Nationalism, politics, history and war - Library of Social ... · back to antiquity. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, ... both the pretext for the great conflict and the battles

The commemoration and/orremembrance of war is one aspect

of modern society that can be tracedback to antiquity. Since the time of theancient Greeks, the West has seem-ingly had a strong desire to makeknown to future generations the sacrifices and con-quests made through various acts of warfare. Forexample Herodotus, considered by many rightly orwrongly as the ‘father of Western history’, wrote hispivotal investigation of The Persian Wars.

That the past not be forgotten by men over timethat deeds, both great and wondroussome manifested by Hellenes [Greeks] and others bybarbaroi [Barbarians] not become without fame — especially the cause for whichthey warred against one another. 1

While written well after the events it describes,Herodotus’s history explores numerous aspects ofboth the pretext for the great conflict and the battlesthemselves, and also the gossip and scandal sur-rounding the Greek campaigns. While his methodrelies heavily on hearsay (oral history recounted manyyears after the event) and moralising (a tendency thathas also earned him the nickname ‘father of historyand lies’), it is a seminal classical text that has beenstudied ever since, bringing about the memorialisa-tion of the victory of the smaller Greek city-states overthe larger Persian Empire.

In modern Western societies, close examinationsof nationalism and warfare have often been uncom-fortable since the Pandora’s box of twentieth-centuryfascism and communism was opened. This was theera that illustrated that religion had long passed frombeing a pre-eminent cause of conflict, and that nation-alistic and secular ideologies coupled with technol-ogy would bring death and destruction on apreviously unparalleled scale. Western nations areoften afraid to confront even the smallest similarities

between themselves and less en-lightened ideologies; similaritiescontained in our own liberal demo-cratic cultures and histories thatoften focus on a virtuous martialcharacter with which to embody the

nationalist spirit. However, it is a fact that war is acentral cultural event in the history of many nations,irrespective of ideology and governance, and com-memoration becomes part of cultural heritage and canimpact on how we choose to remember.

The act of war commemoration itself has been, untilrecent years, a largely forgotten area of academicstudy, but ‘scholars in many countries have turnedto the subject of war commemoration in recent yearsand have wondered why it has been neglected forso long’.2

In France, where so much of the bloodshed tookplace during both of the world wars, a French his-torian mused: ‘How was it possible to ignore all thosemonuments erected after 1918, constituting as theydo the great efflorescence of public art in thenation’s history?’3

Part of the reason, it was theorised, is that liberalhumanist scholars developed a strong dislike ‘ofeverything to do with war and a distaste among cus-todians of high culture for the products of artisan-ship’.4 Despite this lack of interest from academia,though, war commemoration has remained a strongpart of the Western national consciousness throughritualised remembrance of past conflicts.

In Australia, the United Kingdom and Eire (theRepublic of Ireland), the theme of death in conflictas a righteous sacrifice in securing the victory of‘liberty and freedom’ against the forces of ‘tyranny’works hand-in-hand with the ideal of ‘duty’ to thenation-state. In any fair assessment, the very samethemes were often heralded by Herodotus as dis-tinctive Greek qualities shown in the bravery andcourage of the Greek armies who opposed and

AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 74 PAGE 23

ADAM HENRYAdam Hughes Henry, an ACT

historian, is currently completinga thesis on Australian foreignpolicy and Australia’s early

relations with Indonesia.

Nationalism, politics,history and war

defeated the Persians. Yet by focussing upon thethemes of sacrifice and duty, can ritualised com-memoration actually sanitise the true reality of warand its consequences and in effect act as a proxysymbol of martial validation?

The great emphasis upon certain selected themesin various types of war commemoration is often pre-sented as a non-political secular phenomenon, i.e.remembrance of sacrifice. Theoretically one can stillmemorialise those who have served and fallen whilecommenting critically on the relative ethical meritsof a particular conflict and its political dimensions,but such ‘qualified remembrance’ (acknowledgingethical conflicts, errors, and debates surrounding aparticular conflict while remembering the fallen) israre in the ceremonies of remembrance oftenenshrined as national days of significance in theWestern democracies of Australia, the UnitedKingdom, Ireland and the US. Even if it is not overtlyproclaimed through patriotic rhetoric during cere-monies of remembrance, the righteousness of the mil-itary sacrifice of those being remembered is rarelyquestioned.

The contrite remembrance in Germany, which con-demns the fascist excesses and atrocities committedby its army in World War II (albeit with ‘qualifiedregret’ in the case of Japan) but remembers its fallenas merely fallen soldiers ‘equal’ to those of the Allies,is often seen as controversial by those nations thatGermany tried unsuccessfully to subjugate.

The issue of war criminality is rightly at the coreof this argument, and as such can be seen in the crit-icism of past Japanese prime minister JunichiroKoizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which ‘is partwar memorial, part place of worship [and] honoursthe 2.5 million Japanese people who have died fortheir country, including [14] convicted war criminals’.5

China and South Korea, both victims of Japaneseaggression and hideous human rights abuses, wereoutraged by the visits. Critics in Japan took the issueto a Japanese court which eventually ruled that thevisits violated the constitutional separation of religionand the nation-state. Koizumi, who had attemptedto loosen the constraints on Japanese military activ-ities imposed by the Japanese Constitution, called thecourt’s verdict ‘irrational’. This approach to theremembrance of Japanese history may reflect theShinto philosophy of acknowledging death andrebirth, rather than the Judeo-Christian interpretationof history as a confrontation between good and evil,which is present in even so-called secular volumes.It is difficult to say what monuments such as theYasukuni Shrine mean, as Japan is still itself comingto grips with its wartime aggression and war crimes.

Even if Japan itself is yet to fully face the truth of

its years of colonialism and aggression, the amountof scholarship and evidence available leaves littledoubt as to the brutalities and war crimes commit-ted by the Japanese Imperial Army in the name ofthe Emperor Hirohito. The shrine is perhaps not anappropriate place of remembrance, but couldKoizumi honour the 2.5 million war dead (blackenedby associations with Japan’s dark deeds) withoutadding strict public qualifications on what it wasexactly that he honoured?

The crimes committed by the Imperial Army in the1930s and 1940s affect Japan’s remembrance of war,as these repeated gross violations of human rightsare perceived to ‘stain’ the country’s honour. Giventhat Koizumi’s visits to the shrine caused deep offenceto those who were victims of Japanese militarism, itis clear that the concept of remembrance is loadedwith multiples of interpretation — ethical reasoningbeing one such factor. In this regard, a strong ethicaland moral dimension can be seen in the non-accep-tance and outrage expressed by Koizumi’s critics overthe visits.

No Allied soldiers were tried by internationalcourts for war crimes against the Axis powers(Germany, Italy and Japan), but can this be seen asa compelling case that, even in isolation from wideraccepted norms of conduct, such crimes did notoccur? While there have been a number of areaswhere controversy has developed in this regard (thetreatment of German prisoners of war by theRussian Red Army being a good case in point), mostso-called revisionists have faced accusations that theyare perhaps unpatriotic or, worse, apologists for thephenomenal crimes committed by the Axis powers.In this conflictive context, controversies regarding theAllied bombing campaigns over Germany and overJapan (Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki) have ragedever since World War II.

