Friday, January 12, 2007



Questions for Winston Peters

Jim Anderton has attacked America's adventure in Iraq as "another Vietnam":

"It is hard to see how an additional 20,000-25,000 troops are going to be capable of making any real difference and this has an eerie Vietnam revisited element to it.

"One wonders whether the lessons I would have expected to be learnt from that fiasco have been learnt in any way at all.

"It is literally years since Mr Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and announced the war was over. I don't know whether he remembers that," he said.

"It is very easy to get into (wars) but very hard to get out of them. The US is not the first or the last military power to find that out.

"We remain consistent with our original view about military action not being a sustainable or long-term contributor to the peaceful development of Iraq," he said.

Winston Peters has responded by calling the comments "ill-informed and regrettable". So perhaps he'd like to answer: which part of the above is "ill-informed", and why is it "regrettable" for a member of our Parliament and government minister to voice the views of his constituents and indeed the vast majority of New Zealanders? Or must the basic premise of our system of government - representation - take a back seat to Blairite sycophancy towards the hegemon?

7 comments:

ok NRT, you may like Andertons comments now as they reflect public opinion, but (unlike the foreshore and seabed bill) how come you didn't oppose comments made by our government in the civil unions bill as most people did not want civil unions, therefore government policy does not reflect public opinion. Could you prejudices have anything to do with it? Perhaps you approve of statements concurring with public opinion only when you share those views..

Posted by Swimming : 1/12/2007 08:26:00 PM

I've emailed Jim Anderton to express my agreement and gratitude with his comments. I suggest if others feel the same way they do likewise.

janderton@ministers.govt.nz

Posted by Muerk : 1/12/2007 10:28:00 PM

"most people did not want civil unions" . . .

Maybe they didn't, maybe they don't. But for those that want 'em, now they can. And those miserable bastards with nothing better to do than obsess about people who happen to actually have a life can go jump.

Posted by Anonymous : 1/13/2007 12:08:00 PM

The remarks are ill-advised because they are undiplomatic. Everyone realizes that NZ (and NZers) is unofficially vehemently opposed to the war, but this is not something that our leaders should be saying out loud. There is a huge petulant gorilla in the corner over there, and we (the rest of the world) must tread a fine line between chastising it and feeding it bananas. I feel Helen Clark was walked that line very well to date.

Posted by Anonymous : 1/13/2007 02:25:00 PM

That petulant gorilla needs to understand the horror it has visited on the world is unacceptable. Should we be quiet about other regimes' abuses? China? Burma? Sudan? North Korea? No, of course not.

Posted by Muerk : 1/13/2007 07:59:00 PM

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil countries is that good countries do nothing. How about we set a radical new trend, call a spade a spade and an illegal aggression an illegal aggression? Silence is complicity.

Posted by Ryan Sproull : 1/14/2007 07:22:00 PM

Normally I'd agree that Bush's Iraq poicy is dumb, dangerous and stupid. However if Jim Anderton's against it, then maybe old GW's got a point somehow..

Posted by Rich : 1/15/2007 08:25:00 PM