I really want to know

Anarchafairy and Span have both written about how left-wing people should respond to ANZAC day. I'm going to write more about that tomorrow. But Span's comment thread puzzled me, and I wanted to respond to the predominant feeling there first.* As Stef said:

I think that ANZAC day is about honouring the soldiers, not the politics of the day.

I don't understand why it is we honour soldiers, when we don't honour so many other groups of people. We don't honour the people who died in the influenza epidemic, that followed the war. We don't honour people who die in their workplace. Those deaths are just as senseless, just as cruel, and just as much a result of our fucked up system, as the ANZACs.

We don't have an annual holiday to honour all the women who have died in childbirth. Who really did die so the next generation could live.

Why are soldiers special?

* I'm not even going to go near the idea that we need to honour the ANZAC soldiers because they died so we could be free. I understand (and don't necessarily agree with) the argument when it comes to World War 2, but World War One? What freedoms is that supposed to have won.