Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, May 29th, 2008 - 113 comments
Categories: election 2008, john key -
Tags: military, vietnam
Yesterday, the leaders of the parliamentary parties apologised to the veterans of the Vietnam War for the treatment they received both while fighting and on their return home. It was not these soldiers’ fault that their government deployed them in a disastrous and unjust war.
Except, now John Key is saying the war and New Zealand’s involvement weren’t wrong either. Incredibly, Key has said that the Vietnam War was justified and New Zealand’s involvement in it was “the right thing to do“.
This was a war in which over two million of the poorest people on Earth died as a superpower attempted to defend a succession of corrupt military governments.
This war remains America’s greatest military shame. A war that should never have been fought. And they have the wall in DC to remind them, name by name, of the cost.
This was a war that all the Western allies, except Australia and New Zealand, rightly refused to follow the US into. It was a war that New Zealand only, reluctantly, joined after years of US pressure in return for better trade and security assistance.
Vietnam was a mistake. We should never have sent soldiers there and they deserve the apology they received for what they went through because of it. Key has displayed a breath-taking, scary ignorance in defending this indefensible war.
Key wanted us in Iraq (he complained we were ‘missing in action’), he is happy he were in Vietnam. Now, there is the possibility (advocated by Senator McCain ) of the US attacking Iran. Would Key lead us into that war too, given the chance?
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can you PLEASE put a word limit on comments!! some of these mad right wing rants take ages to scroll thru. I sure as hell don’t waste my time reading them – they are intended to get us to divert resources from discussing the posts to answering their insane views which is pointless as they don’t take any notice when their positions are comprehensively demolished. The point of blogs like this is debate, not being sidelined into their nutty world views.
[lprent: Michele (the worst offender today) managed to get banned in almost record time. I'll keep a closer eye on it. It'd be easy enough to impose a limit - I'll write one if there isn't anything available, just to keep it in reserve. Another filter job for monday.]
Oh Dean
There was a UN inspections program.
They didn’t find WMDs.
Someone pointed out way up at the start that John Key was too young for Vietnam – but he’s the same age as me and I spent my entire teenage years scared of the draft ballot (we were all eligible at 18) – while at the time one had to volunteer to go to Vietnam we all expected that that would/could change any day – it’s a shadow over my teenage years that leaves me unable to join in with the modern ANZAC day fetish – it still reminds me of the RSA who at the time were the first in line wanting to send me off as cannon fodder (good for those young ‘uns character building)
Honestly Key’s either telling porkies or was entirely disconnected from the world as a youth
Remember – many years later we found out the only reason Holyoake went into Vietnam was because the US threatened to cut off all trade with NZ if we didn’t – and the Nats folded under the pressure – to keep the farm prices up and kiwis died as a result
Oh brilliant,
If Key gets elected he will be just in time to lead this country into the next illegal war of aggression. Hi ho,hi ho, it’s of to Iran we go.
For that new and exiting trade deal with the US. Oh oops thanks to him and his greedy banking mates at the Federal reserve in New York there will be no more USA.
You seem to be assuming a McCain victory Eve…?
I cannot help but paraphrase a “West Wing” quote;
War in Iran? No way. We’re from the National party – we’re stupid, but we’re not THAT stupid.
Vietnam was the outcome of erroneous geo-strategic thinking, and as with the Iraq war, faulty intelligence that was elevated to the status of truth by politicians in order to get into a war that was pre-determined by people in the white house.
Hennery Kissinger (arguably the US’s foremost foreign-policy maker of the cold-war period) concedes the former part now when he admits “we misunderstood the nature of the communist nation state, thinking it was akin to the spread of Hitler’s fascism”. What Kissinger is saying is that the communist block was far less united than Hitler’s fascist block. i.e. China was, in many aspects, in competition with Russia, and many of the soviet satellite states were able to exercise a large degree of autonomy. So the “free world” wasn’t facing a “united communist enemy” as most of the politicians claimed, but was involved in a global system of states with varying degrees of affiliation to the US or Soviet Russia.
Communism can now be seen as part of a nationalistic “development phase” of the 20th century, which was often a starting place for capital accumulation and infrastructural development, but ultimately unsustainable as a political system because of the desire for higher living standards and political freedom. Communism per see, wasn’t a threat to the US, but the Soviet communist state was. The US’s Vietnam was therefore founded on the erroneous assumption that, “not fighting them there would mean fighting them later at home” (similarities to the “war on terrorism” rhetoric can be found here). Or if we don’t fight them now and stop the spread of communism we’ll end up with a unified enemy that will attempt to defeat us.
As to the aspect of faulty intelligence being used to justify the pre-determined war: declassified documents show this to be the case.
Page 213:
http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/index.html
so in Key was wrong on both Vietnam and Iraq – both wars were based on deception through faulty intelligence, and both were strategic blunders.
Hi roger. I do miss you over at kiwiblog deary.
Kind regards
d4j
xx