Here’s why on Remembrance Day politicians should be kept away from the commemorations
As the commonwealth stops for a minute’s silence on Thursday to remember its military personnel killed in the line of duty, beware any politician who gauchely evokes the memory of war dead with allusions to the beating drums of another supposedly imminent conflict.
You don’t need astounding powers of political insight to pick up on the none-too-subtle hawkishness that has imbued federal government rhetoric this year as tensions heighten between China and Taiwan.
Indeed, one of the most notable of the many times that the new-ish toughguy defence minister Peter Dutton has raised a possible war with China involving Australia came last Anzac Day, when he said a war between China and Taiwan “should not be discounted”. Never one to overlook an upward-management opportunity, Mike Pezzullo, the secretary of Dutton’s prior department, home affairs, weighed in with a quaint Anzac observance of his own – The Longing for Peace, the Curse of War – in which, without referring to China, he lamented melancholically how “we” (royal we?) may yet have “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight the nation’s wars”.
Listening, peaceniks? The drums of war were beating, he said, so let us “continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war”.
Feeling braced? Since then the possibility of war with China has been ever more feverishly talked up by hawkish Australian conservatives and their would-be armchair generals.
Scarcely a day or week passes without reference to the possibility/likelihood of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, even though the strategic circumstances do not necessarily point to its imminence.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott, having visited Taiwan as a private though prominent Australian citizen, talked up the possibility of war there while insisting Australia (and the US) could not stand by in this eventuality.
“So if the ‘drums of war’ can be heard in our region, as an official of ours has noted, it’s not Australia that’s beating them,” Abbott said last month.
There they are again. The drums. Listen. It’s all a bit circular really.
A little over a week ago, Liberal senator Eric Abetz, the chairman of the Senate’s foreign affairs committee, got in on the war talk, saying Australia would be duty-bound to help defend Taiwan in any war with China.
Last week, as Scott Morrison returned from perhaps the most shambolic Australian prime ministerial trip in living memory (during which in response to the French president’s labelling him a liar, private communications were leaked that only seemed to rather bolster the French claim they were taken by surprise), wingman Dutton invoked “the great uncertainty with China in our region” as to why France should “put aside [any] hurt” over the way Australia deceived Paris on a submarine contract.
Look out for more drums of war talk on Thursday, of politicians – you know, those who send young (mostly)
men to die in their wars – invoking the “sacrifice” of the battle-maimed and dead to justify contemporary strategic decisions and even new defence acquisitions. They’ve always done it.
The memory of the war dead – many of whom might consider their own deaths to have been in vain – deserves more. War commemoration should involve quiet contemplation of the human impact of war, although politicians will always attempt to use it to their advantage, spouting various permeations of drivel, whether by linking national birth or some sort of sacredness to mass battlefield death.
It’s why today of all days politicians should be kept away from the commemorations.
As for experts and thinktanks, those who commentate from the sidelines on the likelihood of new conflicts or on the virtues of acquiring certain military hardware, should also, perhaps, steer clear of commemorations.
Sue Wareham, a medical doctor and president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War, legitimately argues that the most prominent Australian thinktanks on defence and foreign policy receive funds from companies whose profits depend on war and its threat.
“In the world of the arms trade and mainstream media, however, ignorance is bliss. Ask no questions of independent ‘experts’ about their links and there will be no awkward truths to explain,” Wareham says.
“With vested interests at play, it is important that we question who is behind the headlong rush to war with China. The need to distinguish what is good for the war profiteers – and political careers – from what is good for Australia is taking on some urgency.” Touché.
Some of the same weapons manufacturers are also sponsors of the Australian War Memorial, in what remains a profound perversion of war commemoration. That is where the commonwealth’s main commemorative ceremony will take place on Thursday.
War is money. Were it not, fewer young men and women in uniform would be dead thanks to the politicians and their lackeys who so solemnly yet so willingly dispatch them.
That’s worth remembering amid all the political speeches today.