Confessions
except all that assumes a few things
1. That all those soldiers were totally naive to the fact that they were fighting a country they had no reason to invade
2. That all those soldiers had entirely noble reasons for being there
3. That we did it for our country when it was moreso for Britain and the interests of international politics. Not being aware of this doesn't make u a bad person of course, but naivety isn't exactly totally worthy of respect and reverence either
I'm not saying we should disrespect them or even that we shouldn't respect them, i'm saying that it is a bit narrow to automatically respect someone simply because they fought in a war, irrespective of circumstances. Im questioning this mentality that a soldier is automatically a hero and im questioning this notion that gallipoli was heroic and im questioning the notion that war shaped our national identity.
1. There is something called taking orders. Soldiers are there to serve the country, not make decisions on whether or not they should be doing so. Even if they had the hindsight knowledge that we now have, it is still their duty to follow the orders because that is their job. It's no different to the manager-employee structure in corporate workplaces where the manager makes the decisions and the employee performs the required tasks from those decisions. My argument makes no assumptions of the so-called naivety of a soldier and still holds if they knew what they were getting into. No one is suggesting that the reason we should respect them is due to their naivety, but they should be respected for reasons of how they had to handle the situation they were in.
2. My argument doesn't make that assumption at all. Regardless of what the original motives of enlisting were, they were still forced into the situation and were forced to draw upon noble qualities to react to that situation.
3. At the time it was considered that serving Britain also meant serving Australia. In a way, Australia ultimately made its own decision anyway to go to war in support of Britain so you are serving in what was perceived to be Australia's interests at the time. Either way, my point still stands as per 1).
Your questioning of the following:
- a soldier is automatically a hero
I think any soldier who has fought and is willing to risk their lives for the country is a 'hero'. The adverse situations that they get put in particularly in combat requires a lot of mental and physical strength, and I think they deserve to be respected because of that.
Just because the decisions made higher up are less than justified in your eyes doesn't make the people who risked their lives any less of a 'hero' (I use this term quite loosely). I stress the point I made about differentiating between what occurs in the ground operations (who have no role in the high level decision making) and what occurs through the higher level decision makers because they are not the same thing.
- Gallipoli was heroic
There is no doubt in my mind that soldiers in Gallipoli had to draw on heroic qualities to handle the situation they were given. It seems that your definition of heroic is related to actions which justify a cause that you personally believe in, which makes it very subjective. Once again, I stress that you should differentiate between what happens at an operational frontline level and what happens at the bigger picture level.
- notion that war shaped our national identity
If you're talking about in general then I'm not sure why you are questioning it because it seems pretty obvious that it does.