There is no doubt that the war against Germanfascism and Japanese militarism was a conflict thathad to be won in order for the forces of liberal democ-racy to survive. However, both Britain and the UShave honoured individuals and events that haveproven controversial to their own preferred conceptsof war remembrance and commemoration. At onestage, postage stamps commemorating the fiftiethanniversary of atomic bombings were to appear inthe US but were later cancelled by the Clinton admin-istration due to issues of sensitivity. The world-famous Smithsonian Institute also created anexhibition for this fiftieth anniversary that dared toexamine aspects of the reasoning behind PresidentTruman’s decision. Amid howls of protest from USveterans, politicians and ‘patriots’ who called theexhibit unpatriotic revisionism, the exhibit was sig-

PAGE 24 AUSTRALIAN RATIONALIST • Number 74

nificantly scaled back. In Great Britain, a statue to AirChief Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the mas-termind of the Allied carpet-bombing campaign ofGerman cities, was erected on the Strand in 1992. Thecity of Dresden, which was destroyed in the firestormcaused by incendiary bombing at the cost of 60,000civilian lives, protested the memorial. Yet the BomberCommand Association, which has actively defendedHarris’s reputation from accusations that he need-lessly pursued a bombing campaign against civilians,paid the £200,000 for the statue. A spokesman, RayGallow, stated a plain and straightforward reason-ing for this: ‘When we started area bombing [carpetbombing of German cities], we were losing on allfronts. The public didn’t find a thing wrong withbombing German cities then.’6

This is to all intents and purposes a correct state-ment, and it is doubtful that many British citizens atthe time would have disagreed. Bomber Commandhad first attempted ‘precision bombing’ of militaryand industrial targets, but heavy crew losses and thedesperate state of the war against Germany causedthis policy to change. The fact that Hitler ordered thebombing of civilian British targets (‘the Blitz’) madesome believe that the ‘gloves’ had to come off in thewar against Nazism. The Blitz hardened British

opinion against Germany, and both the government’sand ordinary citizens’ resolve to strike a blow againstHitler and his tyrannical empire was strong. The truecontroversy is that even once the Germans were inretreat after D-day 1944 and the Allies, after fiercefighting, were eventually ‘winning on all fronts’,Harris’s enthusiasm for the destruction of Germancities rather than ‘obvious’ military and industrialtargets never seemed to waver. It was said that evenChurchill, not noted for much dovish sentiment, wasappalled by the destruction of Dresden, which Harrishad firebombed with catastrophic results.

The concept of ‘total war’ was established in WorldWar II by the use of precedent and the fact that allsides would ultimately ignore established inter-national rules. The ‘Rules of War’ covering militaryaerial bombardment were originally laid down at the1907 Hague Peace Conference, which establishedthrough Article XXV that the attack or bombardmentof any undefended civilian dwellings was illegal, andthrough Article XXVI that the officer in command ofan attack must warn the civil authorities.7 The Ital-ians ignored these rules of engagement fightingagainst the Turks in 1911, and the Germans ignoredthem by attacking London with Zeppelins duringWorld War I. In 1938, at the insistence of the British


prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, the Assemblyof the League of Nations wanted new tangible lawsregarding aerial attacks on civilian targets. The leagueadopted the view that:

a) the intentional bombing of civilian populations isillegal, b) objectives aimed at from the air must belegitimate military objectives and must be identifi-able, c) any attack on legitimate military objectivesmust be carried out in such a way that civilian pop-ulations in the neighborhood are not bombedthrough negligence.8

Hitler of course ignored such rules of engagementduring the Blitz. (He would also ignore the GenevaConvention on the treatment of prisoners of war, andthe Eastern Front was awash with Russian bloodthroughout his war against Stalin.) In retaliation,Bomber Command ‘took off the gloves’. Harris wasa man who seemed, more than most, a fanatical advo-cate of attacking German cities even after theGerman army was in retreat. The most troubling argu-ment against Harris is that it is highly likely suchbombing campaigns did not achieve their objectivesof hastening the end of the war, depleting industrialproduction, and zapping German morale.

Germany lost 560,000 killed and 675,000 injured fromthe Allied bomber offensive, most of them womenand children, [and the country’s] war production untilthe final months was cut as little as 1.2 per cent. 9

Harris’s memorial was opened by the late QueenMother amid shouts from German protesters whocalled Harris a war criminal. Even the deplorably self-serving Nazi, Albert Speer, singled out the fact thatUS ‘precision bombing’ was more devastating andmore militarily effective than Harris’s ‘carpetbombing’, which he felt did not undermine moralein the way envisaged by Bomber Harris.10 Resentmentand resolve for some kind of retribution (as had beenthe case in Britain) may in fact be the main result ofsuch attacks on civilians. The United States, in con-trast, used ‘precision bombing’ of military targets inEurope, but in the Asia-Pacific theatre chose to under-take the firebombing of Tokyo (100,000 dead) and,finally, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (140,000dead) and Nagasaki (70,000 dead).

In the US, World War II has been called the ‘goodwar’, and is seen as having been fought against clearlydemonstrable evil. Yet the bombings of Japan havecreated conflict and debate about this claim, and thisconflict has impacted on how best to remember andmemorialise a very significant historical moment.Most Americans apparently still believe that thebombings were justified, while a significant minor-ity does not. Yet any examination of why Trumandecided to use the atomic bomb has been contro-

versial, even though the destruction of Tokyo clearlydemonstrated that so-called conventional bombingcould be equally devastating.

Certainly, most historians who addressed the ques-tion agreed that the factors shaping Truman’s actionsin the war’s climactic days were too complex to besummed up in a single, easily recited formula (‘Theatomic bomb saved American lives, ended the war,and repaid Japan for Pearl Harbor’) — a formula that,if not demonstrably false, was demonstrably inade-quate. But beyond this, one would be hard put,despite accusations to the contrary, to identify a mono-lithic ‘revisionist’ position on the A-bomb decision.11

US patriot remembrance and commemoration ofWorld War II in 1994, the fiftieth anniversary of theatomic bombings, clashed with historical debate whenthe Smithsonian Institute exhibition on the bombingsgained great media attention from ‘patriots’ as revi-sionist and anti-American. Eventually the Smithson-ian Institute decided to scale back this exhibition. Thiscontroversy added to existing sensitivity of the Japan-ese government evoked when US postage stampscommemorating the atomic bombings of Japan wereproposed. The stamps, much to the dismay of somewho protested against the Smithsonian exhibition,were cancelled by the Clinton administration afterconcern was expressed by Japan. The anti-Smithsonian‘patriots’ argued that any critical examination of thedecision to bomb was in fact an attack on core Amer-ican values. The ethical dimension of the debateagainst the Smithsonian exhibition was justified bythe ‘patriots’ on the grounds that the bombing endedthe war and saved American lives, and therefore suchevents were ‘beyond’ academics, whom, they claimed,were glossing over the Japanese wartime record inorder to tarnish the innate motives of the Allies duringthe ‘good war’.12

Those who articulate such responses are not inter-ested in debate; for them, unquestioning support forTruman’s atomic bomb decision becomes a litmustest of patriotism. Indeed, they reject the legitimacyof the historical enterprise itself. What right have you,a mere academic, such critics are really asking, topublish dissenting views on matters about which truepatriots cannot possibly hold differing opinions?13

Despite considerable arguments showing there weremany highly contentious aspects to the atomic bombdecision, most of those who oppose historical exam-ination of the moral or ethical dimensions to this eventstill assert as ‘fact’ that ‘no one can doubt this hor-rible weapon saved American lives’, and it is thisassertion that colours their remembrance and com-memoration of the bombings.


