Walt means no disrespect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Most of them went into battle bravely, if not willingly, because they had to. Willingly or not, they answered their countries' call, and did what they were told to do, without questioning the right or wrong of the wars in which they fought.
Some of those wars, in Walt's opinion, were fought in vain, for the wrong causes. By all means, remember and honour the fallen, and pray for their souls, but forget what I'll call "bad wars". Four examples come to mind.
In Canada, today, the names and dates of two semi-forgotten wars were added to the "National" War Memorial*. They were the Boer War -- more properly the Anglo-Boer War -- and the Afghan War -- more properly the Third or Fourth Afghan War, depending on who's counting.
The Anglo-Boer war was perhaps the first modern war, and a nasty affair it was, won by the British only by sheer force of numbers, and by tactics such as imprisoning the Boers' women and children in concentration camps. You can look it up.
It was an imperial war, fought by then-Great Britain and its colonial subjects (that's how Canadians got involved) against the Afrikaaner citizens of a couple of tiny republics who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Did Britain subjugate them in the name of freedom or (as is now pretended) racial equality? Hardly. The war had more to do with the fact that the Boers were sitting on top of a mountain of gold.
The Boer War ended on 31 May 2002. Fast forward a century to find Canadian troops fighting alongside another imperial power against another people who wanted only to be left alone. The imperial power would be the US of A, and the people who wanted to be left to alone were the Afghans.
We pretend now that this fourth attempt to conquer a barbarian and unconquerable people -- the British had already tried twice, the Russians once -- was for the purpose of bringing them the benefits of Western civilization. In reality, history will see the Afghan wars as part and parcel of the larger War of the Middle East or -- my prediction -- the Oil Wars.
Dear readers, let's not kid ourselves about the real reason for Armerican "intervention" in Iraq, Afghanistan and other sandpits. No matter what Presidents Bush and Obama told us, there is considerable doubt, in my mind at least, that the Taliban/Al-Qaeda/ISIS pose any real threat to the USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, or any other country which has joined the Armerican "coalition of the willing".
Let's be honest. The American government has sent tens of thousands of men and women to their deaths in some of the must useless land on earth because under that land are billions of gallons of oil. The USA wants to control the entire Middle East to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of cheap(ish) oil, and that's a fact.
Canada and the other members of the "coalition" have gone along with the Americans because, having sat out Vietnam and/or Iraq and/or Libya and/or the last-but-one Afghan war, they couldn't be seen to shirk any longer. Why? Because if it ever came to an actual threat against Britain and/or Canada and/or Australia and/or the Netherlands, they'd be screwed without the protection of the USA, and they know it!
I promised you four examples. As well as the Anglo-Boer War and the Oil Wars, I had in mind the Spanish-American war (which coincided neatly with the Boer War) and, of course, the Vietnam War. But I think the point has been made that there's no point in remembering the bad wars unless we do so with a resolve not to make the same mistakes again. Sadly, that resolve seems to be totally lacking in Washington and the other bastions of democracy and freedom.
* Footnote from Ed.: I put "national" in quote marks because Poor Len assures me that in Canada the word has two different meanings, depending on whether you're saying it in English or French. Advice taken!
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