Another attempt to post my thoughts on Vimy

I get the sense that so far I've not really been able to convey what I mean by the posts I've put here expressing my skepticism about the commemorations of the battle of Vimy Ridge.

What I want to do is to sort of separate out the gauzy soft-focussed nationalistic version of Vimy from what I think Nietzsche might call the dismal truth (I think it was Nietzsche who used that phrase).

The soldiers who fought World War I went through hell, I cannot imagine it as much as I read about it. The Canadians (including my great-grandfather) fought under severely incompetent British leadership (Sir Douglas Haig) in conditions that boggle one's mind.

I don't think that is uncontroversial.

What does bother me is this proxy valorization of the cause for which the soldiers fought. It was an imperial-powers clusterfuck. I'm sorry, but that's the best way to put it. There was no common cause for freedom or anything (the British were allied with Czarist Russia). While remembering the losses incurred by Canada in that conflict (some 60 000 dead, many more wounded), we need to be conscious of the danger of uncritically accepting a sort of my country right-or-wrong, war-is-a-force-that-gives-us-meaning mentality.

I can feel that sort of ideology is going to be verbalized in some form by you-know-who tomorrow.