Howard and Evans on a day of ‘war commemoration’for World War II, that is notable. This links the con-troversial Iraq War with the established moral cred-ibility of Australia’s military effort in World War II.

That the prime minister supports the war in Iraqis of course beyond doubt. Without formal consul-tation with his Cabinet, the day after the September11 World Trade Center attacks John Howard signalledhis support for subsequent US actions by invokingthe ANZUS Treaty.15 In reality, our strong member-ship of the subsequent US anti-Iraq coalition required

the ADF (Australian ‘Defence’ Force) to be sent onactive service against the backdrop of enormous inter-national protest to participate for the first time in Aus-tralian history in the starting of a war.16 Given thecontinuing controversies of the Iraq War, the linkbeing made by airing this conversation prior to theconclusion of such a large war commemoration — alink between the ‘noble’ Pacific campaigns thatopposed Japanese tyranny and the campaign in Iraq— could have been nothing but intentional.


That precisely this assertion is, in fact, a matter ofconsiderable doubt, and certainly open to historicalinquiry and discussion, was a position whose legit-imacy he [the man who asserted that the bombingssaved US lives] simply could not acknowledge. Hewas left, therefore, with no alternative but toimpugn the character and integrity of those who dohold it. The confrontation between popular memoryand patriotic affirmation on the one hand, and thenorms of historical research and argument on theother, could hardly be more starkly revealed.14

Therefore how we choose toremember and commemorate doeshave an influence on perceptions ofthe event in question, and impactson our sense of ‘righteous nation-alism’. This process, as Koizumi’sshrine visit demonstrates, is alreadysociologically complex, and can beintruded on by political and estab-lishment elites. Using high office,they can assume public ownershipof most aspects of institutionalisedremembrance such as Anzac Day inAustralia or Veterans’ Day in theUS. They can invoke the symboliclegacy of past wars to rouse nation-alist spirits for a myriad of possiblereasons.

For example, in 2005, just prior tothe climax of a day-long commem-oration marking the end of thePacific War (World War II) on theshores of Lake Burley Griffin in Can-berra, Prime Minister of Australia,John Howard, was shown on all thelarge video screens speaking to AirCommodore Greg Evans, Com-mander of the Australian DefenceForces (ADF) in Iraq. This referenceto the current political decision tosend the ADF to Iraq on such a daywas, of course, deliberate. In therather scripted conversation, theprime minister, while avoiding allreferences to any controversial aspects of the Iraq inva-sion such as the use of dubious British, American andAustralian intelligence to justify the war, was unwa-vering in his own praise of the professionalism,conduct and mission of the ADF in Iraq. The profes-sionalism of the ADF is noted by observers and Alliesand is held in high regard. That such views are heldby the prime minister is not a surprise, but it is ofcourse the context of the conversation taking place —a video-screen presentation of a conversation between

The Australian military legend is at its very essenceambiguous (wars of imperial linkages with Britain,and wars of strategic alliance with the US), and canbe manipulated to have multiple meanings. In 1992,Paul Keating, then prime minister of Australia anda strong republican, accused Great Britain of ‘betray-ing Australia during the Second World War by sac-rificing the so-called Far East to concentrate onEurope’.17 Only a few months later, documents werereleased by the British government suggesting thatwhen Singapore fell in February 1942, ‘Australiantroops resorted to rape, drunkenness and desertion’.18

According to the so-called ‘Wavell Report’, based onunsubstantiated British hearsay, the desertion of Aus-tralian troops caused the Fall of Singapore. The releaseof this report by the British government shows howhistory is so easily manipulated for political ends.

As Lynette Silver points out in Scapegoats for theBloody Empire, General Archibald Wavell held Aus-tralians in Singapore in high regard. Indeed, one inten Australians died fighting against the Japanese, asopposed to one in twenty Britons or Indians. Aus-tralian supply stores in Singapore were robbed at onestage by British troops desperate for supplies; withonly their boots differing, many British soldiers worethe same uniform as the diggers. There must be veryserious doubt over the endless reports of bad ‘Aus-tralian’ behaviour in Singapore. To some, the very factthat the British had released these documents,perhaps in response to Keating’s allegations, illus-trated their contempt for Australia.

Keating had discovered the historical debateregarding Singapore, but he did not examine itslessons closely. Instead, he saw in the Fall of Singa-

pore an historical event that could be manipulatedto support his own republicanism. As a latecomer tothe power of military history, Keating was not con-cerned with conducting a serious historical debate,but rather with using history as a potent politicalweapon. Keating trumpeted over the British failureto secure Singapore by properly defending theMalayan Peninsula. The Fall of Singapore is a seriousacademic and military issue, and despite Keating’snationalistic bombast it is perfectly valid to point outthat Churchill was not completely forthright with theAustralians or New Zealanders about his strategies.British and Australian historians have also come tothis conclusion, but Keating went further than thisby using the word ‘betrayal’. It is difficult to imaginethat any historical interpretations other than that ofdeliberate British deception and betrayal would haveinterested him.

While Churchill referred to Singapore as a‘fortress’, there can be little in the way of ‘equipment’to suggest that its defence was a high priority. Thedefence of Singapore required first-rate planes,trained soldiers, tanks and ships, but despite warn-ings that if equipment ‘did not materialise…the armyin Malaya [would be] fatally exposed…Britainrefused to admit this, while Australia looked the otherway’.19 The largely untrained and untried Austral-ian soldiers fought hard in adverse conditionsagainst the battle-hardened Japanese troops, as didthe British, without tanks, sea power or planes — thelater proving decisive. The Japanese had completecontrol of the air and 180 modern tanks, ‘while theBritish had none’.20 Peter Elphick has argued that:‘during 1940 and 1941 Churchill downgraded theimportance of Singapore to 2nd 11 status in Imper-ial defence. A decision he cloaked from the PrimeMinisters of Australia and New Zealand by outrightdeceit.’21

Churchill was, of course, unrepentant about thesedecisions, arguing: ‘If the Malay Peninsula has beenstarved for the sake of Libya and Russia, no one ismore responsible than I, and I would do exactly thesame again.’22

Against the advice of his service chiefs, Churchillsent a battleship, Prince of Wales, and a battle cruiser,Repulse, to Singapore against terrible odds. By thisstage the Japanese controlled both air and sea, andboth ships were lost. Yet opportunities to avoid thisdisaster were arguably available before the onset ofthe Japanese land attack. Had half of the tanks andplanes sent to the Russians been diverted to lieu-tenant-general Percival, who described Singapore asbeing as ‘useful as a chocolate teapot’, the defenceof the island would have markedly stiffened.


