NZ has surplus armoured vehicles; Ukraine needs them. Why won’t we send them?
This week Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denounced Russia over the atrocities discovered in Bucha, and promised more support for Ukraine.
That support included a second round of sanctions, looking at importation controls, and getting “our people supporting some of the efforts”.
That comes on top of our earlier donation of surplus military equipment; a total of 1066 body armour plates, 473 helmets and 571 camouflage vests. All very nice-sounding, but compared to what many other countries are doing, pitifully small, even mean.
The weird cry for NZDF to send weapons to Ukraine to kill evil Russians is strangely similar to the middle class Marxists screaming for police to bash the smelly lumpenproletariat nazis off Parliament’s lawns and is now extending to a new SIS Stasi to dob in enemies of the State who say mean things about you on line.
When did we go from peace loving kiwis to righteous violence?
Where is our ‘enemy to none, friend to all’ headspace?
It seems that ever since the Wellington Middle Class Marxists got spooked by the Dumb Lives Matter protest, any perception of threat is now met with a Trevor Mallard level over reaction.
Currently Stuff is calling anyone bad mouthing women online is a sure sign of a domestic terrorist.
This sudden rush of blood to the head is directing demands for us to give Ukrainians lethal military aid which when you consider the dangers of escalation with a dangerously bogged down and nuclear armed Putin is the antithesis of what we should be doing.
It’s like our feelings now rule social policy debate and drive actual policy implementation!
We feel angry and frightened by the Dumb Lives Matter protestors so send in the Army and riot police.
We feel angry and frightened by the images we see on TV, so send lethal military aid.
We feel angry and frightened by people saying mean things anonymously online so build me an SIS Stasi and designate anyone who posts mean things about me online as an enemy of the state.
We live at a time where logic, rational debate and facts are all heteronormative cis male privileges used to enslave women and POC so feelings are the new currency.
This is what we is now. A pumped up self righteous git spoiling for a fight at the end of the night.
How gauche. How 1970s of us.
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We don’t send them because our armoured vehicles are crap. They (the LAVs) have been parked up for years looking for a buyer.
A billion dollar purchase by Mark Burton, a Labour minister of Defence.
There were some issue when the LAVs were obtained. Didn’t one of those people involved in selecting them get a new career with General Dynamics or whoever made them shortly afterwards?
The number of them that were purchased and their rather hefty unit cost sort of precluded the purchase of other chassis types and didn’t really allow for more specialised systems to be considered later on. Especially when other systems werent even seriously considered to be in the running originally and the decision to get the Lav was almost a foregone conclusion when it went to cabinet for the final approval and it appeared that few if any had much of an understanding of what they were getting. For whatever reason.
Anyway my father in law was ex army and he took some interest in the matter.
You need to do at least a minimum of research before you display your total ignorance to the world.. An excerpt from the process that led to the purchase of these vehicles “Cabinet approvals in March 1998 and May 1999; the tender process that was undertaken in late-1999” .. From this ..https://oag.parliament.nz/2004/lav/part2.htm .. It was a NATIONAL PARTY GOVERNMENT that started the procurement process.. Your bigotry, and mindless bigotry aren’t useful in any way.. Your only saving grace is that the drivel you wrote isn’t any worse than most of the childish garbage that passes for rational debate in this hick town of a country..
Its the zeitgeist. Twitter, FB, instant images and inflammatory headlines designed for visceral response.
Very obviously reality is being subverted by unreality. Why? For the professional middle class its that unseen creeping fear that everything they hold precious is getting close to the edge. I smell their fear, anxiety.
….not to mention supplying weapons that can’t be delivered, to a hopelessly lost cause…..
The decision should be made on whether anyone thinks Ukraine can , with or without some extra equipment (if it can be delivered to where it is needed under complete Russian air control) possibly win a war against Russia.
If the answer is absolutely not , then all the extra weapons will do is prolong the conflict and increase the civilian casualties that will inevitably result.
The kindest thing the world can do is to encourage a settlement as soon as possible which recognises the realities of the situation.
The failure of the Minsk agreements and ongoing internal war against the Russian population of Donbas has to stop. And the Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk are no longer part of Ukraine.
D J S
David, the aim of the US is to prolong this war as long as they can to grind Russia down. The Ukrainians are just fodder for the yanks.
The NATO countries are just passing off their old ready to expire tat anyway.No way do they want the Russians to get their hands on new systems, to reverse engineer and render useless any combat advantage.
Apart from Ben Wallace promising spanking new anti aircraft systems (to those two pranksters)
It seems Starstreak may have entered the field.
What a bonanza it is for Marie Kwondo type clearing of military clutter from the warehouses.
Is there no concern that NZ is going to commit to one side in an increasingly ugly conflict and how will that look if maybe some of the claims against the Ukrainians are actually true. Why even back the lesser of two evils in a war across the other end of the world that’s none of our business.
Personally Matryn I think you are way too dismissive of dickless little incel types being nothing to worry about. I guess you could say there are as many feral females out there who threaten other females too. Either way I am not so clear it’s just ‘all talk’. I agree that terrorist is a stupid label but I wouldn’t want to trivialise what some of these women have to put up with.
The Ukrainians already have enough modern javelins, NLaws and a lot more better anti – tank missiles. Im sure Puti wont be so obsessed with tanks this time. They need more stinger missiles and especially drones now. It was reported that they also have ant-ship weapons.
Its just an uninformed media/NATZACT beatup about NZ sending our javelins over. NATO/USA have more that enough spare new weapons to give them. All we can do is send them more technicians and forensic staff and $$$$ to spend on what they need to protect their citizens.
NZ can show leadership here as Jacinda (and Labour) is the only recognised Government in the world to have best protected its citizens from a foreign invader, COVID – 19.
Bucha was a Ukrainian atrocity – let’s not forget this is a civil war as well as a proxy war between the US and Russia. So was the train station which was hit by the sort of missile that Russia doesn’t use but Ukraine does.
Oh dear, Esoteric. That comment will not be welcomed by the flood of righties who have been infecting this website lately.
The strange thing is that while we are mostly aware that Russia is now a right wing state governed by a right-wing religious bigot, many of these others dream up ideas of ‘Putin apologists’ ..
The dumb propaganda we are supposed to swallow: apparently the evil Russians have now been booby-trapping kids’ toys. Oh, sure – that is a great military ploy.
But never a hint that maybe we cannot have absolute belief in anything the Ukranians say.
The hourly radio news bulletin on Friday; an excerpt from an interview with an Ukrainian MP regarding here sending Javelin missiles, said MP almost breaking into tears requesting them.
The previous day, said MP demanding we should expel the Russian ambassador.
Breaking into tears for humanitarian support—understandable. Breaking into tears for a small country and military such as ours to provide missiles–cringe-worthy. Dictating how we are to operate diplomatically also an unpalatable affront.
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