WM,

We’ll give you credit for a gracious exit. Thanks for calling in.

BJ, As I’ve said before it’s not American’s per se that are the problem. Glad to have your contribution to NZ.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Good work, chaps. Thought experiments are cheap, can be conclusive (Schrodinger’s Cat, fer example) and by eliminating way-out (way mad?) scenarios, tend to focus minds on the possible rather than the completely improbable.

From this leetle discussion already:

- Defence needs to be taken seriously, and I commend you all on not just parroting the ‘let’s be nice to everyone and it will all go away’ meme that so stifles actual strategy and policy development.

- Current living conditions (cities, infrastructure) in NZ were never planned with any defence in mind. In military terms there is no hardening whatsoever. This leaves us quite vulnerable to even small events. I’ve often joked to colleagues that a handful of old farts in $200 cars could gridlock Auckland for weeks by stalling them at key junctions, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see that electricity, water, and sewerage could be similarly disrupted oh so easily.

- a tragic sensibility is needed for this sort of stuff, and a .mil background doesn’t go amiss, either.

Good luck for pulling all that together. And selling it to the troops – whoops – Green personages.

Roger, over and out.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

and to get back to your original strawman, Way Mad (“You are all innocents who are going to get mown down like rabbits”), and to the subject of the thread :

it’s based on the following syllogism :

* Fisk is not only anti-war, but against all forms of army or armed police
* Anyone who approves of anything that Fisk writes or says must necessarily believe everything that Fisk believes

Neither of these terms has been demonstrated, so your strawman falls flat on his face, with a dull thud.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

5000 armed-to-the-teeth fighters who in the name of Lebensraum, arrive simultaneously at each of our major airports in 747’s

Hahahahahahah!

Well, if any such threat should take form — and there’d be time enough to see it coming — then I think a couple of dozen SAMs should take care of it. Soviet-era technology would be fine — it would be cheap to buy, and with the added advantage that you could hire technicians to maintain and run them pretty cheap.

i.e. sure, let’s examine REAL threats, and take measures to deal with them if it seems necessary.

I am severely puzzled as to why anyone who claims that we should be taking measures to deal with security threats, should choose to cite Iraq as an example… it was possible to be mistaken about it in 2002, but not today surely…
It has not only made the world a much more dangerous place; it has, unfortunately, severely discredited the notion of pre-emptive military action in general. I can think of circumstances in which an Iraq-style intervention might be desireable (I am not made of straw, but of sterner stuff), but it clearly won’t be politically possible for a long time to come.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Waymad? American?

As may be, I have no doubt that he’s not thought through the scenario. There are 4 million Kiwi’s here and a surprising number of weapons, not even counting the reserves and the regular army. Packing 5000 “fighters” plus THEIR weapons into 747′s, landing them simultaneously at any single airport or at “all our major airports” and accomplishing anything aside from getting a lot of people killed is beyond even my imagination. How many people in one of them? I think there’d have to be about 15 of the things, but we don’t have that many runways.

I reckon they’d last a day, maybe two at most. Do some damage, kill some people and die. Supported by Submarines? Just what sort of amphibious or other support of ground troops do you get from a submarine Waymad?

Not only do I know the Columbians have a submarine I know just how useless it is to them, and just how useless they are in general for doing ANYTHING to people on the beach…( except for the SSBN’s and those aren’t much use if you actually want property you can walk on ).

Face it Waymad, you’ve gone over the edge here. The scenario you describe doesn’t lead to anything particularly useful for an opponent even with almost NO preparation on our part.

Gill- There’s not likely to be a problem with the Americans. I know we’re the boogeymen, but there’s orders and there’s orders. Officers swear to protect and defend the Constitution, not the administration…. and even if Bush is NOT impeached his ability to sucker them into another war based on fake intelligence offerings is hovering near zero.

I can’t “guarantee” anything… it’s been thirty years since I had regular dinners with the guy who is the current Chief of Naval Operations… (he was my first CO), but I don’t think he’d buy any part of it… and I am sure he’s not alone in that and oil or no oil… they’re going to have a lot of OTHER problems.