Rather than show true knowledge of the event,Keating merely latched onto these credible strandsof the debate to put forward the conspiracy view ofdeliberate British betrayal. While Churchill did holdAustralians in low regard due to ‘convict and Irishstock’, his decisions largely reflected the British warpriorities. The British badly underestimated the capa-bilities of the Japanese military, as did the Americansin Hawaii and the Philippines.The tragic loss of Singaporereflected this grave miscalcula-tion. The British, and the Aus-tralians, had hoped that the meremilitary prestige of the BritishEmpire would be enough to dis-courage the Japanese from aserious attack. The Japanesecalled this bluff, and tens ofthousands of Allied soldiers, notjust Australians, paid the price forChurchill’s strategic prioritiesand Singapore’s air and seadefence shortcomings by becom-ing prisoners of war. The irony ofKeating’s attack was that hechose to impugn ‘British honour’rather than the man most respon-sible, Churchill himself. Keating has in fact stated thatChurchill is a leader that he admires.

Successive Australian governments had sup-ported the British strategies of controlling theMediterranean, support for the USSR againstGermany, and US involvement against Japan. Thiscan be seen in the deployment of Australian troopsto the Middle East, but it must be said that whileChurchill did not explicitly share the fullness of hisstrategies with Canberra or Wellington, were bothgovernments too trusting and/or complacent in rela-tion to the viability of their own defences? What hap-pened in Singapore shows the naive trust of the lesserpower (Australia) in alliance with a great power (theUK). Parallels to Australia’s modern alliance with theUS might have been made, but once finished withSingapore (and ignoring the critical reports on Aus-tralian troops), Keating chose to elevate the Battle ofKokoda to a confrontation of national deliverance,e.g. failed by Britain, Australians saved themselvesfrom Japanese invasion.

Heavily reliant on nationalistic martial folklore (theJapanese invasion), Keating praised the Battle ofKokoda by suggesting that it should be celebratedmore so than the Gallipoli legend. As had been thecase in the argument over Singapore, Keating wasmore interested in using military history to supporthis politics. When he visited Papua New Guinea to

attend a memorial service in honour of World WarII, Keating was without a wreath and, as animpromptu gesture, knelt down and kissed theKokoda memorial plaque.23 Although this was nodoubt a heartfelt expression of gratitude, it merelyserved to highlight Keating’s own nationalistic pol-itics more than the Battle of Kokoda itself. By inter-preting history in such parochial terms and attacking

the war record of Great Britain,Keating used commemorationand war remembrance to supporthis own modern Australiannationalism and to promoterepublicanism.

Via John Howard, the conser-vative side of Australian politicsexpressed outrage at Keating’suse in this way of historicalarguments and Australian mili-tary symbolism. However, it canbe argued very strongly thatHoward is in fact guilty of whathe condemned his predecessorfor; namely, the manipulation ofmilitary history and traditions formere political motives.

At the 1996 Sir Thomas Play-ford Memorial Lecture on 5 July 1996, Howard stated:

One of the more insidious developments in Aus-tralian political life over the last decade or so has beenthe attempt to re-write Australian history in theservice of a partisan political cause. No one shouldbe in any doubt that this process has been a sys-tematic and deliberate one. My predecessor as PrimeMinister regarded the partisan re-interpretation ofAustralia’s past as central to much of the agenda forthe future that he sought to implement.24

Such thoughts can also be applied to Howard — inthe context of the video link between himself andEvans just prior to the grand finale of the sixtiethanniversary commemorations on Lake BurleyGriffin — and to Howard’s friend US PresidentGeorge Bush. The president took the opportunity atthis year’s Veterans’ Day speech to not just ‘remem-ber America’s 25 million veterans’, but also to outlinehis justifications for US involvement in the nowincreasingly unpopular occupation of Iraq.25 In fact,given the nature of the speech, it is clear that the veryoccasion of Veterans’ Day was seized on in order toput forward the presidential view of the war in Iraq.

Of the 5,764 words contained in the presidentialspeech, 4,991 words were devoted to outlining themerits and justifications of the ‘War on Terror’, andthe speech was delivered from a stage lectern sur-


❛According to the so-called ‘Wavell Report’,

based onunsubstantiated Britishhearsay, the desertionof Australian troopscaused the Fall of

Singapore.❜

rounded by US service personnel, with bannersbehind the president that read ‘Strategy For Victory’.Such behaviour is standard practice in the UnitedStates. In fact, the speech was openly given a dualpurpose — a speech for veterans and a speech out-lining ‘War on Terror’ strategy. The linkages betweenservicemen, Veterans’ Day, US patriotism and Iraqwere being made both in words and through sym-bolic associations.

The association of political causes and martial

history has been a well-worn pathway of manipu-lation by politicians. For example, during the 2004television election debate, John Howard called theINTERFET operation led by Australian troops in EastTimor in 1999 a ‘liberation’26, presumably in the faceof Indonesian human rights abuses. There is no doubtthat INTERFET did an excellent job in East Timor, yetpolitical spin can, through association with martialendeavours in the form of parades, also elevate thestature of politicians.

In reality, strong pressure was put on Australia bythe Clinton administration, which after the Santa Cruzmassacre and repeated concerns regarding humanrights violations in Indonesia throughout the 1990swas, by 1999, in the process of debating the contin-uing merits of America’s twenty-five-year policy ofneutrality on East Timor.27 Throughout the timeleading to the fateful decision to send troops as partof a UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission, John

Howard and Minister for Foreign Affairs, AlexanderDowner, consistently rejected the very concept of Tim-orese independence (favoured by the majority of EastTimorese) by openly favouring instead the ‘specialautonomy’ package put forward by PresidentHabibe.28 Both men also publicly saw fit to insist thatthe Indonesian army (TNI), despite its human rightsrecord in Timor, was perfectly placed to act as a‘neutral’ security force between warring ‘local fac-tions’.29

Even a Defence Intelligence Organisation briefdated 6 January 1999 stated unequivocally that theso-called ‘pro integrationist militias’ were nothing but‘proxies for the ABRI’30 (Angkatan Bersenjata Repub-lik Indonesia — now the TNI), which had also armedthe militias. Embarrassingly for both Howard andDowner, despite official assurances from the Indone-sians that they were not arming paramilitaries andthat TNI troops were in fact deploying from theisland, clear evidence came to light to contest theseassurances and the Indonesian military openlyadmitted to the practice for ‘protection reasons’.31

Defence Signals Directorate intercepted incriminat-ing phone messages from militia figureheads toIndonesian Special Forces on 9 February 1999, andconfirmed via records smuggled out of East Timorthat despite claims by Indonesian officials of troopreductions, the TNI had in fact secretly landed troopsinto the province, ‘including five battalions in thenorth of Los Palos’.32 Six days after AlexanderDowner spoke during the question-and-answersession at the National Press Club on 31 March 1999to defend the integrity of the Indonesian denials andto state that there may be rogue elements at play33,the Liquiçá Church massacre occurred and sixty-one(or, according to local sources, up to 200) men, womenand children were killed by pro-Indonesian militiaswith the assistance of TNI soldiers.34

The success of the INTERFET operation bolsteredthe very false view that the Australian governmenthad in fact liberated East Timor. As a consequence,INTERFET established Howard’s international rep-utation. Considering that during World War II,‘between 40,000 and 70,000 Timorese died as a directresult of [assisting the Australian-led] Allied guerrillaoperations in Timor [Operation Sparrow, 1942–1943]against the Japanese’35, Howard’s post-INTERFETstatements of ‘liberation’ rest on very insensitiveground. Despite adhering to and defending policiesthat would, if allowed to run their course, haveavoided any peacekeeping involvement in Timor, theprime minister chose to associate himself with thesuccess of INTERFET and Australian military sym-bolism. The INTERFET welcome-home parade washeld before 55,000 Sydney citizens. The prime min-


ister, along with the Sydney Lord Mayor, who handedGeneral Peter Cosgrove the keys to the city, tookcentre stage. In his speech, Howard called on themythical linkages of Australia’s noble military pastwhen he stated:

