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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Christ, every time communism’s mentioned we get another verbose nutter from the right. You’re not Michele Cabiling are you Katipunan?
Tim: “I prefer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
Ivan Denisovich is to Archipelago as MASH is to Apocalypse Now. That’s perhaps a bit frivolous, but a novella just doesn’t have the same impact as that three-volume behemoth. It’s heartening that you’ve read it, but it’s disheartening that despite having read it you still think communism can work.
“Marx never said you needed to enslave and kill”
No, indeed he didn’t. He advocated the temporary concentration of power in a few individuals. That’s what caused the dictatorships: it wasn’t temporary. People with power don’t like to give it up. I shouldn’t have to provide examples.
“Sorry, who’s “expansionist’?”
The Soviet Union explicitly was at the time. China was particularly so toward Viet Nam.
The US was aggressively anti-communist, but that doesn’t nullify my point.
L
Oh yeah – that’s michelle all right. How’s the self-improvement going M?
Tane wrote: “Christ, every time communism’s mentioned we get another verbose nutter from the right.”
Repeat after me: “A label is not an argument … a label is not an argument … a label is not an argument …”
If you can’t engage on an intellectual level why not shut the hell up?
It’s heartening that you’ve read it, but it’s disheartening that despite having read it you still think communism can work.
Could you be any more of a condescending co*ksu*ker, lew?
How’s the stroking yourself in a very small corner going, Robinsodomite?
[Tane: One more homophobic outburst and you're banned for four months.]
I might not like communism, but I’m sure as hell not buying this PNAC bullshit either.
L
If you can’t engage on an intellectual level why not shut the hell up?
Right back at you ‘chelle. Are you still pedaling that 19th century faux-Darwinist tripe?
Robinsod: Yeah, I think I could have been.
As I said earlier, I’m sure the condescended masses are glad to have you as their knight in shining armour.
L
Pretty damn good michelle – how’s that lonely, lonely life of misguided belief in your own superiority going? Actually, come to think of it, you and Lew might get on quite well…
Lew – I’m no knight baby. I just got a dislike of your pomposity and some time on my hands. If you’re gonna be all full of yourself at least do it with some flair…
Robinsodomite wrote:
“Could you be any more of a condescending co*ksu*ker, lew?”
You couldn’t have summed yourself up better in a single sentence, could you?
[Tane: And that's Michele banned for four months. That was quick. See you in September Michele.]
[lprent: Fast, efficent, and not here.... I was just coming in to see what the fuss was.]
Also, your avatar, if it purports to describe you, shows the wrong end of the horse.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s get back to the point. I was originally responding to an earlier post trying to say the Vietnam War was justified because it was anti-communist. I don’t think it was, nor do I think any war in purported opposition to communism is justified as a corollary.
As for John Key, he doesn’t really seem to know where he stood on any important social issue, being the Vietnam War, the Springbok Tour or a nuclear-free Pacific. I’m glad some others did know where they stood and took a stand.
“Could you be any more of a condescending co*ksu*ker, lew?”
Tane, you’re trigger-happy banning others
[T: Not usually, I've just had experience with Michele. She was banned for exactly this last time - she's abusive, verbose and destroys threads. I choose not to have her here]
, but how can you justify that level of abuse on Robinsond’s part?
[T: I don't agree with the Sod's behaviour, but his saving grace is he actually adds to the conversation and he's got a sense of humour. He does need to stop having a go at Lew though - that's becoming disruptive]
One thing is the right to argue the point and come to a civil disagreement (even a heated one), but surely his sentence above is beyond the acceptable norm.
[T: Again, I don't think you saw her behaviour last time. Go back and have a search under "Michele Cabiling". We ended up giving her four months off after a lot of warnings, and she showed back up here and started exhibiting exactly the same behaviour patterns. I'm in no mood to give her the benefit of the doubt]
Micky Porton is a disgrace to this blog.
[lprent: Michele is far more unique than the 'sod. For a starter he doesn't paste copied rants. Robinsod merely pushes the line, so gets tolerated. Michele on the other hand just pisses me off, especially her refusal to learn how to link. Tane only just beat me to it]
Also, your avatar, if it purports to describe you, shows the wrong end of the horse.
No michelle – if you were the clever bugger you think you are you would recognise my avatar and get the joke. But alas you are not quite the great mind you consider yourself to be.
