Under Clinton, our military was slashed so deeply they didn’t have ammunition for simulation drills. They ran around yelling “BANG BANG… YOU’RE DEAD” instead. No lie. Even if Clinton had ordered a retaliatory strike against AQ for the bombing of the Cole or the first World Trade Center bombings, we wouldn’t have been able to.

The risk-adverse hippies in the US have forgotten everything our country was built upon and have embraced a culture of “peace, not war” and entitlement. It’s sick to watch.

And Murray… I swear. One of these days I’ll make you an honorary citizen. You’ve never forgotten us.

You obviously don’t know the US military very well, do you…. They overwhelmingly supported McCain during the election. I know of many who are afraid to serve under Obama, because he reeks of Clinton. One even retired, as soon as the election results were announced.

My agenda is too keep Kiwi’s alive, not to be used as US cannon fodder.

How can I be misunderstood about that?????

Stuart Mackey wrote: ” … we should not take on a ‘Little New Zealand’ attitude, whereby we restrict ourselves on the world stage simply because of unfounded ideas that our size some how equals some sort of ineptitude.”

I’ve never before heard a suggestion that our small size equalled some sort of ineptitude. But it’s also dangerous to think we are a race of supermen.
”

I never said our forces were Supermen or anything of the kind. But People like you, ‘Little New Zealanders’ for want of a better phrase, seem to use the excuse that because we are a small nation that we should not be involved in a significant way or do this task or that project, and this inferiority complex is sickening.

snip irrelevant sycophancy

“But it’s just arrogant and wrong to think we can always do the same things as those in bigger, better equipped forces.”

Really? As I pointed out above, with some help on the logistics side we do better than those who are bigger and better equipped, its not arrogance its an observed fact from those I have spoken to have been there and done it, to say nothing of history.

” Also, with all due respect, we should acknowledge NZ didn’t invent special forces.”

NZ forces were involved at the formation of modern special forces, namely the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) in WW2, albeit to the annoyance of General Fryberg.

I’ve never before heard a suggestion that our small size equalled some sort of ineptitude. But it’s also dangerous to think we are a race of supermen.

There are great soldiers in the American, British, and Australian special forces, and in the special forces of many other countries. And there are great soldiers in these countries’ ordinary services too. As for derring do, it’s hard to beat the feat of Royal Marines strapping themselves to the sides and skids of gunship helicopters that came under fire in Afghanistan so that they could rescue comrades. Then their corps declining to put their names forward for decorations while pilots and support staff were given medals. Part of the job, was the marines’ attitude.

New Zealanders can be proud of our SAS, who in a smaller way reflect the superb fighting of Kiwi infantry in France in World War 1 and in North Africa in World War 2, and of the heroism of our air crews in Britain. But it’s just arrogant and wrong to think we can always do the same things as those in bigger, better equipped forces. Also, with all due respect, we should acknowledge NZ didn’t invent special forces.

Murray, you have put this into a very easy read for the masses. I encourage you to submit this (after a tidy up) to many of the MSM as a contribution, Maybe under the heading “Who are the USA to NZ”
Unfortunately many of our young do not realise what a debt we owe the great US of A

I think you will find that NZSAS have a capacity out of all proportion to their size and can do things that other armies, including the US/UK AUS, cannot and any equipment/logistics issues are made up by others as a result. Out side of a ww3 situation its not size that counts and we should not take on a ‘Little New Zealand’ attitude, whereby we restrict ourselves on the world stage simply because of unfounded ideas that our size some how equals some sort of ineptitude.

The Karzai government is the most corrupt in the world – it is utterly ineffectual. Attempts by international organisations to undertake projects themselves or implement security programs have weakened the corrupt government even further. The billions in international development aid have been almost entirely wasted.

The Taliban are not just rogue insurgents – we might lament the fact that the Taliban are “hell-bent on returning those who live under its rule to the 15th century”, but the problem is that a significant number of the Pathan people want to go back to a medieval past.

