Today sitting drinking my caffeine reading the papers full to the gunnels with stories of glorious ‘diggers’ (Australian troops) who died ingloriously attempting to take an untakeable strip of land called Gallipoli or more accurately the Gallipoli Peninsula which was, and still is a particularly strategically important isthmus.
It was our baptism of fire, Australia’s Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima…the big difference being that at least these two battles were fought by Americans for America whereas Gallipoli was fought for England (the British Empire) by Australians.
The scenario is a familiar one even in modern wars. Propaganda is used to make the people believe that this war is a necessary evil worthy of the sacrifice of your life for “God, King and Country”. While inept warmongers push pawns around an all too real chess board (Winston Churchill in this instance) killing thousands of gullible young men in the process for no strategic gain at all!
9000 Australians died in the WW1 Dardanelles campaign and inglorious Turks who were the winning team this time (if you call 250,000 killed or wounded turks ‘winning’ – the allied tally was 74,000). 100 years later Australia is celebrating the day (April 25th 1915 ANZAC Day) with dawn services and poignant lone trumpet players in every capital city blowing the last post and hand on hearts mouthing the slogan ‘lest we forget’.
Each year a football match is played in memory of those brave but deluded diggers who charged ashore that day filled with patriotic fervor for an Empire that was doing nothing more than protecting it’s commercial interests abroad, much like America is doing as we speak in the middle East and Latin America.
And just like the diggers at Gallipoli the glorious US troops (stupid young men all) are led to believe (as is the American/Australian public) that these incursions are necessary foreign policy initiatives to save us from an evil enemy. Sound familiar?
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