What’s the difference between John Key and a US drone?
Trick question, both are controlled by Washington.
That Mike Hosking has come out cheerleading war should surprise no one. He lists all of the arguments against this stupid re-invasion of Iraq and then just shrugs them all off as if they don’t really count because the world is interconnected and complex. despite all the evidence that clearly states this is an exercise in total futility Hosking ends his column asserting that going to war is the right and honourable thing to do
But through it all, despite it all, we must play our part. It is the right, honourable and only thing to do.
No! It is not right, honourable or ‘the only thing to do’. Stopping the bloody Saudis and Turkey from funding ISIS would be the best option, not an ongoing pointless war to try and clean up the last power vacuum the American’s created when they invaded Iraq under the lie of weapons of mass destruction.
The right thing to do is to pressure the US to force their allies to stop funding crazy extremists who are created in the environments America helps make for their own geopolitical interests. That’s the right thing to do, joining America and putting the lives of our soldiers at risk to suck up to the bloody yanks as part of our role in the club is despicable.
So Hoskings’ war mongering is tired and predictable, Fran O’Sullivan on the other hand is reprehensible because she’s someone who should damn well know better! Hosking is a hairstyle looking for gel and is the intellectual equivalent of unprocessed sewage, O’Sullivan is a genuine thinker who has no excuses!
The Prime Minister has been painted as a craven servant of the White House – a United States lapdog happy to send New Zealand troops into harm’s way to serve America’s Middle East interests.
It is an outrageously naive and insulting allegation, but one which will leave John Key smarting.
BUT IT’S TRUE! That Golf game wasn’t just for shits and giggles Fran. NZ is a member of 5 Eyes, the most powerful surveillance program ever devised. For getting to be part of that Club of Poison, we have to pay the piper and when you dance with the devil, the Devil doesn’t change, you do.
Key’s love affair with America and need to keep them happy was abundantly apparent when he green lighted Kim Dotcom’s demise, when he gave Warners Bros everything they wanted, when he kept pushing for the TPPA despite us getting bugger all for it. Key’s clear subordination to America can’t be written off as ‘outrageously naive and insulting’ Fran, from his Letterman Top 10 list to his 8 hour golf game with the most powerful man on earth, Key has built his reputation as a close friend of the United States, the very second holding up the efforts Key has used to ingratiate himself to the US is no longer politically palatable you suddenly want to write that criticism off.
Pa-lease.
It is also an extraordinary reflection on the New Zealand body politic – and journalists – that they cannot rise above the reflexive anti-Americanism that remains embedded here despite successive bi-partisan measures by Helen Clark’s and Key’s governments to normalise relations with Washington and look at the wider picture before casting their stones.
Your shock is that Journalists have woken up and starting to openly criticise the case for war because it’s so wafer thin. Perhaps there was some reflection on their role after the Dirty Politics fiasco over the holidays at their own part in empowering Slater and his political sadists and they’ve decided to grow some spine.
Committing the New Zealand military to Iraq is the right thing to do.
No. It’s. Not.
Not simply from a moral purpose – although that is highly important – but also because it is rational.
Adding more violence to re-invade a country that has fallen into this situation because America invaded it under false pretences is neither moral or rational.
The establishment of an Islamic caliphate with its barbaric terrorist tentacles spreading out through the Western world is against our national interest, our freedoms and democratic way of life.
Less reds under the beds, more terrorist under the burqa huh Fran? Come on, this sort of rhetoric is for Michael Laws or Cameron Slater. Who is funding this group Fran? How do radicals like this come about? What is the environment necessary for them to foster in? Fran is smart enough to know the answers to those questions.
The New Zealand public gets this.
As a pioneer culture NZ’s negative egalitarianism puts more importance on a good pair of hands than a good brain, them ‘getting’ going to war is bullshit at best. Our graves are full of men who had no idea what they were facing.
New Zealand’s forthcoming deployment is not illegitimate.
Our Government and military have all the legal cover they need through the United Nations’ “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.
If the Security Council itself will not provide appropriate resolutions, Governments – like ours – can simply cite the doctrine and step in where Iraq is clearly not up to the protecting of its citizens from Isis’ rampant barbarity.
Key has stepped up.