Today in a very public fashion, Australians got toshow their thanks and great respect to the men andwomen of INTERFET and the Australian FederalPolice…They followed in a great Australian militarytradition...to defend what is right, the right to livein freedom and peace.36

That Cosgrove had achieved a great success undergreat pressure cannot be doubted. The operation itselfwas planned quickly, and reflected the fact that orig-inal Australian military planning begun in May 1999was not designed, as revisionists claim, with peace-keeping operations in mind: Operation Spitfire was‘designed to evacuate personnel, not keep thepeace’.37

The atrocities committed by the Indonesians fol-lowing the successful independence vote gained ‘wellpublicised attention in the US media’38, whichprompted two responses from the Clinton adminis-tration: after initially upholding the twenty-five-year-old policy of US support for Indonesian sovereigntyin East Timor, only a few days later Clinton reversedthe policy and informed the Indonesian military thatthe US would no longer directly support Jakarta. Inresponse to this US policy shift, Jakarta then allowedthe Australian-led UN peacekeeping force to enterthe province unopposed.39 Considering this roleplayed in East Timor by the US, it is difficult to sustainthe ‘liberation’ argument raised by the prime min-ister.40

Howard’s assumption of public ownership of thedecision to send troops to Timor (seen in his promi-nent role in the INTERFET welcome-home parade),and of the successful outcome (the liberation com-ments), illustrates the perceived value to politiciansof associating themselves with sacrosanct militarytraditions, nationalism andpatriotism. To criticise theprime minister on this issueis to ‘tarnish’ the valour ofthe troops who served sucha ‘noble’ cause, by reducingthem to the status of beingmere instruments of politicalmanoeuvrings and/or expe-diency. At its core, though, the use of mili-tary forces in any context is strongly connected topolitics and ideology. As British historian John Preebleonce pointed out, it is the army that has the right to‘translate diplomacy into death’. The INTERFET


parade, which echoed the traditional Anzac Day com-memoration march, is therefore associated with thenationalistic pride of such celebrations.

The strong mix of myth and fact is an essentialaspect of nationalistic commemoration. It is this mixthat can bind the citizens of any nation into whatAnderson called the ‘imagined community’41. In factin 1916, when the British government wished toconduct an enquiry into the debacle of Gallipoli, the‘Australian newspapers and politicians opposed [suchan enquiry as] there was a fear that the facts woulddamage the legend’42, and only after the war, in 1919,was such an enquiry undertaken. It is interesting alsoto note that revisionist histories of the Gallipoli cam-paign that have painted a fuller picture of the chaosand suffering endured by those who fought therehave failed to dent its allure as the nation’s birthplace.

In Australian school textbooks, children are taughtof the ‘national significance’ of Gallipoli withoutexploring the fullest context of the battle. It wouldbe very doubtful that many students, or teachers,would be aware of the Turkish name for the invasionof 1915 — the Battle of Canakkale. Passing sentencesor paragraphs are given to the British, French, NewZealand or Indian presence, even though theirlosses, like those of the Australians, were high; thiscan give the false impression that Gallipoli was anAustralian battle. Although ‘ANZAC’ includes NewZealand, it would be a fair assessment to say that Aus-tralian nationalism has claimed an almost exclusiveownership of the Gallipoli event — so much so thatAustralians, despite being part of an invasion forcein 1915, feel strongly enough to actually criticiseTurkish authorities for recent roadworks near AnzacCove.

Secondary students using the ‘NSW RetroactiveHistory’ textbooks are taught of the British failure toland the Anzacs on the correct beach; of the heroicimage of Simpson and his donkey; and that the Dar-danelles strait could not have been taken by navalattack due to Turkish sea-mines and batteries. The

battles of The Nek and Lone Pine are also studied,but with little reference to other major battles foughtby the non-Anzac members of the Allies. While AnzacCove was hardly an ideal location to land troops, itwas not nearly as well-defended as the beach origi-nally chosen. It has been suggested that the lighterTurkish defences at Anzac Cove were due to itsnatural defences (its rugged cliffs, steep hills andbarren landscape) and that the Turkish thought it anunlikely invasion site. The original intended landingsite (1.5 kilometres north of Anzac Cove) washeavily defended by Turkish machine guns and razorwire. Had the Anzacs landed there, against suchentrenched defences, as the British had experiencedat Cape Helles, the Australians would have recordedsignificantly more loss of life on those first days ofthe invasion.43 The Anzacs at the time, while respect-ing him, did not idolise ‘the man with the Donkey’,as they did not understand why Simpson was givensuch special media significance over others amid thecarnage and destruction that was taking place allaround them. That there was no alternative to a land-based invasion is clearly also an area of debate, asnaval attempts to breach the straits might just havesucceeded, had they tried again after ships struckmines.44

It is said that on the morning of March 19th, theTurkish gunners [of the straits] had only thirty shellsleft for their big guns. The British would probablyhave broken through, if they had tried. But the navalcommanders weren’t used to losing ships. They con-jured excuses not to attack again.45

Such troubling claims are not often, if at all, givenofficial remonstrations on Anzac Day itself — the dayof Australia’s supreme ‘national remembrance’.Had the naval attacks succeeded, the Anzac landingswould never have taken place. One also wonderswhether enthusiasm for the conflict might have beendiminished had the Australian public of the time beenmore aware of the awful conditions at Gallipoli, thechaos created by inadequate planning and commu-


nication, and the true extent of losses incurred in thefirst weeks of fighting by the Allies.

War commemorations and memorials such asplaques and statues can be treated like gravestones.However such monuments also evoke a potent senseof symbolism and nationalism. They are as much ameans to mourn the loss of fallen countrymen as theyare a point of cultural recognition of the fallen men’ssupreme sacrifice and service. Yetthe shrine-like respect given tomemorials, and the ritualisticaspects of commemoration, havealways held both an attractiveand repellent quality to variousgroups within society. For thosewho obviously supported thevalues inherent within a monu-ment, its very existence is testi-mony to the significance of thesevalues. In times of war, suchsymbols can work as rallying orrecruitment points. For example:

In the Sydney inner suburb ofBalmain the council commis-sioned a board honouring localmen in the AIF (Australian Impe-rial Force) even before the inva-sion of Turkey; on Empire Day, 24May 1915, railway workers at Honeysuckle nearNewcastle unveiled a board honouring workmatesknown to have died in the first days of ANZAC.46

Memorials can have multiple meanings and can beused to serve a number of causes. For instance, theycan be used to serve aggressive militarism. As withthe Boer War, Australian involvement in World WarI rode on a wave of pro-British Australian national-ism. Even the monuments erected to the Boer Warof 1899–1902 became rallying points at which to callfor strong support for the British and Australian wareffort.

