Originally Posted by
megan
AP has never served so has absolutely no insight as to why lads signed up.How kind of you to be so overwhelmingly inclusive.
And how did you arrive at that conclusion "AP has never served".
Sorry, does pulling on a uniform and following orders somehow enhance ones ability to understand what motivated people to do so??
Are you really going to sit there and arrogantly assert that because someone does, the rest of us are idiots and even if we read the listen to the account of people who were in WWI (including my Grandfather, in the British Army) that we somehow lack the ability to absorb that information??
For your information, you have absolutely no idea what I would or wouldn't do - if this country was invaded, you bet I'll pick up a gun an fight because I love my family and I won't have anyone threaten them or try to destroy my country's way of life. You have absolutely ZERO right to question that which you have by that holier than thou statement you made about me not serving.
My other Grandfather was a Police Officer for 39 years, starting in 1930. In peacetime I would contend he received similar injuries (although more often) and abuse and lasting psychological damage than any soldier would receive - he 'didn't serve' so does that make his service in the police force somewhat lesser because it wasn't in the Army, Navy or Air Force?? I'd contend he did more for his community and the State as he rose to quite a high rank than most people do.
And just for your info, he despised every ex-military person they put up to run the Police Force, because not one of them had a clue about civilian policing. That's not to say all military people are leaderless and rudderless, but rather a failure of government to recognise that protecting and serving the community is different to fighting the country's enemies or being trained to do so.
This 'aura' around the military that it is somehow sacrosanct and the repository of all virtue and goodness is just jingoism and it needs to be called out.
You obviously, at some stage, chose to spend part of your career in the military. Good on you, I hope it was everything you expected it to be. Being born and coming of age between wars and US police actions and the like, even if I wanted to there would have been no impetus for me to do so anyway, I chose a career in the private sector.
You don't need to 'serve' in the military to gain some sort of superiority over others that you throw back in their face whenever they venture an opinion.
You also don't get to determine what I would or would not have done if the need and the requirement was there to do it.
I know some pretty high ranking military personnel or have in my career and you know what, not one of them ever resorted to identifying that I 'never served' and therefore are incapable of knowing why they did. They just got on with it and acted like normal people, not making a big deal by - having no real argument - trotting out the old chestnut of "well, you never served so......."
As another poster mentioned on this thread. This is a Constitutional representative democracy, the basis of Australian Government is that the government is ".... directly elected by the people of the Commonwealth..." - the Constitution doesn't add that people who 'served' will get a disproportionately higher say in certain matters or get more than one vote at elections.
If you think they are entitled to more of a say because 'they served' then what the hell were they fighting for.......
BTW, you mentioned some time back that Churchill had a lot on his plate - yep, including orchestrating and doing nothing to then avoid, the Bengal Famine.