History has a price tag

[ltmurnau]

Triumphal arches, parades, panem et circenses.. and now it's starting to affect things that really matter.

Commemorations of historic military events could put current force at risk, internal documents say By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News January 10, 2014

Comments

[sabotabby]

And again, why observe the beginnings of wars?

It's all part of the glorification of war, which Harper promotes over actual consideration for actual soldiers, national interest, or sound economic policy.

[ltmurnau]

Can't argue with that.
Come to think of it, I can't recall any country whose government goes out of its way to observe the start of a war, unless it was also the beginning of an independence struggle... that seems to be common.
Maybe Egypt observes the start of what we call the Yom Kippur War (1973), or Palestine the start of one Intifada or another.
Oooohhh, wait, the United States does (December 7, September 11).
Hm.

[bruiseblue]

And remember he's not celebrating the reality of this stuff, but the mythologised version of events. "We became a nation" =/ mass casualties of under equipped soldiers, neck deep in mud, under British command, etc

[ltmurnau]

"Who controls the present controls the past;
Who controls the past, controls the future."
- Party slogan from Orwell's 1984.

Everything's coming out of the 00s Republican playbook; these are our Bush years, though we don't have term limits.

[bruiseblue]

I keep thinking about parallels to Bush, too, but I don't want to acknowledge it.

[ltmurnau]

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/01/09/Harper-Science-Library-Closure/

Harper is a much better small-p politician and tactician than Chimpus Maximus ever was; he had to elbow his way into power, while Dubya was put there as window dressing.

[dfordoom]

these were comical non-events (well, just the Fenian Raids) or Canadian disasters.

We do the same thing in Australia. We celebrate our disastrous landing at Gallipoli, but most Australians have never even heard of the Battle of Hamel, the greatest military triumph in Australian history.

[ltmurnau]

You had Gallipoli; we're gonna "celebrate" Dieppe!
At least Dieppe was over in a day; the British kept you in the trenches for months....