[Memorials to the AIF in the form of honour boards]became huge scoreboards of commitment, intendedto encourage other men to follow those named. InNew South Wales, the Department of Public Instruc-tion suggested that ‘in order to stimulate recruiting’each school in the state should erect an honourboard.47

To the religious clergy, pacifists, dissenters and con-scientious objectors, certain underlying aspects ofearly Anzac remembrances were troubling. Theconcept of actively encouraging young men offighting age to follow the example of ‘our gloriousdead’ and serve the empire through enlistment startedalmost as soon as the fighting began. This would later

manifest itself into the conscription debate, with the‘Pros’ or ‘Win the War Group’ movement led by ‘thelittle digger’, prime minister Billy Hughes, and the‘Antis’ comprising trade unionists, the CatholicChurch, pacifists etc. Two bitterly fought conscrip-tion referendums consequently divided Australiansociety along sectarian lines: loyal Protestants v.working-class Catholics.

The effects of this sectariandivide were heightened by theIrish Easter Uprising of 1916, andby the prominence of Irish-born,ardently anti-conscription Arch-bishop Mannix, who pointedout that if Germany was to becondemned for its actions inBelgium, the British acted with atleast a comparable degree ofimpunity in Ireland by executingmost of the Irish rebel leaders bymilitary firing squad.

While conscription failed towin the required support, thisdebate revealed just how per-ception can impact on the veryconcept of patriotism, warremembrance and nationalism.Had conscription succeeded,

how many more Australian lives would have beenlost pursuing the cause of Australian honour throughloyalty to the now non-existent British Empire? Evenwithout conscription the AIF, which fought with suchcourage and distinction on the Western Front,served the strategic interests of the British Empire.

The idea of sacrifice is taken to its logical conclu-sion in the concept of the tomb of the UnknownSoldier. Visiting this tomb at the Australian WarMemorial in Canberra is a moving experience. Theremains of an Australian soldier — one of a staggering23,000 unidentified AIF soldiers who fell fighting inFrance — are intended to personify the sacrifice,courage and endurance of the nation.

We do not know this Australian’s name and we neverwill. We do not know his rank or battalion. We donot know where he was born, nor precisely how hedied...We will never know who this Australianwas...he was one of the 45,000 Australians who diedon the Western Front...one of the 60,000 Australianswho died on foreign soil. One of the 100,000 Aus-tralians who died in wars this century. He is all ofthem. And he is one of us.48

As prime minister Paul Keating spoke Don Watson’seloquent words to salute the Unknown Soldier, hebrought home the message that he was ‘one of us’.


❛To the religiousclergy, pacifists,dissenters andconscientious

objectors, certainunderlying aspects of

early Anzacremembrances were

troubling.❜

In London, similarly, the Cenotaph is located nearDowning Street, Whitehall; in Dublin, it is theGarden of Remembrance on O’Connell Street. Centralto this aspect of remembrance is the fact that theseshrines are places of pilgrimage and have primacyover all other such memorials. It is at these focal pointsof nationwide war remembrance that the approvedthemes in the national discourses of sacrifice, honour,liberty and patriotism can be espoused. Irrespectiveof one’s views on these themes, it cannot be over-looked that they are nonetheless highly selective andcarefully scripted.

That these themes are indeed selective says muchabout the society that espouses such romantic idealson significant occasions of national importance. Theideals that are expressed through war commemora-tion are usually a patriotic interpretation of commonthreads and cultural values of the society. This canbe an issue of contention, as it does ignore other pos-sible and, perhaps, equally valid interpretations. Sec-ondly, memorials also fill an almost ritualistic role ofpilgrimage and ceremony, making alternative read-ings of commemoration controversial if carried outon a day of remembrance. For example, an anti-warprotest on Anzac Day would be largely perceived asshowing disrespect to those who had died. Such amischievous ‘act of defiance’ held on this daywould strongly challenge the core values of Australiannationalism inherent within the commemoration. Tochallenge the accepted selective themes is to risk beingseen as unpatriotic.

As in Australia, Great Britain or the UnitedStates, selectivity is also easily seen in Eire, wheremost southern towns, if not all, have memorials tovarious individuals associated with Ireland’s inde-pendence from Great Britain. Many towns havememorials to those who fought and died in the ill-fated 1916 Easter Uprising, an event that, despite itscurrent significance, was not at all popular with ordi-nary Irish people at the time. At that time, tens ofthousands of Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant,were fighting against Germany on the Western Frontin various British army units. Initially, the 1916 rebels

were seen as troublemakers andhad little support. It was onlyafter most were ruthlessly shotby British army firing squadsthat nationalist indignationgrew.

Sean O’Callaghan, a formerhighly ranked Irish RepublicanArmy (IRA) terrorist turnedinformer, recollects his school-boy days as such:

Every Easter he [O’Callaghan’sschoolteacher] helped to organ-ise an Easter Sunday concert inthe Ashe Memorial Hall to com-memorate the Rising of 1916. Itwas a matter of some local prideand the whole town seemed tobe there, even some local priestsand garda [police]. The concertsfollowed a set pattern: Irishdancers and traditional ceilidhgroups would be followed bymelodramatic and sentimental

re-enactments of the Rising. Mournful and evocativerepublican ballads like ‘Kevin Barry’ — about ayoung medical student hanged by the British in theWar of Independence — and ‘The Ballad of JamesConnolly’ would be followed by rousing tunes like‘A Nation Once Again’. Melodramatic tableaux fromthe Rising, which were designed to pluck a tear fromyour eye, would be acknowledged by rapturousapplause and a standing ovation.49

O’Callaghan recalled how he had very much enjoyedthis type of commemoration until he reached his teenyears and started to dislike the overt sentimentalityof the gathering. He also looked back upon com-memorations that were held in the Republican plotof the local cemetery in Tralee, remembering themusic and the marching of the old IRA men. Yet itwould seem that the pilgrimage to Bodenstown, inCounty Kildare, struck a chord in his youth, andcaused deep reflection once he turned against terrorist


violence and the IRA. Bodenstown is perceived as thehome of Irish republicanism as it is the birthplace ofTheobald Wolfe Tone. O’Callaghan went there for thefirst time in June 1966:

The annual pilgrimage to Bodenstown, in CountyKildare, where Theobald Wolfe Tone, the father ofIrish republicanism, is buried is, together with theEaster Commemoration, one of the key events in theIRA calendar. A Protestant, Tone was born in 1763and became one of founding members of a groupcalled the ‘Society of United Irishmen’, which washeavily influenced by the French revolution, andsought aid from France to free Ireland from Britishrule. He and the united Irishmen proclaimed thatthey would substitute thecommon name of Irishman forProtestant, Catholic and Dis-senter, but in reality set off asqualid round of sectarian slaugh-ter in 1798. Tone slit his throat ingaol rather than be hanged by theBritish. As kids we were taughtthat he had not committed suicide— to do so would have been bothcowardly and a sin — but hadbeen murdered by the British. Itwas indicative of much of therubbish we learned as history,particularly concerning the rela-tionship between Britain andIreland.50

The irony of this was that to ques-tion the sacrifice of Irish repub-licans who had fought and diedwas, and still is, virtually sacrilegious. There is nodoubt that many good men wholeheartedly believedin a home-ruled or republican Ireland, but across theRepublic the victors have sought to rewrite the veryact of commemoration itself. Sean O’Callaghanrightly points out the fact that so many more Irish-men, both Catholic and Protestant, had fought anddied in the uniform of the British army over two cen-turies. Without monuments or commemoration,these men are now largely considered beyond the paleof nationalistic memory. These monuments, like themany Norman castles and Georgian houses that havebeen systematically knocked down over the last fiftyyears in order to eradicate the visual reminders ofhated British rule, are often conspicuously absent inEire. The contribution of Irishmen who volunteeredfor service in the British army, irrespective of the manysocial issues that may have caused enlistment, is stilla long and proud one. In fact, given the failures ofBritish rule in Ireland, enlistment in the British armyis a significant window into Irish social history. It hasbeen estimated that at the time of the Battle of Water-

loo, possibly as many as between one-quarter andone-third of the British army was of Irish birth, includ-ing the Iron Duke himself.

