draft people into the military against their will.

When they die, the powers that should be, use such propagandistic phrases such as "these brave soldiers who GAVE THEIR LIVES for our freedom, or other such similar rubbish.

Making such claims is a plain straight out lie. These soldiers died because our govt sent them off to a foreign land to kill and or be killed, there is no other way of accurately describing it.

When young men are drafted into the military against their will, such a claim becomes even more of a cruel lie.

The following is a direct quote on the draft from the book "Silent Weapons for Quiet War." It tells us what the powers that should not be really think of the soldiers who went to Gallipoli, Vietnam and the rest.

I reckon we don't need no allies no longer to kowtow to.

We need good, solid, indigenous, Nuclear Weapons to justly defend Australia.

Like Israel with its Nukes, keep on fighting till peace breaks out.

ANZAC Day could be Fusion Boosted Plutonium Day!

Catchy.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

The great General Patton made several stirring speeches to his men in 1943-44 - when his wasn't slapping them upside their heads.

Here's one pithy fwase he immortally uttered:

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

See Patton's speech in less than 3 minutes at https://youtu.be/sv9XNFpRdhg?t=40s

Respect!

Meanwhile back in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria nothing changes in these wars, only difference on whose funding them:

- Sunni Arab oil money?
- Shiite Iranian oil money?
- good clean Western taxpayer money?
- Putin comradely money?

We remember them.

https://youtu.be/dObTXYa-_n4?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqpjJ4zQDLv9GwGxUsiCYX1Q

I can highly recommend the DVD - 'The Water Diviner,"
starring Russell Crowe for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Great film - worth watching. Food for thought!

Dear Foxy,

With my increasing deafness I avoid movies without subtitles. I would love to see English-language movies with subtitles.

On Anzac day I remind my kids that they, or their children or grandchildren, may be called upon to defend us, and that we must respect our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who did. That's what the day is all about.

They've now grown old enough to form their own opinions. Today I got into trouble, being told the next war will be nuclear, and there's no war on the horizon, and that I'm an idiot.

While there may be some truth in that last opinion, what say others on the first two?

Dear Luciferase,

I think it's fine to defend Australia and all Australians able to do so should do so. However, Gallipoli, the Anglo-Egyptian-Sudan, the Boer War, the Vietnamese War and other actions Australian forces have been involved in have had nothing at all to do with defending Australia. They mainly have been pulling British and American chestnuts from the fire. Your ancestors have suffered and died serving in the Australian armed forces. However, in most cases they were not defending Australia. I hope your descendants will rally to defend Australia but will refuse to participate in war for other reasons.

I hear that, david f.

Where would you place, say, China's annexation and militarization of the international waters of the South China Sea in this scheme, which will affect Australian shipping and serve as a springboard for further expansion south?

Also, should Australia arm itself with nuclear weapons, given the might we may need to oppose at some future point?

All hypothetical, of course :)