Paul Keating says World War One was European folly

[Super Nova]

Good old Paul. he is back in the lime light.

Love him or hate him sometimes he is on the money.

Mr Keating, a staunch republican with a passion for history and oratory - Passion for introducing "scumbag" into the parliamentary dictionary.

“One thing is certain: young Australians, like [young] Europeans… can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen,” - true but we still march off to war when the US or UK call us. maybe our leaders need to remember "Remembrance Day" every time they directed by our pals to go to war with them.

Someone needs to be straight and say what we feel.

Good on ya Paul, even thought you too are a scumbag.

Former Australian PM Paul Keating says World War One was European folly 'devoid of virtue'

Former Australian PM Paul Keating says World War I was "devoid of any virtue" and Australians will not be used as cannon fodder again.

Paul Keating, Australia’s former prime minister, has used a memorial ceremony speech to lash out at the Great War as a European folly which was "devoid of any virtue", lamenting the use of Australian troops as “cannon fodder”.

Criticising European tribalism and racism, Mr Keating said Australia fought out of loyalty to imperial Britain but had already moved away from European values by the time of the war. He said the nation had developed an “Australian-ness” which was “free of the dismal legacy of Europe's ethnic stigmatisation and social stratification”.

"The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism," he said.

"A complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism."

Mr Keating, a staunch republican with a passion for history and oratory, used his Remembrance Day address in Canberra to declare that young Australians were now “too wise to the world to be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became”.

“One thing is certain: young Australians, like [young] Europeans… can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen,” he said.

Mr Keating, prime minister from 1991 to 1996, also sought to insist that a strong Australian identity pre-dated the nation’s devastating losses in World War I.

"We had crystallised a good idea of ourselves," he said.

"But out of loyalty to imperial Britain, we returned to Europe's killing fields to decide the status of Germany, a question which should earlier have been settled by foresight and statecraft."

Mr Keating welcomed Australia’s recent embrace of the “Anzac legend” and the troops who fought and died at places such as Gallipoli, but warned against cheapened or “jingoistic” tributes.

“I am greatly heartened that so many young Australians find a sense of identity and purpose from the Anzac legend and from those Australian men and women who have fought in wars over the last hundred years,” he said.

“But the true commemoration of their lives, service and sacrifice is to understand that the essence of their motivation was their belief in all we had created here and our responsibility in continuing to improve it. Homage to these people has to be homage to them and about them and not to some idealised or jingoistic reduction of what their lives really meant.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... irtue.html