Reference:
To all the soldiers who died saving our country.
You've fallen for the hegemony. The poppy fund was set up after the Great War to commemorate the victims and to help the survivors. That war wasn't fought to protect the freedom of future generations or to fight looming fascism or to save the country from invaders, it was to protect the status quo for the great imperial powers of the time. Soldiers were expendable and slaughtered wholesale, being forced at times to walk into machine gun fire by the hundred or risk being shot by officers behind their ranks. It wasn't a 'just' war. If anything, people should be wearing poppies to shout "Not in my name!" at politicans. If you want to take a sharp, critical look at what's going on then look at how those poor people are remembered. They're remembered in relation to the patriotic cause and for country, not for themselves as individuals: the whole world knows those brave ones didn't die in vain, etc. Siegfried Sassoon captures it all very poignantly in his poetry ... and his famous soldiers declaration.
http://www.counterpunch.org/sassoon12112003.htmlYou love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
rampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood.
German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.