Calm down – it’s ok when our SAS butcher Afghan Civilians – shush now and watch The Block you sleepy hobbits
After all the lies and manipulations by the NZDF.
After John Key personally signed off on a revenge attack by the NZDF.
After all the smearing against journalists and deliberate disinformation campaigns in the mainstream media to gloss over the murder of Afghan Civilians, we finally get to this moment in the whitewash inquiry…
Operation Burnham inquiry: How the SAS determined Afghan targets to be killed
Afghan civilians who picked up weapons could be put on a “capture or kill” list used by the SAS during a controversial 2010 night-time raid.
The Operation Burnham inquiry — inspecting allegations made in the 2017 book Hit & Run that six civilians were killed and 15 injured in an SAS-led raid — covered now familiar matters during another day of hearing in Wellington on Tuesday.
Who is a civilian in a conflict where civilians at times pick up weapons? Who can legally be put on a “capture or kill” list by international military forces, like New Zealand, who were in Afghanistan?
The answer is somewhat unclear, and made difficult by how the conflict in Afghanistan was defined in 2010.
…that’s where we are now, a game of semantics to explain how we butchered 6 and injured 15.
This is the moral standard we hold ourselves to when explaining how we killed a child in a foreign country.
There is still so much that hasn’t been exposed to the media in this terrible war crime and I doubt it will come out in this whitewash inquiry.
SAS forces on a revenge attack, personally signed off by the Prime Minister, killed and wounded 21 civilians and the NZDF have lied throughout to hide that massacre. To now debate semantics over who they thought they could kill and who they couldn’t is a deplorable way to determine justice.
How ugly. How petty. How very New Zealand.
Hush now, go watch The Block sleepy hobbits.
And some total moron from Lower Hutt will write another of his dumb letters to the Dom-Post saying that Nicky Hager should concern himself with things like the NZ road toll instead of far away foreigners.
But hey – the NZDF is in good company. When Meghan got Harry, one of his mates told the British media what a great guy he was, and how he flew around Afghanistan shooting peasants from an Apache helicopter, and that word ‘peasant’ leaped right out at me from my monitor. True.
What the Fuck were we doing in Afghanistan. The Iraq invasion was illegal as was the follow up in Afghanistan.
It was about making a few billionaire richer but cost over 1 million lives.
The Teliban controlled and virtually eliminated the growing of poppies. Under US/UK/NZ intervention the poppy cultivation exploded.
What the Fuck were we involved with.
The rat key also got us involved with NATO with no NZ parliamentary discussion. A corrupt bastard who cares little about loss of life.
John Key behaves like a psychopath, so if he signed off a revenge attack it wouldn’t be out of character for him. The best thing we can do is avoid the politics of the war and instead focus on exposing the media propaganda. Our media has provided cover for war and they need to pay for what they’ve done. Every time the US wants to invade a country, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the media go spastic and start telling lies. Screw semantics, dismantle the propaganda first.
The problems started the moment John Key started talking about getting revenge. The New Zealand Army was a legitimate target in a war zone. The idea that it was a philanthropic aid organisation would not have been viewed that way by the Taliban
Correct, EP. In fact our presence aided Taliban recruitment. ‘Hit & Run’ is well worth reading – referenced, cross-referenced, indexed, endnotes etc. I’ve read it at least three times, but with a memory like a rice sieve I have to dip back in whenever I need facts. It is an interesting read, with a nuanced picture of subsistence farm folk up in the beautiful Hindu Kush. They’ve gone now – we wrecked their lives and livings – killed a few – popped back and burnt one man’s one shelf of books.
It’s just as well that we’re goodies and not baddies, or it could have been worse. Maybe.
The protocols involved in a multi-army operations are clearly set out, rules of engagement and so on. The Afghan authorities know what we did in their country, and it is shameful if our military leaders pigshit around the truth – more so when other countries who have erred, face up to it and make amends.
The SAS seemingly being a rule unto themselves is unpalatable – as is their apparently shopping their services to e g the USA: Wanted By Army: A War To Fight In.
Still, it seems to have done Jerry Mateparae’s career no harm – if I’m right, he went on to become Governor General of NZ, and then our ambassador to GT B.
I’m no shrinking violet – like I wouldn’t give a public linguistics lecture if somebody called me a c*nt- but at page 28 or 38, I was so shocked that I didn’t think I could continue reading this Hager & Stephenson report. I did. Then I read it over again.
English, Key & co don’t actually matter – they’re nothings – it’s taken me a while to realise that the reasons politicians won’t read books like this, or watch film clips of eg a ghastly Oranga Tamariki uplift, is because the politicians are thinking only of themselves, and they are protecting themselves, because they and their interests come first – and honour is an unknown quality – more so when there’s a handy junior staffer to blame should something uncomfortable surface.
I’m exploring alternative meanings and usages of ratbags.
The war on Afghanistan is just like all the wars in the region. All wars are resource wars and Afghanistan is plagued with being on the edge of the cradle of humanity and to be cursed with enormous quantities of mineral resources, all to be fought over by the imperial powers and the nation states adjacent who always get dragged into these conflicts.
Follow the money as always.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-is-worth-waging-afghanistan-s-vast-reserves-of-minerals-and-natural-gas/19769
Thanks Kevin. A big read to reread – which I shall!