Military myths help nation-building - but is that enough?

At the same time Australian free-to-air and pay television is now providing a veritable glut of overseas documentary programs about war and warfare, from battlefield archeology and computerised battle reconstructions, to army-life reality programs, dramatised biographies of fighting leaders and the rise and fall of the great military empires.

This flood of material should theoretically contribute to better knowledge and understanding, but there is scant evidence of that. For example, Hollywood has done its best over recent years to convince the rising generation, among other things, that the 13th century Scottish patriot William Wallace had a highly unlikely affair with a French princess (Braveheart) or that Americans rather than the British captured an code machine from a German U-boat (U-571) even though the actual event took place months before the United States entered the war.

And despite the huge volume of factual reports about the present war in Iraq, public opinion surveys in the United States show that many Americans still believe weapons of mass destruction were actually found in Iraq. Who knows what the same survey would show in Australia or Europe.

If the truth about events so recent is so hard to establish, how much more difficult is it to fully comprehend the truth about wars which were fought decades, generations or centuries ago.

The current rising interest about matters military should be supported and encouraged to improve knowledge of the past events, to provide context for current affairs and to help develop well-informed world citizens. But for that to occur, we need to move our focus away from myths and icons and the Hollywood view of history to a proper understanding of the brutal reality.