It's a direct response to Jessie Pope, an English poet and propagandist who would write poems like "Who's for the Game?", implying that the great war was all a bit of fun and those who didn't want to go were cowards.
Owen had actually been in the trenches, and tragically died only a few days before the armistice.
The problem with your country (at least the vast majority of countries) is that it doesn't care about you. It's just too big to care. It has almost nothing to do with you.
I can't wrap my mind around the fact that people feel some affiliation with their country. For the vast majority of people, the relationship is akin to an abusive boyfriend/girlfriend who takes your money and ignores your existence.
It only reciprocates for a tiny number of people at the very top; everyone else is delusional.
The slots at the top are extremely limited. The country should never be the focus; people should engage with local community instead. The country can only be appreciated in the context of a local community.
My ancestors' country had (and still have) nice values. Used to be under the control of France, then switched to British control, then back to French control. This happened without any war or fighting. Nothing changed for the people. They even kept speaking French. Many got rich still; just had to decide which parasite to pay tax to.
Before they learned this, they had actually fought wars against the British, but for what? The British later ended up protecting them. Protecting their own tax proceeds, really...
If the people are strong-willed and have a strong sense of community and know what is actually important, the owner country doesn't really matter. People won't obey laws they don't agree with anyway. They'll just manipulate the local authorities to report whatever they want to higher ups. What is the parent country going to do if they don't get the results they want, kill everyone in the country?
It's like having a donkey, you know you can't win with it.
It's the reason why US failed to maintain control in Iraq and Afghanistan. The people didn't need to fight to reclaim their country. In spite of massive military power asymmetry. This effect works with large populations and small populations. What more proof do we need? Fighting exists just to sell weapons IMO.
It's crazy to me that everyone assumes that you have to obey authority. People forget this only happens with consensus. You can just pretend to obey, do the bare minimum and let the authorities blame bureaucracy. Anyway these big governments have real major bureaucratic struggles internally anyway so they're used to it.
Most of the countries in WWI - which this poem is about - entered the war because of existing alliances, not because they were personally affected by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
While the US was indeed attacked by the Japanese in WWII, they could have focused entirely on the PTO and left their allies across the Atlantic to fend for themselves. Instead hundreds of thousands of Americans died liberating Europe.
The Vietnam War was at root the US supporting an allied government in Saigon. Tens of thousands of Americans died for an entirely different country than their own, one they'd likely never been to. A tragedy, but a tragedy that's been in the history books for fifty years now.
The Gulf War was 42 separate countries banding together to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. How many of those soldiers had ever even thought about Kuwait before being deployed and potentially dying there?
When the US was attacked by Osama Bin Laden, the US invaded Afghanistan in response. Whether or not that was a justifiable decision, at the time dozens of countries lent their support. Their soldiers died for the sake of the US, though in this case maybe some of them had at least visited it.
This isn't an endorsement of dying for someone else's country (or even one's own); just an observation that it was normal even when this poem was written, hardly modern and no need for an "update" (perhaps just an expansion of the original). I also don't want this to come across as a defense of the US or Israeli action in Iran, which I assume is what you're referring to, so I'll be explicit about my position on this: the Iranian regime may be unquestionably awful, but not only is this attack illegal domestically (in the US) and internationally, I have extraordinarily little faith that either Netanyahu's Israel or Trump's US are going to handle this war or its aftermath well, and I'm terrified about the chaos that's likely to unfold over the coming months and years.
But: this sort of thing is precisely why Israelis/Zionists/Jews often view criticisms of Israel as anti-semitic. Things that have long been considered totally normal - military alliances, in this instance - are suddenly treated as novel and uniquely awful when Israel is involved. So their question becomes, "what's unique about Israel that makes people treat us differently", and then they look at their status as the only ethnically Jewish state and the history of how the world has treated Jews and derive themselves an answer. Especially when the complaint is rooted in an age old anti-semitic trope - “Jews secretly control the world” - just with “Jews” swapped out for “Israel”.
US army is more like mercenaries on a misson. Besides, Us soldiers have not fought on US mainland for century
--
Onward, Christian soldiers! Duty's way is plain:
Slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain.
Pulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill,
God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill,
All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb on high;
If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray and die.
--
Onward, Christian soldiers, rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus, bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;
Folks who do not speak your tongue, deserve the curse of God.
Smash the doors of every home, pretty maidens seize;
Use your might and sacred right to treat them as you please.
--
Onward, Christian soldiers! Eat and drink your fill;
Rob with bloody fingers, Christ OK's the bill.
Steal the farmer's savings, take their grain and meat;
Even though the children starve, the Saviour's bums must eat.
Burn the peasant's cottages, orphans leave bereft;
In Jehovah's holy name, wreak ruin right and left.
--
and so on: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Workers_(9th_edi...
Doomguy feels seen. Especially since fanon has it that Doomguy is Catholic.
Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-th... Is a much grimmer perspective.
Richard Grenier captured the truth for civil society: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." (h/t https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/)
All we have of freedom, all we use or know – This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law. Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899 https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kipling/old_issue/
It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we live in. It seems like we should owe them respect. However, we need to recognize that this kind of respect, while indeed owed, is also sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service of their own greed and vanity.
If, "War is the continuation of politics by other means", then we must demand better policy from our politicians than what we're seeing today.
After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
In the Spanish series "El Cid" there is a nice depiction of how a battle and whole war immediately ends once the king of one side is killed in that battle. Everybody just went back to their regular business.
And a translation of quote, not sure whether it exists in English - "One's heroism is always a result of incompetency and idiotism of somebody else."
I studied it in school as did my children at their school, decades later.
They also studied the Caesar' savage Gallic Wars ( in English and in Latin ) and Thucydides History of the Peloponsesian War.
Thucydides is essential reading these days.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/opinion/america-china-tru...
Imagine they call a war but no one shows up.
Young people are especially vulnerable to brainwashing. Do everything you can to explain to them that they will dying to protect the powerful elite.
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori"
swader999•1h ago
kibibu•1h ago
(This is my all time favourite poem though)
anxman•52m ago
tanseydavid•1h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4BxP5IEyzw
wvbdmp•43m ago
BigTTYGothGF•38m ago