If there are elements within Irish republican com-memoration and nationalistic remembrance that seemillogical and uncomfortable to the outsider, one mustnever forget that the phenomenon of facts obscuredin favour of preferred interpretations is not confinedto Eire. The very same such issues can also be seenin Great Britain, the US and Australia. In Australia,should we not still formally acknowledge the con-textual reality of our then pro-British politics in orderto show why so many Australians chose to serve onthe battlefields of Gallipoli and the Western Front and

wash away ‘the convict stain’ in loyal service to theempire? Despite what some school textbooks suggest,the ‘spirit of adventure’ and the chance of an ‘over-seas trip’ can only go so far in explaining the rela-tively sustained enthusiasm of young Australian mento fight in a war mostly fought (excepting the attackon German New Guinea) so far away from home. Thepublic epitaph, ‘for King and Empire’, is imprintedon countless World War I memorials. The imperialcontext is now mostly ignored as irrelevant exceptin scholarship, or as a passing paragraph in a highschool textbook that speaks of a ‘Mother England’from a long-lost age. It has been replaced by the‘unique’ Anzac qualities of mateship and courage‘against the odds’, and the claim that these stagger-ing sacrifices for Australia were made defending theabstract notion of freedom.

Nationalism requires, at its core, an act of faith andtrust in core values and ideas. This jingoism can beseen in the criticism expressed by self-appointedcustodians of nationalist culture (politicians and patri-ots) when serious military and political academics


expand and/or challenge the cherished myths.Only in 2005 was there any serious attempt to trans-late into English the ‘Official Japanese War Records’by Australian academics.51 The idea that the Japan-ese intended to invade Australia has pervaded thesymbolic meanings associated with the Kokoda cam-paign since World War II. At a recent history con-ference on events in 1942, a view was presented, basedon the available evidence and intelligence reports ofthe time, that ‘Japan never seriously intended toinvade Australia, a fact known to the Australian Gov-ernment by mid-1942’.52

According to Japanese records, while there wassome talk of an Australian invasion, the idea was scut-tled due to its logistical problems in favour of iso-lating Australia from the wider Pacific conflict.

In early 1942, in the euphoria of Asia-Pacific victo-ries, some middle-ranking naval officers in Tokyoproposed that Australia should be invaded to fore-stall it being used as a base for an Allied counter-offensive…The plans got no further than someacrimonious discussions [said the historian]. Thearmy dismissed the idea as ‘gibberish’, knowing thattroops sent further south would weaken Japan inChina and in Manchuria against a Soviet threat. Notonly did the Japanese army condemn the plan, butthe navy general staff also deprecated it, unable tospare the million tonnes of shipping the invasionwould have consumed.53

Both John Howard and Opposition leader KimBeazley thought it proper to criticise the claims made

by the historian54, but given that neither could haveread the ‘Official Japanese History’, or seem interestedin the available intelligence reports, on what groundsthey did so seem unclear. How is the bravery shownin Papua New Guinea actually diminished by the factthat Japan had no obvious plans to invade Austra-lia? The horrendous conditions under which Aus-tralian troops fought, their courage and theirachievements are not lessened by a lack of an obviousJapanese invasion plan at the time. The only thinglessened is cherished nationalistic folklore.

My reflection on how we choose to remember wasstirred after a trip to Northern Ireland,where I found myself in Derry. Thisfamous fort is the only completelywalled city in the British Isles. Derry,or Londonderry, is a grim, gritty andfascinating city. Throughout theCatholic area of the town, known asthe Bogside, murals and memorialsabound. Plaques commemorating IRAprisoners who endured the dreaded H-Blocks and a stark memorial to civilrights marchers shot dead by Britishparatroopers during a Catholic civilrights march in 1972 are full of potentnationalist symbolism and loss. Thelegendary graphic murals that areemblazoned across numerous wallsdepict violent riot scenes, political mes-sages, and hopes for peace. Thevarious messages from these murals —messages of peace, death, hostility andpropaganda — reflect interpretationsof historical events, sacrifice and resis-tance. The same heady mixture is

reflected in the Loyalist (Protestant) areas, wheremurals make use of the same themes only from theopposite point on the ideological compass.

Within the city walls of Derry there is a World WarII memorial for those Irishmen from the north whoserved in the British army. It is an extraordinarystatue, as it depicts a soldier bayoneting an invisibleenemy beneath his boots as he moves forward uponthe enemy position. The gritty determination uponhis face is unforgettable, as is the portrait of such anintimate infliction of death. The statue was originallybuilt for the city of Sheffield in England. My guideinformed me that the war statue was rejected by theCity of Sheffield due to the belief that it was ‘tooviolent’. Derry, apparently without much of a qualm,took the statue as its own. Courage and sacrifice arethe most common themes seen in war remembrancestatues both here and in the British Isles, yet I cannotrecall ever seeing one that depicted a soldier in the


act of killing. At first Sheffield’s rejection seemed tomake sense, as such a focal point to remembrance andritualistic ceremony would not be very attractive. Thisis an aesthetic choice, not a logical one, as it is theduality of death and killing that are actually at theepicentre of the soldier’s experience of war.

The act of killing is not central to nationalisticremembrance of war, yet it would seem to be the for-gotten aspect of nationalism, war commemorationand remembrance. To use the experiences of soldierswho have endured what most of us have not is oftenpart and parcel of some form of established discourseof Australian nationalism. Nearing his death, LesKehoe, my great-uncle, cried in anguish over mem-ories of North Africa, Syria and the Kokoda Trail. Hespoke not of glory, but of those who did not return,and he seemed to grimace with horror at all the deathand violence that must have been flashing across hismind at that stressful time. The memories of all thefear, death and killing obviously remained hauntinglyvivid for Les for all those years, and yet apart froma few words I had never heard anything from himabout the war.

‘The Germans, the Japanese, the English, theAussies, we were all the same,’ he cried. ‘What wasit all for?’

His haunted eyes betrayed that, just as it was allthose years ago, Leslie Kehoe still could not under-stand the horror and sheer inhumanity we inflict oneach other through war, as in the end ‘we are all thesame’. To remember war without acknowledging thefullest context of the decisions to go to war, and thelifetime of nightmares inflicted on those who wereasked to ‘endure’ the battlefield for the sake of thenation-state, is to allow our sacred myths to becomethe tools of politics and nationalistic manipulationsand sit above serious examination. If this is the casethen the preferred themes that are espoused throughwar remembrance and days of ritualised ceremony,while moving and sometimes poignant, can neverpaint the entire story and can only serve those whowould obscure the sheer horror that is war.

References1 Stiles, Lewis (trans) Selections from Herodotus, The Persian

Wars, University of Saskatchewan, 1995. [Accessed at<http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/DeptTransls/Hdt.html#preface>.]

