This is a review of the international fleet review. #meta.
In no way am I against the people who have made a brave and
difficult choice to join the army, navy, air force, or serve in any other way
in the military. You guard us while we sleep, and for that, we can never be
grateful enough.
There is a difference, however, in expressing that kind of
gratitude, and expressing gratitude in extravagant displays of military
glorification. Not only was the Fleet Review spectacularly costly, but it also
simplified the realities of serving in and deploying the armed forces in
conflict, and glorified weapons that should never be seen as anything other
than a last resort.
It was amusing to see the strong support from the
conservative government of the display, with Tony Abbott triumphantly rolling
out his daughters for the umpteenth time, once again usually wearing white.
(Any other colour makes them look impure, you see, like their persistently
black-wearing mother). Precious gifts aside, one would think that a government
elected on the basis of their ‘WE HAVE NO MONEY DEBT DEBT DEBT OMGZ[1]’
platform would be a little less impressed with millions of dollars literally
going up in smoke, whether in the form of fireworks or exhaust.
There are no actual costings that I could find of the event,
leading me to believe that the public purse was drained so hard they couldn’t
afford paper to print the costings on.
The fact of the matter is, I’m not resenting either
characterisations of how our funds are doing. I’m fine with the idea that we
have enough cash to throw at moving lots of boats around to do things on a body
of water, and clustering every single Sydney sider around the harbour so it’s
like New Years Eve twice a year. Furthermore, the government can also act like
we’re entering a fiscal apocalypse and we need to dig as much gas, uranium,
coal and iron ore out of the ground and reject as many incoming welfare
parasites on boats as possible.
The thing is, you can’t have both. Because then the message
is that, we know, we know, the fleet review is expensive. But these fireworks
and arbitrary displays of guns and blades and wings and engines are worth more
than the lives of people living in Nauru or wherever we shove them nowadays.
Machinery is more important!
And you know why it’s especially great to celebrate navy
ships? Because they’ll be doing the great work of turning boats around and
shunting them back into the cold ocean where they came from. It’s OK though, we
don’t have to feel bad about that, because it’s a ‘sensitive military operation’
it won’t be printed in the newspaper anyway. And everything in the world will
be right again – see no evil, eh?
Despite the fact that the cost has not come up at all in the
last weekend, I don’t believe it to be the most insidious harm of the display. No
one seems to really care that these machines are designed to kill people.
Why are we glorifying machines designed to kill people? Why
are we celebrating the fact that we ever have to use them? We should be
lamenting the tragedy of humanity that such things exist. I’ve listened to
people of older generations discuss successful torpedo-ing of German and
Japanese ships – why is that worth celebration? It is worthy of discussion,
yes, but not the simplistic discussion we saw this weekend, consisting of ‘warships
are good’, ‘nationalism good’, ‘machines doing cool things, good.’
By all means, express gratitude for what servicewomen and
men do. It is not necessary for that gratitude to come in the form of a
celebration of the military itself, as the military’s existence is a tragic but
unavoidable reality. The mere fact that countries like ours retain power not
through diplomacy, not through benevolence of international policy, but by
flaunting our own killing machines and flaunting our relationship with American
killing machines, which are far more expensive and impressive, is not a cause
for celebration. It is a cause for mourning.
It seemed ironic that just as America flaunted a slice of
its spectacular fleet in our harbour, its government was shut down over a
fiscal squabble. Part of the problem was perhaps the (conservative estimate) of
one trillion dollars spent on the American military every year. And for what?
To maintain power through fear, not benevolence or cooperation.
Such was the message sent on the weekend. The military may
be a necessity, but seeing demonstrations of its fearsome power should give you
chills, should be a spectacle, should disturb you, and knowing that it inspires
the same fear in our enemies, you should derive great national pride from it.
In broaching these thoughts to my mother yesterday, she
rebuffed me quite brutally. She spoke of the nostalgia felt by older
generations who had lived through the war and depended so strongly on the navy
for their survival.
In no way do I mean to cheapen that nostalgia. But while
they relied on the navy, surely they would hope never to return to such a state
of affairs, such international insecurity and violence, ever again? Surely they
would see relying upon the military as a base last resort? Surely, having lived
through the horrors of war, having suffered the losses of family members and
friends who were killed by the same kinds of war machines we were celebrating
on the weekend, they, more than anyone, would warn against this kind of
glorification?
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