For those of you who didn’t know, I am an American… and a permanent resident here for 2+ years now.

respectfully
BJ

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

He must be american :D:D

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Waymad,

You seem to be having some delusional half baked conversation with yourself. This thread is titled “Campbell and Fisk” – you’ve not only gone OT – but have started repeating yourself on another blog with no reference to the original argument.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

I fear the Americans more… one hint of oil down here and they would be here!
Forcing their ‘democracy’ on us, their Walmart, etc etc…. our TV stations are already taken up with all the American crap… heaven help us and save us from the USA! Sea level rise – America should look at global warming and address this issue…. oh but they can’t… they are ‘Christian’…. and that I don’t believe for a minute.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

So, a tragic attitude! Very good. Now let’s take that one step further: take one conceivable consequence of a sea-level rise: flotillas of not exactly refugees, but 5000 armed-to-the-teeth fighters who in the name of Lebensraum, arrive simultaneously at each of our major airports in 747′s, backed up with a handful of submarines (you should be aware that Colombian drug-lords own submarines….) and gently suggest that they are now the new landlords. Oh, and they’re not Christians.

Your assignment (should you decide to accept it): describe NZ’s general strategic response.

Then, how to get there from here. Tactics.

Hint: it’s a fair distance.

But that’s just the sort of scenario a Defence Policy should be assuming.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Waymad

Thanks for the link. The pound of salt I provide myself. Always remembering where these things are ultimately coming from it is hard to know how much credence to give them. Point is, and this is important, they were not a serious or credible threat to the USA AND they were not among the reasons the war as they were presented to the Congress.

Waymad, if you can tell me in simple terms, what you worry about and why I could perhaps deal with it. Since I have a very seriously and thoroughly considered set of possible contexts in which we MIGHT have to use our military I would welcome any actual indication of where I might have a “blind spot”. I don’t think there is one. I am VERY well versed in Carrier Flight Operations, and the maintenance and skill levels required to manage a bird farm. No Reggie Kray or any private arms dealer will ever have that kind of clout. The delusion isn’t mine.

Sunny? Greens? We expect peak oil, global warming, mass starvation, flotillas of refugee boats, and a 6 meter increase in the ocean level by the turn of the century unless there’s a global thermonuclear war to usher in the next Ice-Age with a nuclear winter. We don’t expect a carrier task group.

respectfully
BJ

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

BJC – try http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/009euijs.asp for a quick take on the Iraqi Assassin’s Guild now uncovered.

I’m not up for a rehash of ‘illegality’, but you haven’t touched the substantive point, which is simply that festering nation-states are a disaster not only to their own citizens, but in pathological cases, to others as well. Grotius, from memory, some centuries ago.

And you illustrate quite well the blind spot in the Green world-view: the feeling that ‘such bad people don’t exist and if they do, couldn’t organise themselves sufficiently well to… do whatever’.

That’s just feel-good, middle-class delusion, IMAO, and in that of more well-versed souls such as Christopher Hitchens. Evil people do exist, and human nature (in contrast to the Pollyanna view) has a side which positively revels in the darker side, given scope and encouragement. History has several examples.

I would much prefer a Defence Policy (and actions, too) based on a much less sunny view of my fellow Sapiens. It has been said that the best strategies come from a tragic perpsective. That’s certainly true here.

And, of course, let’s have a Policy in the first place. Serious about Governing, remember.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Waymad

The legality of the war, in the context of the United States of America, is simply “ill”. The President and his Strangelovian VP simply, systematically and consistently lied to Congress. You may not believe it, but if the House OR Senate changes hands and a real investigation is mounted there will be people locked in Leavenworth before its done. Bush’s approval rating is what, 34%? Cheney is working on HALF that now. Speculation about whether he can get into single digits is rife. What more would he have to do… he’s already shot someone.

Illegal, and that’s even before you reach into the UN mandate or lack thereof.

I started reading into the link you provided but in 3 pages found no referent to “Blessed July”. Could you point more precisely? It’s long, and I have not the time I need to wade through the minutiae of madness that it documents. Of course he was mad. That was not a reason to go to war with Iraq.

Whether there was a war between the “caliphate” as you describe it, and the western world, or we had a problem that could have been solved in terms of international cooperation of police forces, interpol and the like… well we could argue that for a long time. I’ve had the argument before, and basically it is an imponderable. We’ll never know because Bush in his arrogance, took us to war with “Terra”…. and in the process created the very situation that Osama Bin Forgotten needed to instantiate the war to which you are referring. I have no doubt that it will now be sustainable indefinitely with very little additional input from anyone. Hate is like that.

I rather doubt that any of the birdfarms of the world are for sale even to a Reggie Kray, and the skills and teamwork necessary to run one effectively are definitely not available either. Submarines are a smaller package, and might well be available, but what is the threat they pose to us? Most of your unhealthy scenarios reek of unrealistic assumptions. Think carefully on what you are worried about happening. Just what is needed for those bad things to actually become reality?