The Taliban enjoy bases in Pakistan, and the majority of suicide bombers are Pakistanis seeking paradise.

European countries are grudging participants who refuse to fight, and even Canada and the Netherlands are uncertain. Even close allies, the US and Britain, are divided in how to deal with Afghanistan – see the debacle over Musa Qala.

The nonsensical “Domino theory” about how failure in Afghanisatn will lead to “Destabilisation of Pakistan, now ongoing, will lead to larger regional conflict, not just with respect to India, but in a number of other Central Asian republics grappling with Islamicist irredentism” is just panic-mongering. The Taliban are Pathan – the neighbours are not – they are historical enemies of the Pathans, and the Taliban are unlikely to “spread”.

We are wasting our time and should stop wasting money and risking the lives of our servicemen.

So Paul, why are you surfing with the Left? Whats the game plan? Useful idiots will be shot, remember? So you’re not travelling that far, huh? Just enough to regain some institutional cred after the “western guilt” incident? Fair enough.

Paul Buchanan is one of the best political analysts in this country. He did something the PC Psychobabble brigade took advantage of to stick the knife in, regardless of whether or not this was justified. The fact he hasn’t been reinstated, yet, shows the appalling state of our tertiary institutions in terms of what they regard as being important – expertise, or ability to toe the PC line.

January 14th, 2009 at 11:22 am
“Actually Murray, I agree with everything you say and am well aware of the NZ govt turning down project initiatives from the US. I am not a socialist and you are not the first to confuse me with one.

But as I said above, I unreservedly stand by my comments.”

MURRAY:

This guy is a Libertarian. There are a few points on which it is a common misunderstanding that they get confused with socialists; supporting foreign wars is one such point.

William F. Buckley in the USA put a lot of effort into trying to stitch together some unanimity between the various anti-Socialist political groupings, one of the reasons the socialists are so successful is that the opposition to them is fragmented, and some of the most effective ones, like the Libertarians, spoil their usefulness by taking irrational dogmatic positions on some issues. This issue is one that they should give away; Ron Paul in the USA, for example, would make a fine President one day if he would do this.

Can you give some examples of economic sanctions working? I can’t think of any offhand.

Violence, on the other hand, has a long history of working.

January 13th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
“Newsflash Glutaemus: Israel is not Afghanistan, look at a map….”

While we’re about it, Reid, check out the SIZE of Israel, compared to the size of all the Muslim/Arab nations in the region, where the “Palestinians” should have been resettled a couple of generations ago if the said nations were representative examples of basic humanity.

“…..it is both PROGRESSIVE and in NZ’s national interest to get more involved in Afghanistan…..”

I heartily recommend this short essay by the prominent liberal Paul Berman: “A Friendly Drink In Time Of War”:

“A friend leaned across a bar and said, “You call the war in Iraq an antifascist war. You even call it a left-wing war-a war of liberation. That language of yours! And yet, on the left, not too many people agree with you.”

“Not true!” I said. “Apart from X, Y, and Z, whose left-wing names you know very well, what do you think of Adam Michnik in Poland? And doesn’t Vaclav Havel count for something in your eyes? These are among the heroes of our time. Anyway, who is fighting in Iraq right now? The coalition is led by a Texas right-winger, which is a pity; but, in the second rank, by the prime minister of Britain, who is a socialist, sort of; and, in the third rank, by the president of Poland-a Communist! An ex-Communist, anyway. One Texas right-winger and two Europeans who are more or less on the left. Anyway, these categories, right and left, are disintegrating by the minute. And who do you regard as the leader of the worldwide left? Jacques Chirac?-a conservative, I hate to tell you.”

My friend persisted.
“Still, most people don’t seem to agree with you. You do have to see that. And why do you suppose that is?”
That was an aggressive question. And I answered in kind.

“Why don’t people on the left see it my way? Except for the ones who do? I’ll give you six reasons. People on the left have been unable to see the antifascist nature of the war because . . . “-and my hand hovered over the bar, ready to thump six times, demonstrating the powerful force of my argument.

