Pericles

‘My point was that moral principles are involved in selflessly supporting what was clearly right …’

There are only two moral principles in war:

1. The other side always starts them.
2. The side that wins is the side that’s right.

With the notable exception of liberation struggles against occupation or persecution (struggles that are rarely fought by legal armies), wars are about power, not morality.

Marilyn ,

One young Australian went to fight in WW1, on the battlefields of France where he didn’t die, but the gas scarred his lungs, and his ability to undertake hard physical work thereafter was limited. Involved in the capture of the Mephisto in France, this young, slim, tall, gentle man, spent his time running messages from the back to the frontline.

He came back from war and over ten years later married a younger woman, who went on to have 8 children. My mother is the oldest of those and before the age of 12, was pulled out of school to care for her younger siblings, while my grandmother worked the farm.

ANZAC day might have no special meaning for you, but the impact of WWI is felt generations after. I never met my grandfather, he died the year I was born (I am at the top end of a line of 36 grandchildren who never “knew” him). But it was “people we know” who went to the European battlefields in WW1 and suffered the aftermath. There are now over 60 Australian sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-children, to pause and reflect on just this one man who did his duty. ANZAC day is the perfect day to share his story with my children, and to contemplate the freedoms we enjoy as a result. This is not jingoistic pride, some puffed-up version of nationhood or emotional garbage. This is a deep sorrow that cuts across the generations.

Marilyn - I'd like to share a story : when my GF stepped off the boat in Durban, on his way to France, the British jeered the Australian soldiers.

Another: when it came to expatriating the Mephisto that the Australians had captured, the British government created problems.

You were born in Australia, you grew up in Australia, but your parents were British-background, weren't they?

Am I to believe that he went and fought (with the legacy of permanent lung damage and shrapnel wounds to the face and nose), ate horse and dog flesh, buried friends at sea, and was jeered at by the best of the British, just so that you could write such diatribe?

Affinity with ANZAC day IS part of our heritage (not yours, that much is clear), and I doubt that most Australians need to dig back to the trenches of WW1 to find a family member directly affected by war.

Our forefathers were not blind fools. They saw firsthand how the British viewed their participation. It might of twigged just as they were being ordered into the frontline of the bloodiest battles by the British generals.

My grandfather had plenty of time to think about why he was going into war alongside allies who showed little or no respect. And still he went.

Now, you could stand at the dock in Durban and continue jeering, or you could open your arms and embrace the unique character that comes with the country of your birth. Then you might have a hope of understanding how to differentiate an opportunist from a genuine asylum-seeker.

You don't get away that easily, SJF.

>>There are only two moral principles in war:

1. The other side always starts them.
2. The side that wins is the side that’s right.<<

Neither of these is a moral principle, as you well know.

They are the sort of cynical observations that are made by a bystander who is looking for excuses not to get involved.

The moral right in WWII was undoubtedly with the Allies. Having worked in Germany, I know that even the Germans accept and understand that.

WWI is harder to unravel, I accept, but the moral involved there was less about who was "right", but deciding who were your mates, and whether you would help them if they asked.

>>With the notable exception of liberation struggles against occupation or persecution (struggles that are rarely fought by legal armies), wars are about power, not morality.<<

The problem with this is whether your liberation struggle is simply a cover story you tell yourself to justify murdering people whose politics (or religion) you disagree with. At which point your freedom fighter actually turns out to be a terrorist.

And be honest, most liberation struggles are also about power, not morality.

KTO,

I look forward to having a chat with you, but need the deep breath/count to 10/sleep before I do.

I would hate my post to be deleted.

Good grief, Katie, so what? My own grandfather was 3 years in Palestine in WW11 and three years in the jungle and filth of New Guinea and carried shrapnel for the last 25 years of his life to remind him of how vile it was. He never marched, he got his Vietnam aged son deferred from active duty and even had him enter into a marriage to stop him going to fight another useless war in Vietnam.

Hero right? Saved our way of life right? Wrong dear.

He was a wife beater, a child molestor and a right old bastard so as the only member of my family who went to the stupid war why should I honour him ever?

Just being a soldier does not make people good, it shows an absolute failure of imagination of thugs like him.