Australia's soldiers: hunters, trappers and slaughterers of humans

In honour of Anzac Day, cartoonist/philosopher Michael Leunig offers the following salute to those who have fought, and those who have died, for Australia (edited for brevity):

We live in a national culture that glamorises soldiers, yet the sight of a military uniform with its obvious connotations of morbidity and violence provokes in me the question: "What sort of person is attracted to the killing professions?"

"What sort of person volunteers to devote their life to the skills of destruction and the business of hunting, trapping and slaughtering humans?"

Anzac Day brings this question strongly to mind because I am asked each year to remember the soldiers who fought and to spare a thought for them, which I always do, but that's where the trouble starts because before too long questions arise and I try to imagine what sort of men would volunteer to invade a far-off land and perpetrate such murderous violence against its inhabitants ... Inevitably I then start to think and wonder about the forgotten men who on conscience and principle refused to take part in this monumental violence (where is their monument?), which then leads to a yearning for an Australia that would honour and remember the most horrible and sad truth of all: the civilian victims of war. In the grisly light of the fact that Australian soldiers so recently took part in the invasion of Iraq, which involved the killing of more than 100,000 civilians, and lost not one soldier in the process, it feels somehow obscene, bizarre and shameful to be commemorating, yet again, Australia's part in the invasion of Turkey in 1915. More than ever it feels to me that soldiers have been honoured more than enough and civilian victims have been honoured far too little. In the commemoration of war, as in war itself, civilians don't ultimately matter. The failure to prioritise the remembrance of civilian victims is a reinforcement of the military right to abuse or obliterate them with impunity in times of war.

Obviously Leunig would feel a lot better if Australia had suffered casualties, and lots of them, in Iraq. There's also the little matter of the dubious 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed figure. And then there are Australia's inncocent civilian casualties to be considered:

We now know of, and can statistically track, the Vietnam Morbidity Syndrome, a mysterious psychological condition that has seriously plagued children of Vietnam veterans and which indeed may have dire consequences for grandchildren and beyond. And even more surreptitious are the myriad ghosts of war, which return from the battles, banalities and atrocities and attach themselves to the civil situation, entering destructively into the living culture of the nation. This inevitable, postwar militarist invasion of the homeland demands much reparation and imposes hugely on civil society, domestic life and the new generation. Grim authoritarianism, paranoia, guilt, fundamentalism, hostility, bitter or brutal outlooks and a difficulty with Eros, beauty and the feminine are all aftermath qualities that insinuate or assert themselves into family and institutional life with profound consequences. The remnant tones and gestures of war become normalised and the character of society is rewired. The violent, frightened mentality and fetishism of war, the domineering impulse, and the addiction to the "evil other" forever corrupt, disfigure and limit the societies that wage and prosecute the violent solution. A nation may win a war but its people can't get away with it.

In short, Australia is plenty fucked-up. Why? Because we're militaristic. So, let's all get together - those who would kill us included - for a picnic and a group hug. Everything's going to be just fine if we think positive thoughts. Really.

Do yourself a favour, don't bother reading the whole thing.