by frog
Fans of The West Wing will remember that the moment President Jed Bartlet resolved to thump his Republican opponent Rob Ritchie was when Governor Ritchie said of the killing of a Secret Service agent:
Oh. Crime. Boy, I don’t know.
The scene was meant to convey that Governor Ritchie, as a man who did not know how to respond to moments of great sadness and tension, was not suitable to be President of the United States. As I have watched Don Brash squirm under reporters’ questions about the Iraq war over the last 24 hours, I have felt the same thing about the National Leader. Asked repeatedly the question, “Had you been Prime Minister, would you have supported the US-led war on Iraq?”, Dr Brash has pretty much responded, “War. Boy, I don’t know.”
His arguments for not answering this question have been two-fold. First, Labour’s just trying to divert attention from the real issues that Kiwis care about, like tax cuts. Second, how could he possibly be expected to have an opinion, when he wasn’t actually Prime Minister at the time?
To the first, I say: so, you’re only prepared to talk about the issues you want to talk about now? Is it really up to you to decide what’s important? Isn’t it the role of journalists to decide what questions to ask, not you?
To the second, I say: are you seriously suggesting that you’re not going to tell us, until you become Prime Minister, what you think about sending Kiwis into war because you can’t be expected to know what you think until you’ve received briefings? Are you going to be Prime Minister, or will your advisors be?
Seriously, these answers are unbecoming of a man who wants to be our Prime Minister. As Duncan Garner said on 3 News tonight, “Is it really unreasonable to ask the man who wants to be Prime Minister whether he would send Kiwis to war?”
Meanwhile, Scoop has transcripts of occasions when Don Brash has expressed support for the Iraq war. Kiwis should be under no illusions: had Brash been in Premier House for the past three years, Kiwis would still be coming home from Iraq in coffins.
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Wed, July 20th, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
From the video news clips I have seen in recent weeks, it would seem to me that Don Brash is rattled by questions. His prepared speeches in a ‘safe’ environment seem polished enough, but when the questions come randomly from journalists he is not handling it at all well. I guess that is when his total lack of political experience shows.
I used to respect him in his Reserve Bank Governer role, but there the issues of the day were fairly narrow and his environment was safe. he could control it. Joy.
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I object to idea that this is a side issue, a way to distract people from the “real” issues.
This is a legitimate policy difference between Labour and National.
You can either choose for rational, independent analysis or you can choose to be George Bush’s prison bitch, tag teamed with John Howard and Tony Blair.
NIce.
What I lament about this election is that there are no parties that I can say “yes I will vote for them” Labour have annoyed me with their smugness and their arrogance. This is an election of “I don’t want them in charge”
I can’t believe the pathetic adherence to ideology when it comes to tax cuts.
People, tax cuts do not stimulate economies. What they do encourage is further debt loading on the low wage recipients, while the rich get heaps more capital to accumulate assets at the expense of the low paid.
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hey fwwog, would you or would you not have gone to the second world war to fight HITLER ???0 come on fwwog answer, bet you ain’t got the tummy to answer fwwog, would you or would you not have???
whats that fwwog you don’ts have the tummy????
would you or wouldn’t you,?? come on answer fwog,
would you, wouldn’t you?? is that your answewr fwwog???
is that what you say fwog ??, come on fwwog, would you or wouldn’t you, what are yo fwwog or tadpole ??
would you or wouldn’y fwog, no talking about the copyote, that not the question fwwog,, you not a coward is you fwwog???
?
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Frog – you seem to have overlooked Labour has had troops in Iraq. And in fact the combat stage of Iraq was far less dangerous than the post-war stage. So saying National would have Kiwis returning in coffins is pretty dishonest.
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Frog –
IF this election can be turned to the issue of foreign policy and the support of the Bushco war in Iraq, it can probably be turned in Labour’s favour. That’s a real difference between Labour and National, and in the face of supporting sustained military operations in foreign countries any money for “tax cuts” will come out of our children’s futures. Those children who survive.
David… you are deliberately wrong. Minimizing the differences between a PM who flat out stated that there would’nt have been a war if Gore had won the 2000 election ( Bush found that truth insulting, how can anyone support people who find the truth insulting ) and the Brash “gone-by-lunchtime” position, is a deliberate mis-statement of their positions.
PQ, you’re not even in the hunt on this. Any position on Bush’s “vanity war” has to be thought through ON THAT ISSUE. WWII had zip to do with it.
Rantz – Tax cuts have a lot more effects than you seem to understand, as do taxes. You neglect the damages that high marginal rates do to incentive. This however, is always true…when the government is in surplus, REAL surplus, it has an obligation to ME to give some of it back.
The taxes and benefits structure has to be adjusted… even if they are not cut very much, so that the effective marginal tax rate in the 50-70k region is something closer to 60% than 90%. There’s a hump in the damages done, and it is a VERY hard one indeed. As people get pitched in there as a result of hard work and success they VERY quickly start to side with the Nats on taxes. Even though the Nats are unclear on their policy. The clear disrespect shown by Labour (and Greens) for people who by dint of talent and effort are able to raise the game to a higher level, is very demoralizing.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ – while I personally would dearly like some of my taxes back, as Brian Easton has pointed out (and Labour has done a very poor job of explaining): http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/article676.html, the govt is in fact operating a fiscal deficit, and there is no room for tax reduction without cutting expenditure in some way.
