ANZAC Day

I don't understand ANZAC Day. I mean, I understand the history, I know what happened on April 25 1915. Possibly it's because I know this history that I don't understand the way we treat ANZAC Day now.

91 years ago the Australia and New Zealand Army Core was part of a failed invasion of Turkey. Over 130,000 soldiers died over the next 8 months (that's 500 people a day). For what? Well it was part of an on-going war, which historians sometimes blame on railway timetables (Germany couldn't mobilise against Russia without also mobilising against France etc.), but like most wars it was a fight over resources.

New Zealand actually benefitted from this, we became the colonial power that controlled Samoa. This resulted in a large number of Samoans dying of the flu, because our economic interests were more important than quarantine. But that's not what people talk about when it comes to ANZAC day. They don't say 'they died so we could have a colony of our own to fuck over'. They say 'they died for our freedom'. Which is just not true.

I do think we should remember the men who died at Gallipolli (some of them were only 19), and I do think we should say never again. But what we should be remembering is that those men were lied to, and led to the slaughter. We should be remembering, not that they made a sacrifice, but they were sacrificed.

But we didn't mean it when we said 'never again'. Since 1915 we've contributed troops to many other imperialist wars. At the moment New Zealand has troops in Afganistan and the Solomons. We send troops around the globe either to protect our business interests (like in the Solomons), or to promote the business interests of our allies (like Afganistan).