Not so pleasant to be a consciencious objector in the past - prison, labour, persecution & yrs of prejudice - have family history in this.

Do have personal history in anti war demos, but I still choose to respect any loss of life

The black death was not a direct result of human political choices.

The world wars were a long time ago, but they need to be remembered if only in part to avoid the glamourized, sanitised holywood version becoming the default view of what war is like.

As fewer and fewer veterans survive it becomes more important than ever to remember the true face of war. The more people associate war with death and destruction, loss and suffering, hopefully the less likely we are to descend into a global conflict again. I hope it becomes an increasingly long time ago, but it wont be if people forget the sacrifices made and the consequences of heading down that path with rose tinted glasses on.

I don't think that's likely. There are still plenty of amply-reported wars going on. I'm not sure why suffering caused by "direct result of human political choices" merits special attention for moping.

I need to spell out that its just a happy accident of geography that means we havent had to serve in the military? People do forcibly get sent into wars still, conscription does still occur, sane people do go, its not a spectacular failure in places like Germany, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Russia etc etc etc .

i think you were on thin ice to begin with, but comparing a member of the armed forces of a developed western nation to a career criminal is just, well farcical does not do it justice. whats next, baby killers? you'll have to do better than that.
others career choices are not of direct interest to the public for obvious reasons. they have no impact on world affairs, economies, political stability, famine, genocide, murder, torture, rape, terrorism, global power, individual madmen. whereas the military, rightly or wrongly get involved in preventing, and arguably perpetuating all of these, thus attracting media interest and so becoming public knowledge. maria/martin shuffling 20's in the local TD is hardly headline news at 6 is it.

LOL, you think the reporting we see is not all cleaned up and sanitised in large part. I give up.

no, thats a fair point. i would say it is a measure though of whether you yourself are worthy of contempt, when you are contemptuous of someones action, when you yourself are completely inactive.

Tricky one. Are the memorial sevices a little bit glamourizing? (if that's a word)

Perhaps in a small way, but then I wouldn't say that the reading of the names of the dead on the memorial is glamorising anything. I find it moving personally. Especially in a small town where most of the family names are all too familiar.

My elderly neighbour (101 this year) lost two brothers in WW1, and the other two that came back from the front alive were never the same again. She wont be attending too many more rememberence days in person, so its important that that memory be passed on.

Really? Why?

Oh, very moving, of course.

My problem is with the slight feeling of mass hysteria which is now becoming attached to it, ie no criticism of the armed forces permitted.

Isn't killing babies a routine part of serving in foreign wars? Using that example seemed extreme to me, so I picked a more moderate one, but it doesn't strike me as unfair.

That was very rare for Canadians, btw, most of them who survived the war elected not to return to this country.

Did it never occur to you that politicians who have not experienced what war is really like (yes G W Bush, I am talking about you) are rather more likely to send the soldiers in all gung ho rather than to go the extra mile to find a conflict free diplomatic resolution.

Without a public that goes out of its way to recognise and remember the real horror and suffering of war, rather than just the heroic acts and shiny medals in the movies, my fear is that those making the decisions will be more inclined to go all holywood heroic on us and resort to military action as something other than the absolute last resort that it ought to be.

i used this as a direct compassion, war criminal to career criminal. no more relevant than civilian electrician, to electrician in the army.