Presumably one of the only real ways of redistributing the tax burden is by going after companies and individuals paying less than their ‘fair share’ through various tax avoidance mechanisms, and on this front the IRD seem to’ve been quite agreesive in recent years (eg with the trading banks). National and the other parties seem to have nothing but sloganeering to offer in the area of tax.
The one interesting idea of recent times that has quietly died a death was Jim Anderton (amongst others) proposal for a financial transaction tax in an attempt to tax speculation. Which was, predictably, ridiculed, though I never saw a sensible analysis, and my hunch is this is a reasonably area to be looking at for taxation.
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Folks – There’s something wrong with this blog… I posted a response and it disappeared. I can’t answer you Rantz, on your Ralph Nader comment because the blog doesn’t know I’m logged in on that thread. Here it seems sort of OK… but comments disappeared. I’ll try again.
David. National would have had Kiwis with the Aussies and fighting. Whether they came back dead or alive is irrelevant to the fact that the damned war is illegal, but reconstruction is not. There are enough dead civilians in Iraq… that none of them are dead at our hands is a good thing.
Peter – You can do better, and usually you do.
respectfully
BJ
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Huskynut
Thanks for that pointer. I have (apparently) been watching too much of the popular press, which always talks about the “surplus” but never about exactly what it is.
Since I don’t believe in governments being in debt (I am NOT a good Keynesian), I don’t want to “cut” taxes if there’s no money. Heck, if you have a surplus but I haven’t paid the mortgage (the existing debt), you really don’t have a surplus anyway.
The effective marginal tax that is imposed is still a problem, but I had been taking in good faith that the numbers reporters are reporting reflect reality.
If there’s no surplus, and I see there’s not, the issue becomes making the reporting more accurate and making the effective tax burden a bit smoother.
respectfully
BJ
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Labour’s position is that we take part in Iraq when the UN oks it. So we are there for the reconstruction – the UN oked that – but not for the war – not oked by the UN.
I’m not sure how this is a justifiable position. What this amount to is putting our foreign policy in the hands of France, Russia and China – they are the ones that stopped the UN supporting the invasion. Had they voted the other way then NZ troops would have taken part.
National’s position is far more justifiable – they are saying they agreed with the US and would have committed troops. Labour, on the other hand, is saying we didn’t agree with the war but if Chirac was for it we would lined in behind.
And along with that would be an acceptance that not intervening in Rwanda was the right thing to do – because the UN did not intervene. And it was wrong to intervene in Bosnia – because the UN (i.e. Russia) did not support it.
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Surplus…….is it real? I have no idea, of course, but have oft wondered if it was real. I argued with myself how can a mega million whatever surplus be real if NZ has a mega million whatever overseas debt? To someone such as myself, totally ignorant about government ecomonics and running our country, I felt that big debt and big surplus do not equate. Joy.
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Sock Thief,
Just because China, Russia and France opposed the war, for deeply cynical reasons of their own, doesn’t mean that we have surrendered our sovereignty to them. The UN, for all it’s many, many flaws, is the best we have. Certainly a damn sight better than some superpower waving it’s big stick around. If the UN had OKed the invasion, who’s to say that under the circumstances that Labour would have sent our troops in? The situation would have been a lot different, and I imagine that a pretty thorough cost-benefit analysis would have been done on this, especially when the NZ Army at the time was still getting over operations in East Timor. So, I fail to see why waiting for a UN approval equates to surrendering our sovereignty to Chirac and Putin.
As for Rwanda, yes, that was a massive cock-up, and continues to be one now that the war has spilled over into Zaire. The right thing to do would have been for the powerful nations of the world to force this issue through the UN, get a resolution and send in the troops. But there’s no oil there, and they’re only black people so I guess the great and powerful didn’t give a rat’s arse.
Bosnia was always done under a UN flag; my mates went there with UNPROFOR, the UN Protection Force. The Russians probably spat the dummy, but they didn’t veto it.
Iraq should have been a UN operation from the start. But it wasn’t, and this is part of the reason it’s such a godforsaken mess. The UN is by no means perfect, but it is better than what the Yanks have done. And I am very glad that we are not a part of it, not yet anyway.
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Again I want to fully back Tane’s comments. Because of nuclear weapons and other WMD’s the long-term survival of the human race is predicated on the concept of collective global security. There is no alternative.
The implementation we currently have is the UN. My observations are:
1. The current form of the UN is necessarily limited due to the major Security Council nations continuing to protect and wield their own National sovereignty within the UN’s structure.
2. The American right wing has in particular been especially effective at undermining the UN; the current GWB regime appears determined to reduce the UN to irrelevancy.
3. In the medium-term the UN will recover when it realises the essential need for reform and to devise wholly new means for the peoples of the world to participate in it’s deliberations.
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Lets not miss the other point about Iraq. Given the Downing Street Memos and the testimony of former CIA analysts, who became former because they didn’t agree to slant their analysis… and the fact that no WMD were found in Iraq. The Iraq war is and was ILLEGAL in the USA. Never mind the UN.
NZ was right to stay out of it. NZ IS right to stay out of it. NZ has a right to stay out of it. The folks on the right should take the hint.
respectfully
BJ
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I don’t understand you peterquixote. ….
Are you somehow suggesting that someone should take down George Bush before its too late ?
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Wizban
It is already too late.
respectfully
BJ
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