Anzac Day 2017 comes as the drums of global war are beating louder than they have in decades.
You'd therefore perhaps think that this might be the perfect time to reflect on the sheer wastefulness of armed conflict, so it's perhaps a little bit concerning that the one day reserved to reflect on the horrors of war has basically become Australia Day II: The Other Day Off.
Going by the public narrative you'd be forgiven for concluding that it's all about mateship and two up and paying tribute to our brave Aussie heroes, rather than – for example – thinking about how getting drawn into other people's conflicts has historically gotten young Australians killed and maimed in vast numbers.
Since Gallipoli has become shorthand for Australian heroism, it's worth remembering that it was a humiliating defeat.
As the Australian War Memorial reminds us, in 1915 "The Australian and New Zealand forces landed on Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Ottoman Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold stroke to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stalemate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915 the allied forces were evacuated from the peninsula, with both sides having suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. More than 8000 Australian soldiers had died in the campaign."
As last week's little citizenship theatre reminded us, there is a race currently going on as to who can slip the most offensive and divisive policy ideas through under the guise of defining the Australian national identity, as though it's a thing that simultaneously exists and yet also needs defining.
And the Anzac tradition is one over which all sides of politics like to claim ownership. We like to pretend that it's a solemn yet proud celebration of Australian identity and nobility, rather than the more accurate picture of young men being slaughtered for no benefit whatsoever, conducted under the orders of an allied power to whom we weren't game to say no in case they got annoyed with us.
Replace Turkey with Syria and Britain with the US and it's not difficult to imagine a fresh new tradition of Australians being killed to support the political agendas of foreign leaders – and that's why, in 2017, taking Anzac Day seriously is more urgent than ever.
Brexit has wounded the notion of a unified post-WWII Europe (which may yet be torn asunder by the French election result); North Korea is making nuclear threats against the United States and Australia, and China and the US seem prepared to kick off over ongoing clashes in the South China Sea.
And, most obviously, the Syrian civil war could yet turn from a proxy war between the US and Russia and into a proper global stoush between the two nations with nuclear arsenals large enough to destroy all life on this planet.
Since the end of the Cold War we've mainly stopped being wracked with constant terror about the threat of global annihilation. But like so many stupid ideas from the '80s – pegged pants, synthesiser bands, trickle-down economics – nuclear paranoia is making an unwelcome retro comeback.
And before you assert that no one would be so stupid as to start a nuclear war, because it's worth remembering that the US bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – killing an estimated 220,000-plus civilians, half from the initial blast and the rest mainly from burns and radiation sickness, not counting the increased incidence of cancer in the survivors – for one main reason: it was the cheaper alternative.
The US and its allies had looked at the costs of a large scale invasion of Japan to conclude the war in the Pacific after the German surrender in May 1945 and concluded it was going to be hellishly expensive. Fortunately, they had an efficient plan B to hand.
The top secret Manhattan Project had developed two nuclear bombs (one "uranium gun" type, codenamed "Little Boy" and dropped on Hiroshima on August 6; the other a plutonium implosion-type bomb codenamed "Fat Man", which was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9) and the US military figured they would provide a quick and decisive way to bring matters to a halt – and so it proved.
And oh, what a dangerous precedent that is now that all of the most nuclear-ready nations also happen to have economies in varying degrees of collapse. From the spiralling debt of the US to the all-but-bankrupt Russia, who do you figure might be most keen to stump up for a long, drawn out, geographically localised war when they have these doomsday weapons just sitting there?
This Anzac Day let's maybe tone down the talk of noble sacrifice and Australianess and remember that eight thousand young men, all of whom were sons and brothers and nephews and friends and husbands and grandsons, were brutally mown down by equally terrified young men on a beach in Turkey just over a century ago in order to achieve absolutely nothing.
That is the true lesson of war, and right now it seems like a lesson that we're in danger of being taught again.
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