Radiohead - Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

I was going to write up a huge ole post regarding my feelings as a Pacifist on Armistice Day, but I found this post I wrote from 2011 and I can't really improve on it much... but I will try because I'm bursting with thoughts on this topic.

"I am the only one that got through
The others died where ever they fell
It was an ambush
Give your leaders each a gun and let them fight it out themselves

They came up from all sides
I've seen hell upon this earth
I've seen devils coming up from the ground
The next will be chemical, but they will never learn."

"I know we're supposed to be grateful, and it's not that I'm ungrateful or ignorant but lest we forget isn't about just remembering sacrifices made, it's about remembering what an awful waste war is. We obviously have forgotten this waste if people think there's any glory in millions of people dying. People seem to think, especially in this country, that war is inevitable and necessary. If politicians did their jobs properly there should be little reason for war, it shouldn't get to that stage. But it does. Most because of greed. Greed for oil, land, money, and power. It's a fucking joke, but focussing solely on the sacrifice of those holding the weapons deflects our gaze from this.

Anyway, a few years ago there was a documentary made on Harry Patch, who died at the age of 111 in 2009. He had written a book and Radiohead took quotes from this and turned it into this song. It's so sad, and it's clear Harry is vehemently against war, and if anyone would know what war is and does, what it achieves, this man would. I remember seeing Harry Patch's funeral and some idiot in military uniform said he knew Harry would support the current wars, and I was utterly gobsmacked."

The knee jerk reaction to people not wearing poppies in the media indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of what we were supposed to not forget (ie: what we should remember). The continual reinforcement of a narrative of noble conflict inevitably results in a self-fulfilling prophecy of perpetual war, rather than being the warning that it should be. 

Mine and others decision to remember the dead of war, both those who died holding the guns and those caught in the crossfire, is not by wearing a poppy for one day a year. We oppose every day the creeping militarisation woven into the cultural fabric of the countries of the UK (and its schools), questioning the status quo, and offering an alternative. In the past war wasn't necessarily a choice, conscription and social pressures hint at this. Even nowadays when technically it is a free decision to join the armed forces, this association between nationalism and service ingrained from an early age often goes hand in hand with poor employment opportunities. 

I'm not naive about war, but I'm not mindlessly accepting a one-sided version of conflict. I also straight up rebel against the lack of multidimensional conversations regarding a topic of this importance, especially since the (willing and unwilling) sacrifice of millions of soldiers and civilians is being wielded to justify increasingly abusive government domestic defence policies, and don't even get me started on the Iraq War... that's for another rant...