Anzac

"Nature does nothing uselessly." Aristotle

I have always understood it's better to celebrate winning and conveniently forget defeats.
Therefore, I am perplexed when Australia and New Zealand celebrate the much deserved military defeat at Gallipoli in 1915. The ill-fated campaign was born from Winston Churchill's idea that controlling the Gallipoli Peninsular, thus the Dardanelles, would assist Russia defeat Germany.

To land thousands of ill-prepared men on a narrow beach with the Turkish troops staring
down from the steep hillside seems a bit senseless. From a military pointy of view it was
disaster in the making from the word go. Eight months later the Allied troops did an
overnight runner leaving more than a hundred thousand dead on both sides.

On April 25th both New Zealand and Australia stop functioning and hundreds of thousands of people attend dawn parades to celebrate the victorious defeat. While there's nothing wrong with remembering the dead, Gallipoli was not the only battle in Word War 1. Yet Gallipoli has caught the public imagination and the numbers attending the celebrations are sky rocketing. This year, more than 20,000 Anzac enthusiasts camped on the beach at Gallipoli. Naturally politicians had a field day solemnly declaring their piousness remembering those that had gone before. Numerous black and white original news items were aired around the world commemorating the unfortunate trench diggers.

Today, no Gallipoli survivors exist. Age catches up and frail soldiers from World War 2
have replaced the original. This is right and proper.

In New Zealand, ANZAC (Australian & New Zealand Army Corp.) Day has become a social occasion and entire families make the early morning effort and attend the day long functions. Children are taught that the photo of Great Grandad wearing a funny uniform was their predecessor and actually died on the other side of the world. All sections of the defence forces are involved. It is indeed heartening to see a nation remember the past.

My argument is not that Gallipoli should be remembered or not remembered. I humbly
suggest that politicians learn from history and stop committing our young in wars that are
none of our business. But then again, politicians rarely fight in wars they've declared. They leave that to the public who have no choice.

They thump the drums, rattle the swords and declare patriotism as the national trait. 'Your country needs you, young man. Go forth and die for your country. Be a real patriot.'

American Thomas Paine summarized patriotism when he said in 1791. "The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from the government. It has become the only source or terrorism that we have need to think about."