2 Inglis, Ken ‘War Memorials in the Australian Landscape’ inWartime — Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial,No. 4, Summer, Canberra ACT, 1998, p22.

3 Ibid.4 Ibid. 5 Simkin, Mark ‘Japanese PM’s war shrine visits

“unconstitutional”’ on Lateline, Australian BroadcastingCorporation, 2004. [Program transcript accessed 7 April 2004at <www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1083515.htm>.]

6 Kezwer, Gil ‘Dresden protests statue of “Bomber” Harris’ in


Peace Magazine, May/June 1992, p15. [Accessed at<www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v08n3p15.htm>.]

7 Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land,The Hague Convention IV, Articles XXV and XXVI, 36 Stat.2295, TS No. 539, 18 October 1907.

8 League Doctrine, League of Nations Office J, SpecialSupplement 182A.69, 1938 IX, 1938, pp15–16.

9 Morton, Desmond, Canada and War — A Military and PoliticalHistory, Butterworth & Co, Toronto, 1981, p135.

10 Speer, Albert Inside the Third Reich, p280. (See also Webster &Frankland, ‘Interrogation of Albert Speer’, Vol. IV, App. 37,18 July 1945, p378.)

11 Boyer, Paul ‘Whose History is it Anyway? Memory, Politics,and Historical Scholarship’ in Linenthal, Edward T andEngelhardt, Tom (eds) History Wars: The Enola Gay and OtherBattles for the American Past, Metropolitan Books, New York,1996, ch. 4, pp115–139.

12 Ibid.13 Ibid.14 Ibid.15 Behm, Allen ‘Australia and Iraq: political courage or strategic

folly?’ in Australian Rationalist, No. 63, Winter, 2003, p32.16 Broinowski, Alison Howard’s War, Melbourne Scribe Short

Books, Scribe Publishers, 2003, passim.17 Wilkinson, Richard ‘Ashes to Ashes’ in History Today

Magazine, Vol. 52, February 2002, p35.18 Ibid.19 Ibid., p38.20 Ibid., p39.21 Ibid.22 Ibid.23 Stanley, Peter in conversation with the author at the

Australian War Memorial, 10 November 2005. 24 MacQueen, Humphrey Suspect History — Manning Clark and

the Future of Australia’s Past, Wakefield Press, South Australia,1997, pp2–3.

25 ‘President Commemorates Veterans Day and Discusses Waron Terror’, Office of the Press Secretary, 11 November 2005.[Accessed at <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051111-1.html>.]

26 ‘The Great Debate’ on 60 Minutes, 2004. [Program transcriptaccessed at <http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2004_09_12/story_1227.asp>.]

27 Fernandes, Clinton Reluctant Saviour — Australia, Indonesiaand the Independence of East Timor, Scribe, Victoria, 2003, p35.(See also Chomsky, Noam Hegemony or Survival — America’sQuest for Global Dominance, Allen & Unwin, Australia andNew Zealand, 2003, p54.)

28 Ibid., pp35, 58, 59.29 Ibid., pp51–57.30 Ibid., p51.31 ‘Indonesian Military Chief in Dili Colonel Tono Suratman

armed Timorese civilians in order to supposedly protect themfrom pro-independence militias’, press release, East TimorInternational Support Centre, 7 December 1998. (See alsoFernandes, pp51–52.)

32 Fernandes, op. cit., pp36–37, 51–52.33 Downer, Alexander ‘Indonesia, East Timor and Australia:

New Challenges, Enduring Interests’, speech, National PressClub, Canberra, 31 March 1999. [‘Speech by the HonAlexander Downer MP Minister for Foreign Affairs’transcript accessed at <www.dfat.gov.au/media/speeches/foreign/1999/990331_new_challenges.html>.] (Foran excerpt from the ‘Question and Answer’ session, see alsoFernandes, op. cit., p55. It should be noted that as of16 November 2005, these ‘Question and Answer’ sections arenot published for free viewing on either the officialDepartment of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) site<www.dfat.gov.au/media/transcripts/1999/> or the Foreign

Minster’s official site <www.dfat.gov.au/media/speeches/foreign/1999/index.html>.)

34 Fernandes, op. cit., pp55–56.35 Fighting In Timor, AWM, Canberra. [Accessed at

<www.gov.au/atwar/timor.htm>.] (With limited cooperationfrom the Dutch leading up to the invasion, and none at allfrom the Portuguese (the island was divided between the twocolonial powers), Australia’s military planners attempted todevelop a credible ‘forward defence’ strategy with which toconfront the Japanese in Timor. Sparrow Force was thecodename for the Australia-led operation, which wasdesigned to secure important supply islands and ‘was part ofa strategy of seeking to defend forward airfields, and alsoinvolved deploying Lark Force at Rabaul and Gull Force atAmbon’.)

36 ‘Australia holds tickertape parade for Timor forces’, Reuters,US, 19 April 2000. [Accessed at <www.etan.org/et2000b/april/16-22/19aushol.htm>.] (For another example of JohnHoward associating himself with the Australian militarytradition, see Ramsey, Alan ‘When valour is more than aslouch hat’, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 August 2002.)

37 Fernandes, op. cit., p35.38 Chomsky, op. cit., p54.39 Fernandes, op. cit., pp47–85 and passim.40 ‘The Great Debate’, 60 Minutes, 2004. [Transcript accessed at

<http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2004_09_12/story_1227.asp>.]

41 Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on theOrigin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition ed. Verso,London and New York, 1991, passim.

42 Carlyon, Patrick The Gallipoli Story, Penguin Books, Australia,2003, p166.

43 Ibid., p33.44 Ibid., pp26–28.45 Ibid. (There are documented stories of Turkish officials and

officers hastily packing for complete abandonment ofConstantinople to the looming British fleet.)

46 Inglis, Ken ‘The Monument as Recruiter’ in Sacred Places,Melbourne University Press, Victoria, 1999, pp106–107.

47 Ibid., p107.48 Watson, Don (speechwriter), prime minister Paul Keating’s

speech at the entombing of the Unknown Australian Soldier,Canberra, 11 November 1993.

49 O’Callaghan, Sean The Informer, Bantam Press, UK, 1998,pp17–18.

50 Ibid., pp19–20.51 Stanley, op. cit.52 Forbes, Mark ‘Japanese invasion a myth: historian’ in The Age,

1 June 2002.53 Ibid.54 Stanley, op. cit.


Saibaba man Tharoor out of race for UN top postThis article first appeared in the Rationalist International Bulletin on 3 October 2006.

The Indian Rationalist Association expressed relief as Shashi Tharoor, the controversial Indian can-didate for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations, pulled out of the race after South Korea’s

Ban Ki-Moon won the latest straw poll. Mr Tharoor received three negative votes, one of which wasfrom a permanent Security Council member. The formal election for the secretary-general is due on9 November.

The rationalists in India reacted strongly against the hasty decision of the Indian government to nom-inate Tharoor, as he is a Saibaba man [a follower of the guru Sai Baba] and a hardcore propagandist ofobscurantism, miracle-belief and all kinds of superstitions. During his career as the UN undersecretary-general for public information, Tharoor raised his voice in the international media in favour of para-normal claims and in praise of god-men and miracle mongers.

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