As for whether the Greens have a defence policy… well that is up to us. Some of us reckon if we want to actually WIN elections we have to have one (In other words -We didn’t need you to tell us ). I should point out too, that the lack of the formal policy is NOT the same as adopting a pacifist policy. Some Greens are pacifists, some are not, and the Green Party has not as yet decided a policy.

respectfully
BJ

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Good point, BJC.

A defence policy, people, resources and equipment to do the dirty deeds, and training etc is just what I expect my hard-won and reluctantly surrendered taxes, to fund, as the very first duty of Gummint. So, you are quite correct, not having such a policy shows a fundamental unseriousness about Governing.

And your own straw person (Lord help me, I’m using the same woolly language) is the ‘illegality’ of Iraq. You’ll need to keep a careful eye on the documents now being released: the ‘Blessed July’ aspect alone (see, for example http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060501faessay85301-p10/kevin-woods-james-lacey-williamson-murray/saddam-s-delusions-the-view-from-the-inside.html) would make a Londoner think twice. The point is that ‘legality’ applies only to a Westphalian nation-state weltanschauung. And we’re definitely not in that Kansas any more, Dorothy.

New Zealand is strategically irrelevant to the new Great Game – the Western Enlightenment against the Third Caliphate, but does pose a security risk to the rest of the Anglosphere: our laughably lax immigration and citizenship attitudes, mean that we are seen as a ‘soft touch’.

So a useful start to a Green defence policy might be to ponder awhile on the ‘sustainability’ of this stance.

And this goes far beyond the electoral considerations. When you consider that the Reggie Krays of the world can now purchase submarines, aircraft carriers and crude nuclear devices (read William Langwiesche on A.Q Khan in recent Atlantic Monthlies) as well as the usual run of weaponry, and that NZ has the longest and certainly the least defendable coastline in the Pacific, all sorts of unhealthy scenarios swim up from the depths.

And Reggie, to those who knew him, had one persona that was utterly charming, urbane, philanthropic and which took in more than one ingenuous reporter. But then he also had his Little Moments.

We, of course, don’t want to be a pawn in someone else’s game. Fair enough, the quiet life and all. But then, as Trotsky noted, ‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you’.

Better to heed and prepare.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Actually, Waymad is pointing up the folly of us greens not having a defence policy. That omission permits persons like himself (assumption) to create such extreme pacifist strawmen.

Which doesn’t make his creations any more edifying.

Those peaceful CPT citizens wouldn’t have been in trouble if some other chaps with nasty shooting things (and bombing things) hadn’t rudely and without ANY legal reason, knocked down every door in Iraq 3 years ago. You should be careful where you grab the blade Waymad, it actually has no handle.

BJ

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Strawpersons? Shurely the first duty of Gummint is the physical security of its citoyens.

Fisk is essentially saying, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’d never go to war again.

But history is replete with cases of citizenries being trapped in what amounts to our modern eyes, as slaveries of some sort.

Tyrannies of all stripes are in fact extremely sustainable, particularly if they rely on fear engendered by letting 14-30 year old males (in ‘security forces’ or the like), indulge their hard-wired tendencies to slaughter, rapine and general hell-raising.

So shooting your way into such self-sustaining loops, to release the lives of all involved for Better Fings, is literally the only way sometimes.

Fisk may well have seen a lot, and be prepared to spread a message of ‘let’s not keep doing this’. But he’s preaching to the choir. Anyone truly concerned with the sustainability of a way of life, will in a political sense, ensure that there are police, security and other specialists in violence, on hand to keep people safe. And answerable to that citizenry. So saying ‘ don’t keep doing this’ is at best mischievious, and at worst a recipe for takeover by folks with fewer scruples about employing violence.

And Campbell didn’t ask the most obvious question:

‘Mr Fisk, you have lived safely for 30 years in Lebanon, which for all of that time was a police state, client of Syria, funded by Iran. Who has ensured your own freedom over that time, and has that affected your judgement?’

Straw into gold, eh, Alistair?

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

Waymad:
Dear innocents (you know who you are)

Can the strawpersons stand up and be counted please?

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

SPC : There is another “point of view�. This sums up his journalism.

So (from your point of view) Fisk is an idiot because he has a point of view?

You’re perhaps suggesting that journalists should be “objective”? that they shouldn’t have a “point of view” of their own?

That would imply presenting only “facts” (if, for a start, we could agree on what they were), and no analysis. Because analysis requires a point of view.

