|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
On April 25, we will remember them. Anzac Day has become a time to applaud all who have served in our military. Some counties celebrate victories confirmed at the end of wars, but we commemorate a defeat, and for very good reasons.
Part of ‘remembering them’ should include how the Gallipoli tragedy occurred. If so, we won’t forget that the whole shooting match began due to a blocked passage.
In brief, Churchill gambled that allied ships could race up the Dardanelles, knock Turkey out of the war, open a better supply route to Russia, keeping the Russian bear in the war. That accomplished, the good guys could be eating sausages in Berlin by Christmas.
There was a slight problem with this – the allies needed to win, the Turks just needed to avoid losing.
More than a century later. maybe some general or other pointed out that such ‘dire straits’ would result from an attack on Iran, seeing the Strait of Hormuz as blocked as the Dardanelles.
If that example was all Greek to Donald Trump, perhaps the general could’ve mentioned the battles of Salamis or Thermopylae or even the 1956 Suez Crisis. All of these (and many more) show how smaller, weaker forces can hold giants at bay. Whether in narrow stretches of water or mountain passes, Davids slay Goliaths.
Maybe experts dared not educate Trump that, if Iran’s hand was forced, they’d hold another damn strait and, the world to ransom.
However, The Donald is a fan of the Big Book of War (aka Sun Tzu’s The Art of War). In fact, he played on this title for his own book, The Art of the Deal.
It speaks volumes if he sees war as no weightier than a business negotiation.
Unfortunately, Trump is no donkey leading lions – he is a businessman, a game-player, putting everything secondary to profit.
While we remember those who sacrificed on the front lines on Anzac Day, we would do well to also remember that those who often lead us into wars are not fools – they know exactly what they’re doing and precisely why.
As a different type of Dire Strait sang: ‘Someday, you’ll return to your valleys and your farms and no longer burn to be brothers in arms.’
Here’s hoping as it hasn’t happened yet.