“The left doesn’t see because -” thump!-”George W. Bush is an unusually repulsive politician, except to his own followers, and people are blinded by the revulsion they feel. And, in their blindness, they cannot identify the main contours of reality right now. They peer at Iraq and see the smirking face of George W. Bush. They even feel a kind of schadenfreude or satisfaction at his errors and failures. This is a modern, television-age example of what used to be called ‘false consciousness.’”

Thump! “The left doesn’t see because a lot of otherwise intelligent people have decided, a priori, that all the big problems around the world stem from America. Even the problems that don’t. This is an attitude that, sixty years ago, would have prevented those same people from making sense of the fascists of Europe, too.”
Thump! “Another reason: a lot of people suppose that any sort of anticolonial movement must be admirable or, at least, acceptable. Or they think that, at minimum, we shouldn’t do more than tut-tut-even in the case of a movement that, like the Baath Party, was founded under a Nazi influence. In 1943, no less!”

Thump! “The left doesn’t see because a lot of people, in their good-hearted effort to respect cultural differences, have concluded that Arabs must for inscrutable reasons of their own like to live under grotesque dictatorships and are not really capable of anything else, or won’t be ready to do so for another five hundred years, and Arab liberals should be regarded as somehow inauthentic. Which is to say, a lot of people, swept along by their own high-minded principles of cultural tolerance, have ended up clinging to attitudes that can only be regarded as racist against Arabs.

“THE OLD-FASHIONED LEFT used to be universalist-used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so. They thought this was especially true for people in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy-societies like the one in Iraq. But no more! Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes! Tyranny for Arabs! And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude? By the way, you don’t hear much from the left about the non-Arabs in countries like Iraq, do you? The left, the real left, used to be the champion of minority populations-of people like the Kurds. No more! The left, my friend, has abandoned the values of the left-except for a few of us, of course.”

THUMP! “Another reason: A lot of people honestly believe that Israel’s problems with the Palestinians represent something more than a miserable dispute over borders and recognition-that Israel’s problems represent something huger, a uniquely diabolical aspect of Zionism, which explains the rage and humiliation felt by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. Which is to say, a lot of people have succumbed to anti-Semitic fantasies about the cosmic quality of Jewish crime and cannot get their minds to think about anything else.

“I mean, look at the discussions that go on even among people who call themselves the democratic left, the good left-a relentless harping on the sins of Israel, an obsessive harping, with very little said about the fascist-influenced movements that have caused hundreds of thousands and even millions of deaths in other parts of the Muslim world. The distortions are wild, if you stop to think about them. Look at some of our big, influential liberal magazines-one article after another about Israeli crimes and stupidities, and even a few statements in favor of abolishing Israel, and hardly anything about the sufferings of the Arabs in the rest of the world. And even less is said about the Arab liberals-our own comrades, who have been pretty much abandoned. What do you make of that, my friend? There’s a name for that, a systematic distortion-what we Marxists, when we were Marxists, used to call ideology.”

Thump! “The left doesn’t see because a lot of people are, in any case, willfully blind to anti-Semitism in other cultures. They cannot get themselves to recognize the degree to which Nazi-like doctrines about the supernatural quality of Jewish evil have influenced mass political movements across large swaths of the world. It is 1943 right now in huge portions of the world-and people don’t see it. And so, people simply cannot detect the fascist nature of all kinds of mass movements and political parties. In the Muslim world, especially.”

Six thumps. I was done. My friend looked incredulous. His incredulity drove me to continue.

“And yet,” I insisted, “if good-hearted people like you would only open your left-wing eyes, you would see clearly enough that the Baath Party is very nearly a classic fascist movement, and so is the radical Islamist movement, in a somewhat different fashion-two strands of a single impulse, which happens to be Europe’s fascist and totalitarian legacy to the modern Muslim world. If only people like you would wake up, you would see that war against the radical Islamist and Baathist movements, in Afghanistan exactly as in Iraq, is war against fascism.”
I grew still more heated.

