Today is a day to remember the sacrifice made by our military personnel and their families. It is also a day to reflect on the horror of war.
But thanks to John Howard, ANZAC Day has instead turned into some sort of jingoistic national celebration.
Speaking to the ABC in 2013, historian Clare Wright said: “What we saw in the Howard era was that Anzac Day became used as a political opportunistic tool for rallying the nation behind a particular version of Australia’s history.”
Afghanistan war artist Ben Quilty is scathing of that time: “It was state-sanctioned zealous patriotism and the young men and women serving in the ADF were to lose because their story was buried more and more for the Anzac story.” And as for disillusioned youth at the time – they were also sold short, says Quilty – “they were given patriotism as emotional crutch.”
James Brown, a former officer of the Australian army who now works at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, has called the centenary celebrations and the enormous amount of money spent on them, an “Anzac arms race – to find the biggest way to commemorate dead soldiers.”
“The sheer effort we are expending on the Anzac centenary is utterly irreconcilable with the parlous state of our defence forces, our ignorance of the war in Afghanistan and the marginal status of the serving military in our society. We need to look hard at the reality of Anzac, the bad as well as the good. [With] commercialisation: what started as a simple ceremony is now an enormous commercial enterprise.”
John Howard also sent our troops to Afghanistan – the epitome of the futility of war.
After the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, President George Bush declared a war on terror and Prime Minister John Howard committed Australia to assist, citing the ANZUS Treaty. Most Australians had long expected that if ANZUS were ever to be invoked at all, it would be the US coming to our assistance, not vice versa.
Australian special forces were soon in Afghanistan alongside US and coalition counterparts. Their task was to dismantle al-Qaeda and deny it the havens from which the September 11 attacks had sprung by removing the Taliban from power.
Australia’s military and civil aid commitments between 2001 and 2017 amounted to more than $7 billion, and, in April 2017, Malcolm Turnbull confirmed a further commitment of $1.236 billion out to 2020 ($916 million and $320 million of military and civil aid respectively).
That same month, Donald Trump, in some kind of weird dick-waving exercise, dropped the Mother of all Bombs on Afghanistan. Which was kind of odd considering he had campaigned on getting out of there.
Later that year, Trump said he was sending 4,000 additional troops. Marise Payne refused to rule out sending more Aussies, saying: “We will examine the president’s statement, consider any expectations of counterpart nations, and engage in discussion with the US on those matters.”
Then lo and behold, last month, foreign minister, Marise Payne, and the defence minister, Linda Reynolds, issued a joint statement welcoming the agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban that will see the 19-year presence of coalition forces come to an end.
What a waste.
The Defence Portfolio Budget Statement shows the eye-watering resources that are being spent on acquiring and sustaining military equipment.
We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars for what?
We won’t get the first of the new frigates into service until around 2030. All going well, the first submarine won’t be in service until 2034 or 2035, despite a conservative design philosophy based on using only currently mature technologies.
HMAS Perth will be up on blocks for at least two years after its latest upgrade for want of a crew.
We’ve already spent $4.6 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter planes, with another $2.4 billion to be spent this year, and for that princely sum we have two planes.
In a rapidly changing world, the value-for-money calculation doesn’t favour billion-dollar manned platforms that are too valuable to risk losing.
Autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, more accessible space resources, and 3D printing could help militaries to break out of the vicious cycle of increasingly complex but increasingly expensive manned platforms.
Currently, less than 1% of Defence’s budget goes into its innovation funds. There’s no point investing billions in military capability if it doesn’t support Australia’s needs.
The ADF are a highly-skilled, well trained, well-resourced, mobile workforce who are being wasted on war games.
Forty-one Australian soldiers died in Afghanistan. Eighty Australians have died in the last couple of months from the coronavirus.
Perhaps old generals are not the best people to equip us for the world of the future.
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