Everyone knows that Fisk has his own point of view. You read his articles knowing who he is, and with a fair idea of what he believes. He’s a left winger, with crusading tendencies. That’s perfectly honourable in a journalist. You may disagree with his opinions, or with the selection of facts he uses, but that isn’t an objective criticism of his journalism.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

And in today’s crowning irony, solidly built chaps (and possibly chapesses, if the Special Forces have Embraced Diversity), armed with nasty shooty things, have barged their way into some poor cowering oppressed Iraqi’s shack, and forcibly ‘released’ those lovely peaceful CPT citoyens. And without dialoguing anyone, too!

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

SPC,

I am sorry to hear that you feel like an “outsider” on frogblog.
I will take you seriously and try to answer your post.
(Just to put this answer in context … I taught Communications English at tertiary level for 20 years.)

When “analysing” what others say when responding to one’s contributions, it is VERY important to look carefully at the content and manner of one’s own contributions (as they are an essential part of the equation.)

I will do that now with my responses to your “comments”.

SPC:
“So one gets slighted here, if one criticises Fisk AND says why?”

eredwen:
“I think that is MOST unlikely!”

(That was a straight and honest opinion based on my knowledge and experience of frogblog… )

eredwen:
“I read your posts and find them full of assertions (many of which are inaccurate), and written in a beligerent tone.â€?

(That was an honest assesment of my reaction to your posts … I do give you the courtesy of reading what you have written … )

SPC:
“A blanket assertion easily made, with no corroboration or supporting case.”
(No! My post was not “a debate”. I gave you information about my reactions to the way in which you wrote. It was up to you whether you chose to take heed.)

SPC:
“Is that a way of saying nice people come here to agree with what “youâ€? believe? And those who don’t, are not nice? Is that how simple your world is?”
(No it isn’t! There seems to be quite a diverse group frequenting frogblog. I suspect this says more about you and how you feel, than what actually occurs.)

SPC:
“As you also said, if more carefully, in responding to waymad. Which actually makes his point. As you also made mine.”

“If this is commonly accepted, what is this, one of a religious sects meeting houses

“Frankly I am uncomfortable with any place, where anyone whose whose opinion does not accord with that of others, does not belong.”

(All of that says much more about your behaviour and feelings than the behaviour of others on the blog.)

SPC: Well I did write to the PM to say, I would move to supporting her government via voting Green from 2002 on. But obviously, if one cannot find a modicum of acceptance for diversity, on even the public outreach of Green politics, it is futile for those of the mainstream to consider any closer association.

(What is this? A veiled threat?) Poor old SPC! You “dish it out” in a combative manner but when you don’t get the response you hope for …

frogblog is NOT the Green Party. Contributors here are not necessarily members of the Green Party. (I occasionally see a post from someone I actually know within the Party.) The Party itself has a diversity of members.

(Personally I find the Greens VERY tolerant and inclusive.)

“I will simply then declare the obvious, the Green party will miss Greens such as Rod Donald.

Yes we do! You have absolutely no idea … I met Rod in 1972. We associated in various roles over the years. I live in the Banks Penninsula electorate and thus, more recently, worked with Rod reguarly ( … But that was not what you meant was it?)

SPC I have taken considerable time and effort to answer your post.
Take it or leave it as you like … Anyone is welcome on frogblog, but it isn’t a place where the behaviour common on some other blogs will be effective …

“Adapt the way in which you present your message to suit the situation”

If you are genuinely interested in the Greens, then practise some Green behaviour. (You might even enjoy the results!)

It really is up to you.

Best wishes!
eredwen

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)

SPC:
” It was more an issue of sanitation/clean water/medical capability etc than poverty”

I would consider these to be poverty-related impacts. My point was that the figure of 100,000 dying since the US invasion doesn’t include deaths from these sorts of causes. There are certainly still people dying in Iraq from lack of clean water and lack of medical facilities, but I haven’t seen any figures.

Can you actually cite Fisk’s opposition to collective security? Or is it a case of him objecting to certain actions undertaken in the name of collective security? Fisk certainly objected to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, carried out in the name of “collective security”, not because he objects to collective defence, but on the grounds that it was an occupation. If, as you claim, he “prefers survival of the fittest regional power”, why would he object to Syrian rule in Lebanon, Syria being the far stronger power?

I don’t understand what you are trying to say about the suppression of the Iranian democracy movement (it’s the grammar). The Iranian government and its supporters have been using threats from the US as weapon against the democracy movement since the 1979 revolution, or very soon after at least. I don’t see how you can refute this as it seems very well established.

Like or Dislike: 0  0 (0)