“What a tragedy that you don’t see this! It’s a tragedy for the Afghanis and the Iraqis, who need more help than they are receiving. A tragedy for the genuine liberals all over the Muslim world! A tragedy for the American soldiers, the British, the Poles and every one else who has gone to Iraq lately, the nongovernmental organization volunteers and the occupying forces from abroad, who have to struggle on bitterly against the worst kind of nihilists, and have been getting damn little support or even moral solidarity from people who describe themselves as antifascists in the world’s richest and fattest neighborhoods.

“What a tragedy for the left-the worldwide left, this left of ours which, in failing to play much of a role in the antifascism of our own era, is right now committing a gigantic historic error. Not for the first time, my friend! And yet, if the left all over the world took up this particular struggle as its own, the whole nature of events in Iraq and throughout the region could be influenced in a very useful way, and Bush’s many blunders could be rectified, and the struggle could be advanced.”

My friend’s eyes widened, maybe in astonishment, maybe in pity.
He said, “And so, the United Nations and international law mean nothing to you, not a thing? You think it’s all right for America to go do whatever it wants, and ignore the rest of the world?”

I answered, “The United Nations and international law are fine by me, and more than fine. I am their supporter. Or, rather, would like to support them. It would be better to fight an antifascist war with more than a begrudging UN approval. It would be better to fight with the approving sanction of international law-better in a million ways. Better politically, therefore militarily. Better for the precedents that would be set. Better for the purpose of expressing the liberal principles at stake. If I had my druthers, that is how we would have gone about fighting the war. But my druthers don’t count for much. We have had to choose between supporting the war, or opposing it-supporting the war in the name of antifascism, or opposing it in the name of some kind of concept of international law. Antifascism without international law; or international law without antifascism. A miserable choice-but one does have to choose, unfortunately.”

My friend said, “I’m for the UN and international law, and I think you’ve become a traitor to the left. A neocon!”
I said, “I’m for overthrowing tyrants, and since when did overthrowing fascism become treason to the left?”
“But isn’t George Bush himself a fascist, more or less? I mean-admit it!”

My own eyes widened. “You haven’t the foggiest idea what fascism is,” I said. “I always figured that a keen awareness of extreme oppression was the deepest trait of a left-wing heart. Mass graves, three hundred thousand missing Iraqis, a population crushed by thirty-five years of Baathist boots stomping on their faces-that is what fascism means! And you think that a few corrupt insider contracts with Bush’s cronies at Halliburton and a bit of retrograde Bible-thumping and Bush’s ridiculous tax cuts and his bonanzas for the super-rich are indistinguishable from that?-indistinguishable from fascism? From a politics of slaughter? Leftism is supposed to be a reality principle. Leftism is supposed to embody an ability to take in the big picture. The traitor to the left is you, my friend . . .”

But this made not the slightest sense to him, and there was nothing left to do but to hit each other over the head with our respective drinks.”

The smallest possible idependent combat unit is a infantry battalion and even in a low level threat environment like Timor the army was gutted to provide manpower over successive rotations. It simply could not sustain an infantry ballalion in a medium to high level threat environment.

So the only realistic option is a sub unit group (artillery battery – we only have one) or an infantry company (six on paper).
Buit it would not be an independent command and it would be part of an (Australian or UK) unit and under their direction.
Possible in an ANZAC context (but there are some equipment issues); less likely as part of a UK unit where there are major differences in equipment and SOPs.

Possible alternative is one or two C130s which would have the advantage of maintaining a distinctly national presence – but again, with a total inventory of only five and allowing for increased maintence wear and tear it would probably leave us with only one operational a/c back in NZ at any one time.

I continue to somewhat suroprised at what the general public think the NZDF can do. In reality its not very much but that’s not to denegrate them. NZ (successive governments) has long wanted Defence on the cheap and they get what they pay for. Project Protector is a prime example.

But as I said above, I unreservedly stand by my comments.