Tane – Please don’t ban michele. She may be as mad as a cut snake but at least she has some fire in her belly and some opinions (albeit crazy ones) – otherwise I’ve got nobody but Lew-the-bore to tease.
eriktar – good to see you are concerned about the level of debate on this blog. I suggest if you really want to improve it you take your bigoted bumper-sticker arguments back to the bog where they belong.
Tim: Yeah, drifted away a bit, there.
erikter: FWIW I don’t take such things personally, particularly not from Sod, who seems to have launched a somewhat endearing crusade against my vapid pomposity.
L
Damn! you banned her. Well michele – if you want a good old bit of biffo you are more than welcome at newzblog.
Lew – at least you can laugh at yourself. If you find self deprecation too tiring then let me know and we can laugh at you in shifts for a while…
[Tane: It'll probably double your readership Sod. By the way, lay off Lew okay? Critique the ideas, not the person]
Do mean my readership at http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com (the best site on the web!)?
I haven’t check the stats for http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com lately but I would imagine that plenty of people visit http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com for its witty and concise take on the modern world.
In fact Tane – you would be more than welcome to drop in at http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com some time.
Oh and I’ll lay off lew because I don’t need to get banned again but if he ever feels like a robust chat he just needs to visit http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com
[lprent: I could just make some URL's to go straight into moderation. Or possibly write some code to automatically make certain URI's auto link to the wikipedia article on link whoring. I was wondering what to do on Monday morning. I've been meaning to try out the filters in wordpress]
Sod
I just had a look at your site – it is marginally better than
http://capitalismbad.blogspot.com/
“Link whoring” always was an unpleasant phrase. It has now been rendered totally inadequate as well.
So what was that – a link blitzkrieg? Link warfare? A linkademic? Linkbotting?
Whatever, I think I’ll go visit ‘Sod’s site at http://www.newzblog.wordpress.com
I’ve no problem with banning Michele, but if you are not reasonably even-handed about it, you’ll fall into the trap that Farrar set for himself. His banning policy is openly and cheerfully biased against left-wing posters, but this has only encouraged the rwnj sub-culture/scum that flourishes under his blog’s refrigerator.
‘Sod dearest… are you trying to see how many warnings you can accumulate before they add up to a red card?
[Tane: Red, I am aware of that and I genuinely don't want to ban anyone. My concern is with behaviour that disrupts the threads, leads to flamewars or is overly racist, sexist or homophobic. Michele has a history of doing this - it's why she was banned last time. Her dreadful homophobia is present in nearly every comment she writes. She had a second chance, I warned her to stop the homophobic remarks, she did it again, I banned her.]
I’m one smeg of a lot younger than John Key, and I sure as hell have strong opinions on things that happened before I was born, even.
Still, a population ignorant of history has to be a heck of a lot easier to sell outdated illogical National and ACT policy to.
The tragedy of Vietnam is that ALL powers used it as a proxy war, there was significant Soviet and Chinese involvement in Vietnam too, but I don’t believe their embassies had people protesting outside saying “get out of Vietnam”. Nevertheless, the US made a huge strategic error in not siding with the anti-colonial Ho Chi Minh, which drove him into the hands of Moscow. Vietnam suffered from war, but also the communists – nobody can pretend that it was liberated, or that the end result was good at all (or the “choice of the Vietnamese people”). The communist north twice promised free democratic elections (as did the south) and it never happened – by no measure was the north better than the south.
It threw hundreds of thousands into prison camps after the war, 2 million fled the country of whom hundreds of thousands died on the way (boat people) and there were peasant revolts against so called “land reform” that were suppressed brutally. Vietnam still throws people in prison for political activities, there is no free press or right to protest.
The war in Vietnam was wrong in many ways, but its objective of stopping the whole country going communist was right. Tragically the lot in the south were next to useless, corrupt and cruel. However, nobody should pretend those in the north were or are noble.
The Lon Nol puppet regime in Cambodia, after all, was corrupt and cruel, but nothing compared to the Khmer Rouge – but by the time that war was being fought the West was withdrawing, tragically. Defending the Lon Nol regime would have been moral, but few paid attention to the horror stories of the Cambodian hinterland in places where the Khmer Rouge were running things.
