Stupidity
I hope we never have a world war in our times. Any war. I hope our children don't either.
Old men's tears cannot even come close to convey the horrors that they saw and endured.
In the second world war, six out of two and half thousand prisoners of war survived a POW camp in Borneo. Six.
Nineteen hundred kamikaze pilots were deployed during the battle in Okinawa. They succeeded in bombing thirty six US naval ships. Presumably they all died.
It took two atomic bombs to end the war with Japan. They wiped out 200, 000 civilians, if memory serves me correctly, and then a further 200, 000 with the after effects.
At the end of WWII scores of Japanese citizens made their way to the emperor's palace and prostrated themselves on the ground to apologise for losing the war. Citizens.
Of the seven million Australians who populated Australia at the time, one million served in the war. I don't know how many survived.
In a war, no participant is innocent. All participants are victims.
No-one should be sent to kill and maim strangers and destroy nations, raping and pillaging along the way, leaving desperate relatives and loved ones at home, often dying alone in foreign countries.
Australia seems to have a history of serving in unnecessary wars and being sacrificed in unnecessary battles. We still do. Why do we let ourselves be used as clapping monkeys?
Even an Australian nurse who served in WWII was despairing at the fact that we, as a nation, don't seem to learn from our past mistakes. We continue to display the same stupidity and generate the same type of hatred, she said.
It is no comfort that we live in a passive, "safe", no-one-gives-a-shit-about-anyone-else, Howard voting country.
Nothing pains me more than old men's tears.
Old men's tears cannot even come close to convey the horrors that they saw and endured.
In the second world war, six out of two and half thousand prisoners of war survived a POW camp in Borneo. Six.
Nineteen hundred kamikaze pilots were deployed during the battle in Okinawa. They succeeded in bombing thirty six US naval ships. Presumably they all died.
It took two atomic bombs to end the war with Japan. They wiped out 200, 000 civilians, if memory serves me correctly, and then a further 200, 000 with the after effects.
At the end of WWII scores of Japanese citizens made their way to the emperor's palace and prostrated themselves on the ground to apologise for losing the war. Citizens.
Of the seven million Australians who populated Australia at the time, one million served in the war. I don't know how many survived.
In a war, no participant is innocent. All participants are victims.
No-one should be sent to kill and maim strangers and destroy nations, raping and pillaging along the way, leaving desperate relatives and loved ones at home, often dying alone in foreign countries.
Australia seems to have a history of serving in unnecessary wars and being sacrificed in unnecessary battles. We still do. Why do we let ourselves be used as clapping monkeys?
Even an Australian nurse who served in WWII was despairing at the fact that we, as a nation, don't seem to learn from our past mistakes. We continue to display the same stupidity and generate the same type of hatred, she said.
It is no comfort that we live in a passive, "safe", no-one-gives-a-shit-about-anyone-else, Howard voting country.
Nothing pains me more than old men's tears.
posted by Darcy at 9:33 PM
5 Comments:
in japan i taught english and one of my private students was an old man. he said to me that if the allies hadn't bombed japan, they would never have stopped and many more would have died.
for this man to say this was like the ultimate betrayal to his emperor. and yet he said it, to me, a young aussie girl. i had tears in my eyes. it was an amazing moment. but he said it needed to happen, otherwise the japanese would never have stopped.
not that i'm saying it was ok. it was bad. all war is bad. i hate it. i hate what we are involved in now. it's just making everything worse.
peace out.
Makes for good movies though.
yeah if you're a boy, rm
[wonders why she can't stop biting]
[wants to ask roguemaze what kind of fucking movie they'll make out of the current mess. decides not to. goes to bed.]
We are having a world war by stealth at the moment. The USA is ruling the world and those that don't support them are being coerced, some by trade agreements others by bombs. This current war isn't on our doorstep yet, but the effect of it is. Our government keeps bringing in draconian laws (that in "peacetime" would be unthinkable). Now it appears to be illegal (or rather grounds for deportation) to be a tourist attending anti globalisation/anti war profiteerinng rallies, as Scott Parkin has just found out.
What next? Identity cards? Curfews? Even if blood is not spilt on our soil (though our citizens are in iraq and afghanistan shedding blood on our democratic behalf) repression is at large in this country.
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