Re: Confessions
Just out of curiosity, does this mean you wouldn't consider conscripts 'heroes' in the way you'd consider those who went willingly?
I do personally thing that a lot of the 'heroic' traits like perseverance weren't really a result of some innate strength and courage, so much as the fact that going home wasn't an option so you didn't really have a choice but to keep going. If getting up and leaving was a shameless and available option you can bet most of them would have gone home, and justifiably so, they were being literally slaughtered in an ultimately totally pointless battle. When we start calling people stuck in an battle they can't win running out to be slaughtered 'heroes' I personally think we start to enter a dangerous mentality. It's that kind of mythologising and romanticising of war and those that fight it that leads people to be so pressured by society's perception of what constitutes strength and heroism that they feel as though they have to fight. And that's what leads to people being slaughtered en masse for no good reason, which is exactly what we saw in WWI. I think we should lament that we live in a world that forced young men to make such huge sacrifices for such little gain rather than building up this myth of war as something which imparts strength and grants hero status. That's all just my personal opinion though, and on an issue like this there are always going to be people who see things in different ways depending on how they view violence, war, heroism and traditional masculinity in general.
In answer to your first question, I will reword this more clearly and yes I still consider conscripts as ‘heros’ because at the end of the day they had to fight in a war.
I don’t think anyone is actually romanticising war at all so I don’t know where you got this idea from. It is quite clear from ANZAC and Remembrance Day commemorations that nobody is glorifying war and these days are used to pay respects to those who fought and died in them. The reason why we should respect those who have fought in war is because it is a horrible thing to be in and these people had to face it. Regardless of whether they volunteered to be there or were forced into it, you cannot deny that they had to display heroic traits at the end of the day. I don’t think anyone is called a ‘hero’ without considering what they had to go through.
Based on the logic of your argument, we shouldn’t be appreciating anyone who had to go through any adverse situation unless they chose to be in one. For example, if someone had to live with a crippling disability then by your logic we shouldn’t be appreciating the fact that they had to draw on great mental and physical strength to survive everyday life simply because they didn’t voluntarily get themselves in this situation.
This seems to make sense to me: we should lament death, not to celebrate heroism. We should not be trying to distinguish between individuals and the bigger picture insofar that even if the campaign had been won, we should still be lamenting rather than celebrating. World War I was the war that lifted the illusion of glory and exposed its true horrors, if you remember "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori".
Following from the above, I would therefore say that this is a dangerous assumption to make. Patriotism is well and good, but this as a blanket statement borders on nationalism. The military fulfils a role in society, much like business, health and critical infrastructure sectors and much like these, have entry criteria and job descriptions. Purely being a soldier does not mean that one is inclined to consistently performing heroic actions, nor is it expected--in this day and age, "acting the hero" is not the job description of any profession and may put others in danger.
I don’t think that is true. Soldiers have always been expected to risk their lives in the face of a conflict (including in this day and age), which are heroic actions by definition. You only need to look at what’s happening in wars like Afghanistan and Iraq to see this.
Regarding the whole lamenting death/celebrating heroism (I would consider it as appreciating rather than celebrating), yes, we should be remembering people who have died in these events but at the same time we should be acknowledging the heroic qualities they had to draw upon. No one is suggesting we do the latter exclusively.
pretty much this
As for the "being forced into the war and taking orders", i think this mentality only applies to conscripts, otherwise voluteering to become a soldier is a personal choice, i doubt anyone becomes a soldier without considering the possibility they are going to be in life or death situations and if you do, then that's hardly heroic in itself.
You cannot say a soldier is not responsible for their actions simply because their job is to take orders, if that soldier voluntarily chose to become a soldier and chose to walk down that path.
I did not say that a soldier is not responsible for their actions and your interpretation of my argument is not what I meant at all. My argument of taking orders is in relation to your argument that I assumed that soldiers are naïve. Yes, they hold a level of responsibility and nowadays is a personal choice but soldiers are NOT the ones who decide on what wars to fight.
Furthermore, Gallipoli in particular was not "serving out country", and in fact there was a sizeable proportion of the population who were against the notion of participating in the war at all. I mean you could argue that people volunteered to fight based on the perception of serving their country but is this something heroic in itself, to be misguided and simply perceive u r serving the interests of ur nation when ur rly just participating in a war about european geopolitics that Australia got involved in solely cos it was politically allied with Britain?
I don’t think you are using the word ‘heroic’ correctly. Someone who is heroic is someone who displays a distinguished level of courage. Whether that courage is directed justifiability is not what I am talking about when I am talking about heroism.
As for the heroic qualities they drew upon of nobility and sacrifice, neither of those are distinctly Australian or "Anzac", and there is just as much evidence that rather than dying a magical hollywood movie death many soldiers were horribly slaughtered irrespective of what they tried to do. Mythologising these soldiers by saying they must have been heroic and courageous amd fought against the odds, may be true but i can guarantee you that in equal measure they were batshit scared and would have done anything to get out of there. That isn't anything to look down upon and instead of putting said people on a pedestal where they transcend basic human qualities into heroes we need to appreciate they too were human exactly like us and that war is not something that instantly makes you a hero if you participate but a horrible and disgusting waste of human life that cost these young people their lives for what was essentially a bullshit reason. Anzac day shouldn't be about the justification of war or how war makes our nation what it is or how heroic soldiers are, it should be about mourning and understanding the futility and horror of war and resolving not to get in such a situation again.
It seems that people here are saying that acknowledgement of heroism therefore leads to glorification of war. This is simply not happening. You can bet that the everyday Australian would acknowledge their soldiers as heroes but hardly anyone would say that war is a place they would want to be in.
With regards to the whole idea of when you fight in war you are automatically a hero, I think this is a case of correlation versus causation. Soldiers who fight in war are normally acknowledged as heroes but they are not seen as heroes simply because they are soldiers in a war, they are seen as heroes because they actually had to endure the difficulties of war and draw on heroic qualities in order to deal with it.
It also seems like you are suggesting that on ANZAC day we should be telling our war veterans and those who died in war “I’m so sorry that you had to suffer” rather than “We appreciate what you did during the war”. In which case, this is where you and I have very different opinions.
