GSS
You've not defined what militarism is, if you disagree with mine. When you stage parades and pretty uniforms and prey on emotions with brass bands in as blatant a way as this sets out to, then you have a responsibility for creating an image which is not that of the reality of soldiering, which is predominantly boredom and bullshit interrupted by periods of huge pressure. Once upon a time, that last was expressed in terms of fugue, as terror or worse. But now we train our troops not to give in to the red fog of war or simple terror, and that requires a certain intelligence. The problem is that the RBL approach is predicated in the days before this was true, when conscripted men of whatever rank only did what they were instructed to by an officer, whose first lesson was actually the opposite of the practice, that their best adviser was their platoon sergeant. Nowadays you'll not infrequently find that's been simplified, with sergeants actually commanding platoons and on occasion RSMs commanding battalions. The best man does the job and we no longer allow forelock-tugging. And so what the RBL does is now counter-productive.

The modern military requires men and women who are honest to themselves as an essential core element of their very nature. The old days of drill sergeants whipping up hysteria before teaching killing have gone, a soldier who kills must know why. He must be ready to act as needed at the right time, and that can mean being ready to kill instantly - but it also means being ready to hold one's hand, and to be able to differentiate between the two needs. He's bound by written Rules of Engagement, and is held to them.

Yes, an essential element of soldiering is a search to be the best, and that starts in drill, in having one's kit in good and proper order at any time and in precise control of oneself. It builds a core for a correct response when the pressure comes on, in things like the standard form of orders, so you can function as a commander when you're at your limit, when you've had no sleep for three days and you're on the edge of breakdown as a result. The training teaches you where those limits lie, and how to not go past them, either in yourself or in those under you.

But that is a matter of professionalism, and it needs not stop with the military. When I joined WEU as a senior civilian officer, we were upgrading from a dipolomatic thinktank, and the question arose within the civilian staff what their role working with the military HQ we built alongside us could be. I taught them that their job was every whit as essential as the military planners, that they should not think to be any less than them, lest by that weakness they create the gap by which someone is killed. That is a huge difference from the MOD, and a bigger one still from the 9-5ers the EU put into our jobs when they thought they could do better. Never once was the question even hinted at about worrying about working hours, the job was only done when it was done, and WEU's theoretically non-executive grades routinely carried the responsibilities and authority of an executive grade. Heck, for most of the time I as senior accountant was one, and I'd never have it any different! Just the same as in the Forces, we were the best and knew it by proving it every day. And simply demonstrating that you're not a slovenly rabble doesn't count in my book, Europe is full of toy soldiers, who find it difficult to make it stick when it matters. The RBL encourages the former, not the latter.

So no, I'm not buying your mealy-mouthed attempt to define the question in the RBL's own terms. It's an anachronism, and the bluster shows it. At least the return parades for forces coming back from campaign don't shoehorn them into that in the way they did when I was one of them, no sudden need to bull boots last attended to months or years before, you take us as we are and no other.

However, that does not deal with what we have here. The real reason for this hoo-hah is to make our political leaders look good by wrapping themselves in a form of Patriotism they've rarely earned. I make a specific exception for the 50 who have done their time, but only one Minister is among their number, Ian Duncan Smith: in the Labour Government which took us to war, not a single Cabinet Minister had served.

The only other reason for these pretty parades is tourism. My Dad used to beg to go to the Royal Marines barracks at Eastleigh "to see the soldiers jump", nigh on a hundred years ago. Kids will be kids, and throng the streets of London for the Lord Mayors Show, much the same. But we need adults, not kids, and we do not have time to build that kind of self-awarenesss.

Our Continental cousins wonder about us in this militarism - I know because I worked with them and had to explain it. We still live in a world where the Germans are castigated three genrations after the Nazis left power, and where we seem to wallow in mawkish necrophilia only beaten by the Victorian fascination with death - they at least had some excuse for it. Is this some kind of death-wish, or a paranoid fascination with the dead, the way mountains of flowers appear near newsworthy death, but not near an ordinary death? Or is it a form of desperately seeking one's fifteen minutes of fame by surrogacy?

We see today war widows getting something they were promised but which a good number did not receive. Yet it's spun as a huge victory for them, whereas the Treasury has got away with NOT granting it to those who gave up waiting, it's not backdated, leaving one wondering whether the Armed Forces Covenant is worth the paper it's written on. And anything which allows the political world to look good under those circumstances is to be castigated. Tonight they'll all be on parade in the RBL Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall, and tomorrow the Cenotaph, mostly . I've just looked up the running order: Pointless Celebrities. Strictly Come Dancing. Doctor Who. National Lottery Live RBL Festival of Remembrance. News. Match of the Day. The first summed it up, I fear, and Joss Stone is one of the most pointless.