As we busy ourselves for our traditional ANZAC celebrations, in memory of those servicemen & women who gave their lives on our behalf, perhaps we should reflect on the values imbued in that fine tradition & what they really mean to us today?

Values such as bravery, honour, humility, compassion, self-sacrifice, trust, loyalty & mateship are the hallmarks of our ANZAC tradition & they resonate with ordinary Australians, not only out of pride in our accomplishments at Gallipoli, Tobruk, Kakoda & Long Tan, but because we have come to believe that they are at one with our character.

Our pride & respect for our Armed Services springs not only from that fine ANZAC tradition but also from our belief that its members will protect & perpetuate those same values, no matter the circumstances or situation in which their orders might place them. Ultimately they represent us: our values, our beliefs & our aspirations for a world in which we would like to live.

The members of our Armed Services cannot & will not question or refuse their orders & nor would we expect them to. They will do their utmost to fulfil their duty & we will always wish them safely home, out of harm’s way.

So what of our duty?

In the course of our brief history, Australian servicemen & women have demonstrated a willingness to volunteer in the service of their country, whether to defend it directly or indirectly as a consequence of our heritage, but always reflecting our collective belief in the moral soundness of their purpose.

The exception in this record arose fairly recently through our involvement in the Vietnam conflict, instigated by a now forgotten Prime Minister & promoted through the use of an infamous slogan: “all the way with LBJ”. In this conflict, our would-be warrior leaders were obliged to resort to conscription in order to satisfy our blind commitment to our US ally.

Ultimately the US strategy & our involvement in Vietnam were discredited, as was the political leadership of our country. Sadly, in one of our least proud moments, when most of our brave young servicemen & women came home, we failed to recognise & acknowledge their service. Indeed, we shamefully turned our backs on them & it was many years before their loyal service was acknowledged as being fit for inclusion as part of the ANZAC tradition. This disloyalty on our part, a misguided reaction to the deceit practiced on us by our political leaders of the day.

Today we find ourselves at a not dissimilar conjunction of events as arose 40 years ago.

We have political leaders who have lied & colluded to justify our participation in a war of aggression against another sovereign nation. The deaths & destruction visited upon Iraq & its helpless people in the name of “freedom & democracy” & the phoney “war on terror” is, without question, a crime against humanity, driven solely by the geo-political interests of the US in securing control over 1/4th of the world’s dwindling oil reserves & legitimised by the cowardly, complicit & corrupt support of governments such as our own, Great Britain & even lesser powers, all dependant on an immoral alliance to serve their fear-based domestic political agendas & an insatiable greed for personal aggrandisement on the part of their unscrupulous political “leaders”.

In spite of loud proclamations of success, US casualties continue to grow & support for this obscene criminal enterprise has all but evaporated: Bush & his evil cronies are recognised for what they are. In Great Britain, Tony Blair has been exposed as a liar & a fraud, & will soon leave Downing Street discredited & diminished.

Opposition to the war amongst Australians has taken longer to germinate & whilst less noisy than the demonstrations that ultimately aroused us to put an end to our shameful involvement in Vietnam, it is nevertheless growing: fuelled by a profound disquiet at our having been hoodwinked just once too often.

A single tragic Australian casualty in that remote far off place could well be sufficient catalyst to arouse our nation in one united voice of opposition to this criminal enterprise.

Ultimately the carnage wrought by the US will cease. Whether this comes about as a result of the American people recovering their senses or the current administration taking their nation to the brink of bankruptcy or through some other series of events, it will surely happen.

As the wheel turns, the lies & deceit practiced on us by our politicians will become even more transparent & we will hasten their departure with relish. We will ultimately be shamed for our part in this genocide against innocent civilians, who we promised to liberate & protect. We will be shamed for sanctioning torture & ignoring our obligations under international law. We will be shamed by the loss of our humanity.

And, ultimately, our servicemen & women will come home.

When they do, we must remember to honour them in the ANZAC tradition & not punish them for the acts of our idiot politicians.

We must remember that it is us who put them in harm’s way & that it is our ignorance, blindness & stupidity that has put at risk the ANZAC tradition & the common values that should bind us.

This ANZAC Day, John Howard will once again seek to bask in the reflected glory of our fallen heroes, but bereft of the values for which they gave their all.

Lest we forget …..

(Originally written & published on Your Democracy in 2005)