Nov 05 #2 - 'Tis the Season to be Jolly?

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DATE : Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:00:00 EST
Entered in Database : 2005-11-10 11:00:00
length : 4500000
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As I write Tony Blair is telling the British parliament that his proposed changes to detention legislation are not an attack on human rightsor turning Britain into a police state. Seems that he and Howard and Bush are all, as they say, singing from the same song sheet.In a couple of weeks we'll hear on the radio and TV the sounds of kids singing, "'Tis the season to be jolly, falala lalala la la la". Why is itthe season to be jolly? Why is it that our so called leaders fail to recognise the destruction they are wreaking on our way of life? Why is itthat we, as a community, seem to be allowing them to take away what was so hard fought for and for which we take a minutes silence thistime each year?Eighty seven years ago the first Armistice Day was observed here and in other Allied countries as citizens took a silent moment to listenfor the no quiet voices of the slaughtered who, they were told, provided us with 'liberty', 'freedom' and 'hope' for the future.The end of the "War to end all wars" saw ten million human lives erased and tens of millions more forever suffering the scars of physicaland psychological trauma. It's hard to imagine what it was like in Australia at the end of World War I. However in raw figures it is notinaccurate to say that we paid a higher sacrifice per head of population than any of the other Allied nations.From a population of about five million approximately 300,000 young men served between 1914 and 1918. If we take away from thepopulation figures all those who were not eligible to 'serve' (women, children, older men and, of course Indigenous Australians whoweren't even counted) we find that of the total available cohort of eligible men one in two served. Of the 300,000, about 60,000 were killedeither on the battlefield or died from their wounds while under military care. That means one in ten Australian men were killed and of thetotal number over a ¼ were wounded. The odds of being killed were one in five. The odds of being wounded were one in two. Eightyseven years later we should be hearing about the reality of war and why is was, supposedly fought. Instead we get lectures on how weshould just accept the imposition of the conditions our grandfathers supposedly fought to 'liberate' people from.World War I war historian C.E.W. Bean describes the way Australian soldiers were killed on a battlefield in the fight for 'liberty'. He wrote"[they] are simply turned in there as into some ghastly giant mincing machine". Unlike his colleagues today Bean was attempting to bedispassionate and tell it like it was. No embedding. No cosying up to the majors, generals and politicians. He leaves them no room todescribe their barbaric decisions and the resulting deaths as somehow heroic. I am yet to hear one of today's military directors or theirpolitical masters or any mainstream journalist describe, as British poet John Mansfield did of a battlefield scene, in which "there was a cateating a man's brain...they were shovelling parts of men into blankets"(1).Sure we hear reports and see pictures of dead people but we don't see the dying – unless we go to the movies. We don't hear the hours ofgroaning and crying and screaming as men, women or children die with their guts strewn about them. We don't see the images or hear thesounds of the soldiers dying in their Humvies after an IED rips it apart. We don't see journalistic poetry that allows for a real humanityand helps us to understand the futility of war. Yet we are supposed to believe the empty rhetoric of our so-called leaders who expresstheir "sympathy" for the "victims" of war. The dead and wounded are not victims of some inevitable outcome. They are dead, dying orwounded because of the direct, conscious decisions taken by ideologues who decree a war should begin.Poet/soldier Siegfried Sassoon, who was renowned for his want to wander off into the battlefield on his own (no embedding in thetrenches of the Somme), wrote of his disillusionment of the war commanders in this way:Good morning, good morning, the General said,When we met him last week on our way to the line.Now the soldiers Owen smiled at are most of them deadAnd we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.Sassoon also wrote of the suicide of soldiers who, faced with death at the hand of the enemy or out of shear desperate fear, turned on itshead any notion of the brave patriot fighting for King and country. Robert Fisk describes similar scenes in brutal detail from hisexperience on the front lines of modern battle fields around the world. None of the them are romantic or glorious places to be.Today we find stage-managed events taking place and broadcast, not as what they truly are – propaganda - but as if they are reality. Wefind that when threats fail to alarm us sufficiently, the guns and dogs and helicopters come out and the carnage is brought to ourneighbourhoods and streets. Perhaps it is time that we adopted the line from Sassoon who wrote that he would not return to the Frenchtheatre because, "I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings".Sassoon and the poet/journalists/soldiers of his day were far more engaged and observant of what was happening around them than theweak and snivelling media we have today. Sassoon and his contemporaries wrote what they saw and had no need to resort topropaganda and deception. Perhaps our well coiffured news anchors in their pancake make-up along with their never ending stream of'experts' and 'reporters', who have dismally failed to report the effects of this current war both here and abroad on those who are caughtup in it, would do to take a moment to reflect on the life and words of Edward Thomas.Thomas was a young poet who decided to enlist in the British army. He was married with two young children when he decided tovolunteer. He wrote of his decision, ". . . above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is war, and the pity of war, the poetry is inthe pity."As we know, the war is still not over. The lies, broadcast around the world and unchallenged in any substantial way by the corporate andmainstream media, prevail. These lies now tell us that we need to be subdued. We need to be put in our place like so many unrulychildren. We are told we need to have our civil and human rights taken from us so that we can be a better society. We are told endlesslythat the 'war on terror' must continue. But for what? For what?Perhaps we need to take some time during the minute silence to reflect on our part in attempting to stop wars, wherever they might be.Perhaps we should take the time to read the history our so-called political leaders ignore and remind ourselves of the pain felt by ourgrandparents as they found out about the death of their mates and loved ones. Perhaps we should remember their rheumy eyes and theway they spoke about their battles for our freedom. Only if we acquaint ourselves with the lessons of history will we be able to betterprepare for a humane, just and lasting, peaceful, future. Those who fail to take note of history, it is so often said, are bound to repeat it.(1) Anthony Burke, Security: an Australian genealogy, PhD thesis.

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