We have great wisdom of hindsight nowadays on all these events, the ongoing litany of mistakes, the cruelty of the Western side (though we’ll never know half of the north Vietnamese side’s cruelty) and say what should and shouldn’t have been done – it was the Cold War, and the fight against global Marxism-Leninism was moral. Sadly the concentration on this didn’t mean, in some cases, fighting for freedom and liberal democracy – it meant backing the enemy of our enemies, and in far too many cases they weren’t much better than the enemy.
Anyone else hear Key on bfm this morning? Saying again that the Nats supported the right of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to go to Iraq.
He also said that he still believed Bush and Blair thought that Iraq had WMD’s and supported terrorism. This shows how amazingly naive Key is in terms of foreign policy. All evidence coming out suggests Bush deliberately mislead the public. The more people that hear Keys comments the better.
Luke C: “the Nats supported the right of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to go to Iraq.”
This isn’t as extreme a position as you make out; after all, international affairs is a normative field, and the primary actors in this case (US and UK) are the two pre-eminent norm-leaders in that field. If anyone believes they had no right to take the action under international law and convention, their recourse is to NGOs including the International Court of Justice. Until someone does so, then in strict legal terms they did not act illegally – even if there is a prima facie case to answer under international law, as there seems to be here.
If Key had supported the moral authority of the Coalition to take that action, that would have been a less defensible statement, since `moral authority’ is a more malleable concept than `right’. I think it’s clear that the US and UK lacked moral authority to invade Iraq, and like others before them, they’ll be judged on this by history.
L
Luke – Iraq did have WMDs, it used them on several occasions. It didn’t allow full inspections as required by umpteen UN Security Council resolutions. The fact that the Hussein thugocracy destroyed/dismantled it is another point, but nobody can pretend Iraq didn’t have WMDs. That’s a fact. It’s a fact it supported terrorism, it cheered on 9/11. It wasn’t allied to Al Qaeda, that was a complete fabrication, but it has long been allied to other terrorist groups.
You can oppose the overthrow of the Hussein regime, fine, but let’s not pretend Iraq was some innocent peaceful party. This thread isn’t about Iraq, but there is a legitimate debate about whether invading Iraq was the right thing to do – but you can’t pretend it wasn’t run by a dangerous megalomaniac mass murderer. Though I fully expect someone will divert this onto “Bush is the same” hyperbole, which is as tiresome as it is intellectually vapid.
Drifting off-topic again here, ah well.
libertyscott: The question is whether those rationales (previous atrocities, previous possession of WMDs, failure to comply, supporting terrorism, and cheering on 9/11) justify invasion led by the USA.
You can argue that they justified invasion by someone but I think the US and UK would be very far down that list; certainly the customary test for intervention under international law (UNSC resolution) was not met.
L
Iraq did have WMDs, it used them on several occasions. It didn?t allow full inspections as required by umpteen UN Security Council resolutions.
Iraq had a PROGRAM to consider ways to make nuclear WMD’s. At no time did they ever actual possess or even so much as test one. Nor did they ever possess any effective delivery system against a properly defended power.
The chemical WMD systems always were a much lessor threat. They were basically only of limited use against undefended civilians.
ANY evidence whatsoever that Hussein cheered on 911? Like what this guy said?
but you can?t pretend it wasn?t run by a dangerous megalomaniac mass murderer.
Well in historic terms Hussein was pretty much your run of the mill Middle Eastern strongman. For the average Iraqi, life under the socialist Baath Party rule was reasonably ok. Iraq had an excellent education system, more doctors per head of capita than most other countries, working infrastructure in most cities and a decent economy. Hussein was actually quite popular with many average Iraqi’s for this reasons.
And yes Hussein also maintained political stability by murdering his opponents. Dangerous, yes. Meglomaniac, maybe… but for actual numbers of deaths he was very amateur mass murderer compared to the 100′s of thousands, possibly millions of Iraqi’s who have died either directly or indirectly as a result of Western intervention in that nation’s affairs.
“he said is was “appropriate”, that means he was happy with the decision. I suggest you get something better to argue with than semantics. SP”
Well, Steve, I guess that about wraps it up for any chace of you being considered objective or brimming with facts when you make your analysis.
