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Are you marching on Anzac Day? I'm not. Many I know will be, of course. As will others I’ve met wearing uniforms from Cyprus to Cambodia; Afghanistan to Iraq. And good on them. For them it’ll be a great opportunity to catch up and share stories. But for me, well, I’m blowed if I know why children or relatives, let alone anyone else, would want to march. This time last year I’d just returned from Mosul, Iraq. Nobody who saw that horror would want to commemorate war. It’s simply evil. I can still smell the filth, the lingering odour of death (think vomit plus defecation) that seeped up from under fallen masonry blocking the street. I can still see, in the houses, the scattered detritus of clothes and baby toys, the remains of lives torn apart by horror. No glory there, watching Iraqi people dying senselessly while our planes flew overhead. None, either, amongst the confusion of militias, each attempting to rule their own tiny patch of land according to the one true faith, whichever it happened to be at that particular moment of time; Shia or Sunni, Orthodox or Catholic, animist, nationalist or, when all else failed, simply a lust for power and money. Pick a flag. Green or red, black and gold, the tribes held them all. They could be seen, flapping limply around hastily-erected poles as we passed through rival checkpoints on the way to war, manned by boys nervously groping their AKs or M16s. Children too young to hold a woman; too undeveloped to make love; unable to marry; yet old enough to kill. So no, I won’t be marching, although I do respect old soldiers who choose so to do. It’s just that I feel no need to "remember" war, let alone legitimise the politically-inspired industry that’s being built around such "commemorations" by leaders and business. These are always ready to jump on the back of genuine emotion and hi-jack real concerns for their own purposes or needs. An Anzac Day footy match? They were banned until 1958 and then all takings had to be donated to charity. And I’m sure supermarkets would love to cash in, too, although Woolies was so badly burned when it tried a "fresh in our memories" sales campaign in 2015 that perhaps everyone learned not to mix sales with real sacrifice. That some silly marketing guru could even attempt such a stunt was a clear indication the real meaning of the day has already escaped most Australians. That’s very different from a movie opening, however, which is quite OK. We don’t need to stand around sombrely all day. Besides which, there’s no point. This is no longer a day for all Australians. One quarter of us weren’t born here and the majority have no link to Anzacs in the 1914-18 war. None. It’s silly to attempt to invent one. There’s certainly no law that insists one creation myth has to fit all of us. Obscenely, we’ve already spent more money "commemorating" the First World War than any other country and yet, although this effort has resonated with a few, it's pushing others away. Anzac means something to me, but it doesn’t seem a particularly Australian thing to do to force this meaning down other people's throats, let alone prescribe for them a particular way of behaving. And if anyone needs to be reminded which side of the chest to wear medals on, well, they probably shouldn't be wearing them at all. Our country is a very different one from that of a century ago. Take my best mates at university. Their fathers were, respectively, a young conscripted Italian at Bardia and a 12 year old quickly handed a Panzerfaust in 1945 and sent out to kill Yanks. Fortunately, both recognised the futility of war and surrendered before they were shot. On the wrong side, they were forced into uniform for a bad cause by demagogues. Wrapping today inside a flag suggests that they are, somehow, less Australian than the few who can claim a link to Gallipoli. That’s rubbish, as Richard Flanagan so cogently argued in a searing address to the National Press Club. But none of this endorses Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Famous because she’s infamous; a conspiracy theorist who sees a nefarious foreign plot in her own inability to obtain a proper visa to visit America (a country far more likely to admit someone challenging orthodoxy than, say, many Arab states). She wouldn’t attempt to wander around Iran without wearing a head covering, so why flout US laws and regulations. There's no point associating this particular day with "Manus, Naru, Syria, Palestine" — a confusion of causes if ever there was one. It’s playing politics by creating false opposites, inverting meaning by reducing sophisticated arguments and ideas to the simplistic jingoism patriots claim for themselves. It presses our buttons and pushes us to the extremities; preventing us from beginning a sensible discussion on complex issues. Enough time brawling in the gutter. Today is about much more than that. Its meaning cannot be reduced to a tweet. If Anzac is going to live beyond this centenary we’ll need to define its significance in terms we can all share. Uo until now there's been nothing better to take its place in the national mythology. Let's leave today for the Anzacs. Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra author and columnist

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