We will not make a jot of difference being there, you know that Fran. America spent $25billion on trying to train Iraqi Army, the same Army that committed so many atrocities that people fled into the arms of ISIS. Our last deployment in Afghanistan saw us possibly committing war crimes by handing over civilians to known torture units, this deployment will risk NZers lives and ask our soldiers to commit acts that may well breach the rules of war and for what? A smug sense of superiority?
Fran O’Sullivan is better than this and NZ used to be better than this.
Great article. I like the drone joke. Perhaps NZ’s new flag could be the stars and stripes or maybe a picture of Uncle Sam with his pants down shafting a kiwi.
Was Fran O’Sullivan one of the journalists who got a free trip to the US for their “balanced” reporting or is she angling for this years intake?
Actually, I have never had a US Information Service (or whatever is is called these days) trip. Was invited for a six week study trip back in the day when individual tailored trips were offered but was busy editing.
Gosh, in six weeks one would have thought there would be evidence that you’d actually learned something. Perhaps you were in the toilet when they addressed bias and unbalanced reporting?
Fran you used to be credible. I don’t know what ‘they’ have over-on you, or what your price was, but you are a disgrace to your profession, although you have a the company of 90+% of NZ journos.
You used to be the reason to read the NZ herald. Now you are a good reason not to.
Shame on you as a supposed senior journo of the fourth estate. NZ is the poorer because of the ending of NZ reporting, which you epitomise.
Once you sell your soul, you can’t buy it back
There is no legal cover under the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. There is simply no obligation at international law – its parameters are not agreed upon. When does it apply? What is the threshold? Is it an obligation that triggers forcing states to intervene regardless of the political consequences? Currently, there is no conceptual consistency – why Iraq? What about Syria with some 200,000 civilian deaths? Nigeria and Boko Haram? You can’t cherry pick when this doctrine applies if you want to rely on it.
The only way, in reality, for it to trigger is following a Security Council resolution that would actually frame the obligation – this is clear from when the General Assembly adopted the principle in 2005.
Unfortunately, Fran is just wrong on this. You can’t use the doctrine to side-step the Security Council and it certainly doesn’t provide “legal cover”.
Why iraq? Maybe the vast untapped oil reserves and uranium.
All this getting at Mike Hosking! The poor chap is shit scared of anything that might remotely affect his fancy lifestyle and comfort in which he wants to spend his time on Planet Key. A few disposable soldier ants are going away to that end and when he and his leader are next chuckling over a wine they won’t even get a mention.
The trouble with O’Sullivan is she can’t bring herself to honestly criticise Key or his government. She along with Hosking and Roughan are part of them. At best I have seen some veiled reference to their inability to balance the books, more of a gentle nudge, nudge, people are starting to notice Bill, sort of thing, but that’s it really.
But otherwise for every not so cheerleading article there are several others like her war musings that are ridiculously illogical.
I have yet to see her take National to task over the imbalances and damaged caused by their rich man and business friendly policies. We have somewhere between 150,000 to 190,000 work visa’s issued annually, primarily to supply cheap, unquestioning, exploitable labour because business want to pay the most bare minimum wage they can get away with. These people drive down wages and conditions and displace collective wealth gain. Then have to live somewhere and this is a major contributor to Auckland’s housing problems and a looming disaster.
So this lack of questioning tends to make me think she’s less a thinker and more a sad old National Party girl.
The weakest point among many weak points in Fran O’Sullivan’s arguments, is somehow the idea that we don’t really need UN approval, because there is a clause in some earlier resolution which can be twisted to sanction all sorts of stupid interventions.
Even Obama realized that a new intervention requires a new mandate.
We are, through recent history, a fundamental supporter of a UN based approach to world conflicts. There are times when UN sclerosis stops rational intervention. This is not one of those times. Even if the government is genuine in the belief in military meddling in the area, the minimum, as in Afghanistan, is to seek a UN mandate.
Anything less is to undermine the only hope for a rational world order.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40347.htm
The proof is now emerging of complicity between NATO and ISIS as the article above shows. The link below show Washington and Israel are involved in training ISIS
http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/677207
So Mike Hoskings and Fran O’Sullivan want NZ troops to go over to Iraq and train the Iraqi’s to fight US, NATO and Israel. Maybe they are right?
And yes the reliability of these sources will be called into question but then the reliability of NZ’s media Has been proven suspect. MH17!
Comments are closed.