You’re like some sort of self professed left wing mirror image of whale oil.
gobsmacked: I wonder if Key could be described as uncurious? I don’t know. It’s a genuine question. If so, it would be very Bush-like (according to Scott McClellan and others)
We can see clearly enough where that leads to. NZ doesn’t need to go there.
libertyscott: Why fudge on the timing? The timing of Iraq’s “WMD” is relevant to the case for war. Iraq had not ad any WMD since 1998. Until Bush decided to invade the place, the only serious discussions through 2000 and into early 2002 in relation to Iraq were WHEN to lift sanctions….not IF. Bush fabricated the pretext of WMD like he fabricated the rest of his case for war. Remember, to be legal, the threat needed to be serious and imminent. No such threat existed and it was obvious at the time that it did not exist in so far as there was no credible proof of any imminent threat.
The legal argument hangs, in part, on the UN Charter being a fully ratified treaty by the US Senate. Under the US Constitution it is therefore law and cannot cannot be overridden by any state. It is a part of the United States’ law.
Chemical WMDs were used against Iran, the US didn’t turn a blind eye to this, but it was supporting Iraq (as was the USSR) against Iran at the time.
RedLogix – All you said about Hussein could be said about Pinochet too. The ends do not justify the means. He murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, imprisoned and terrorised many more, and killed thousands in neighbouring states due to his own adventurism in Iran and Kuwait. The “oh but some things were good” argument is like saying “Hitler was popular, he made the trains run on time and built the autobahns”. Don’t forget Hussein’s “amateurish” murders were deliberate – he bombed civilians to terrorise them. Western intervention has been to kick him out of Kuwait, stop him using air power against the Kurds and Shi’a Arabs in the south, and boot him out of power – it wasn’t to engage in genocide as he did. However, play the moral equivalency game if you like, pretend the Iraqi insurgency seeking to (and has already in some places) impose an Islamist totalitarian state, which targets civilians is the same as US forces. The war in Iraq has been waged badly, but defending Hussein, a genocidal maniac is a non-starter.
Steve – Nobody could verify that there were no WMDs in Iraq in 1998, but if you choose to believe a megalomaniac dictator then fine. North Korea has proven the trustworthiness of that. Iran will do so again. The argument about the legality of war is dependent on respecting state sovereignty – if you believe the genocidal Hussein dictatorship deserves such respect then good for you. I don’t. I believe it lost any such right to such protection in waging two aggressive wars, in repeatedly engaging in genocide and operating a brutal totalitarian nepotistic dictatorship. That doesn’t mean there is an obligation to go around and overthrow such regimes – but the regime had no moral rights whatsoever. Reasons to overthrow Saddam include all of that, the unwillingness to allow inspections of WMD facilities on a transparent and open basis, and the malignant nature of his regime which continued to seek the destruction of Israel.
There is an argument that the West should have sat back and let the regime continue, let it profit from high oil prices today, breach sanctions and build up WMDs again (who honestly thinks he wouldn’t have tried). Yes in hindsight the regime should have been crushed in 1991, but there was a genuine US effort to maintain a wide ranging coalition then that would have been broken up had that happened. About the only cogent argument against overthrowing Saddam is the financial cost, and the risking of soldiers’ lives in doing so (the planning and tactics are a whole other point after you’ve decided to do the job).
libertyscott: It didn’t allow full inspections as required by umpteen UN Security Council resolutions.
Iraq allowed full UN inspections from November 2002. The UN reports stated clearly that no WMDs were found.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5878.htm
The timeline of all this is explained in detail here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
oh r0b.
From your own linked wikipedia page:
“On October 3, 2003, the world digests David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group report that finds no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, although it states the government intended to develop more weapons with additional capabilities. Weapons inspectors in Iraq do find some “biological laboratories” and a collection of “reference strains”, including a strain of botulinum bacteria, “ought to have been declared to the UN.” Kay testifies that Iraq had not fully complied with UN inspections. In some cases, equipment and materials subject to UN monitoring had been kept hidden from UN inspectors. “So there was a WMD program. It was going ahead. It was rudimentary in many areas”, Kay would say in a later interview.[81] In other cases, Iraq had simply lied to the UN in its weapons programs.[82] The US-sponsored search for WMD had at this point cost $300 million and was projected to cost around $600 million more.”
Lied to the UN about their programs!
Equipment kept hidden from inspectors!
I expect your character asassination of Kay presently.