Saturday 3 November 2007

Rememberance Day

The political and religious establishment gather together for Rememberance day. It is tempting as a radical, seeing such dignatories to switch off, but it would be wrong to do so.
It is not really about them. I am personally lucky to live at a time and in a place where I have not had to even contemplate going to war.
Yet in WW2, there was no choice. And as history shows, Naziism had to be defeated, it was the most poisoness ideology ever witnessed.
So when I forget about the rather conservative nature of the event, I find myself in awe of what my previous generation managed to do.
And lets be clear, it is right that the political and religious establish take part in this. It would be intolerable if they did not. And it is right the event is conservative in nature. Conservative means reluctant to change. And this is an event that honour people who died many years ago, it should not change.
Also we remember those who died in other wars, and some more recent ones. I was opposed to the war in Iraq. But I do not blame our armed forces for that. I sympathise for the intolerable circumstances they were put in, brought about by the real villians; the politicians who sent them there.
And then of course there are wars that do not involve the British. We do not have a day to remember them. No doubt it is not practical to do this, but minimising the amount of war in the world does not seem to be a high enough priority for the kind of establishment politicians we will be seeing on Rememberance day.

No comments: