As I reflected on it, I felt that this seemed to be heading down a rather more militaristic direction. You see, it seems to me that this way of advertising takes the emphasis away from supporting those bereaved by warfare, which was what I was told from childhood it was about, more towards 'supporting our troops': we are not being asked to remember the bereaved and bereft. And that message is problematic at a time when British troops are being used as adjuncts to US military adventurism. You see, it seems to me (as an antiwar sort of person) that this is moving away from what the original purpose was. As Robert Fisk reflects about his dad's difficulty with 'poppy day':
I remember that they wanted to remember their dead comrades. But above all, they wanted an end to war.
This poster, it seems to me, is not enunciating a hope for an end to war. It seems to be colluding with continuing warfare.
Unfortunately a red poppy no longer seems to be a way of articulating solidarity with that first generation of world-war-widows and orphans and veterans in their knowing-from-bitter-experience determination that war should be done away with.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-do-those-who-flaunt-the-poppy-on-their-lapels-know-that-they-mock-the-war-dead-6257416.html
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