Posted 11th November 2011
Today was weird for me, I pondered for a while whether I should do something special for 11/11/11 but in the end I decided I've got enough to promote at the moment without throwing another free track/release or such out there. Plus considering what day it is today in England would make any "oh look at the date!!!11" celebration seem crude.
Today was/is Remembrance Day which marks the official end of the first World War. For a lot of people including myself it also ties in with those who fought in World War II also. We marked it today by having a two minute silence at 11:00am and while it felt a bit like a ritual at the time, it kinda made me wonder.
I have great respect for those who fought in the two World Wars, the stakes were high and the conditions were dreadful. All those people who were drafted in and I really can't conceive (in my wonderfully sheltered suburban life) the horror of being forced to go to war when you don't really want to and getting killed or maimed, the nightmare for the family back home, knowing that their loved one might not come back and there was never a choice there to make.
What Remembrance Day this year has made me consider is how I feel about modern wars and what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Libya. This may upset a few people but over the past few years I've found myself having little to no respect for soldiers involved in these wars, I've not given to charities such as "help the heroes" simply because the soldiers I class as heroes are those from World War I and World War II and even their grandkids are old enough to not need support now I suspect.
Why this big divide? For me the main difference is the element of choice. Do "heroes" choose to go to war? I'd say no but I guess they do, well in fairy tales and stories anyway. In real life I would say that the only time something needs to be done is when there isn't a choice or that the other choice is so wrong to be inconsiderable, that's the definition of "need" really isn't it? I don't see any of the current wars as that, I see them as fragile, pointless and horrifying.
I guess what it all comes down to is whether the current wars needed to happen, and when a lot of the evidence for them can be considered as suspect (World Trade Center detonations, "terrorism" groups, Weapons of Mass Destruction that don't seem to have existed, no evidence of Osama Bin Laden being killed etc) you have to wonder who are the aggressors in these wars. If that ever was the case, if the UK and the United States are the "bad guys" then what does that make the soldiers that are fighting in them? Puppets? Murderers? This is what has made things so difficult in my mind for so long, if the soldiers make a choice to go to war but the information they have to base that decision on is suspect, does it dissolve their actions? It goes back to that old line I remember my mum saying a lot whenever a friend would make me join in on some stupid activity, "oh well if he told you to jump off a bridge would you?".
But what I realised today is another side that I hadn't considered really, is it bravery? Is it a trait so pure and amazing and selfless that these troops are willing to offer up their lives in order to do what they think is right? Even if it might not be and the evidence is all lies, does that stop the troops being any less courageous if they're truly doing it in their minds for Queen and country, for what the same people fought for in World Wars 1 and 2?
Today made me wonder if in my cynical mind there's no space to conceive traits like bravery or nobility, but at the same time, in a logical world there can never be good or evil - just shades of grey with outcomes in a scale of preferable to non-preferable.
I guess for me, I can never make a decision without first considering it from every angle, I've always been like this, I'm a nightmare with a restaurant menu as I factor in things like "how full will I be later?" "will it take longer to make than everyone elses?" "too expensive" "Portion might be rubbish" etc, so it makes me feel odd towards anyone who could just believe what they're told without looking into it any further (in all fairness I'd probably envy them more than anything!).
A lot of the people I know who are in the armed forces fall into three main categories for me,
- Those who genuinely believe the job needs doing.
- Those who want the money/benefits and can't do other work.
- Those who just want to "kill some darkies" (not my words).
Worryingly this third category seems to be commonplace due to racial tensions especially around the north east of England where I'm from. When you know people like this, people who probably weren't sure what to do with their lives after they stopped being the high school bully or the nerd needing to prove himself a man, it becomes hard to feel the same way about those fighting in modern wars as one does about those who died in World Wars I and II. Is this purely because those older wars are now legend? That their participants are immortalised as caricatures, good Englishmen and bad Nazis as the details of those involved fade away? Or is it like I said before, because of choice, or because they were in the army already and chose not to leave?
I hope I haven't upset people with my rambling here but it's just what I've been considering during the day. What are your thoughts and feelings? You can post them using the comments thingy below. Don't just flame me if you don't agree but please put forward your opposing point of view in as much detail as you can. Have I gotten this totally wrong? Is there even a right answer do you think?
