| Defence Matters - View of a Nation
†
June 2008
Disturbing, yet equally revealing, is the connection
between so many critical issues of our society and those of Defence.
Collectively, individual attitudes of compliancy
permeate throughout the nation and provide the sort of environment
a left wing pacifistic government needs to engrain its ideologies
upon the people it supposedly represents.
Richard Prosser’s “Eyes in the Sky”
(Investigate Magazine, June 2008) is a set-piece example
when you consider the Queen’s Birthday weekend Tribute 08
to recongise, forty years after the fact, our Vietnam Veterans –
New Zealand the last nation involved in the conflict to do so. The
double edge comes in uncomfortable unison with New Zealand’s
responsibility for the production of Agent Orange and successive
governments’ denial of its effects on deployed troops. Several
hundred veterans have already died since their return from Vietnam,
the health of their families irrevocably affected.
A soldier goes where they are asked to go. If a
fireman decided not to turn up to your house fire, or a policeman
said he didn’t want to turn up to your violent assault, you’d
be justifiably indignant. The impact is personal – you are
directly affected. When it is another people, another nation, suddenly
it means very little. It shows just how selfish we are, this country
that claims to stand for so much.
The “domino theory” was a genuine concern
of the Cold War era. South Vietnam did not wish to be communist
and received assistance in that fight. Sadly, if I came to aid of
neighbour in a home invasion scenario and defended them and their
property, the consequences I would face in a court of law would
ride parallel with the attitudes held against the allies of the
South Vietnamese involved in that war.
Some years ago, a good friend of mine produced the
“Bully in the Schoolyard” analogy. No one is going to
deny the horrors of war, and that all parties involved must apportion
responsibility. Yet it seems all too easy to apportion blame to
one party, while disregarding others; namely Russia and China and
the expansionist nature of Communism.
Instead, the motive to help a friendly nation was
seen as swaying to the imperialist whims of the US. In the schoolyard
you would think it good of one child to go to the aid of another
in a bully situation. But no, and that is why the bullying continues,
because the perpetrator knows, more often than not, they will get
away with it; in your home, in your community, nationally and globally.
It is no mere coincidence that New Zealand is the
first Western nation to sign a Free Trade Agreement with China.
Many of those involved in it were at the heart of protesting against
the Vietnam War – cursing, spitting and yelling “baby
killer” to those who were simply doing their job. The irony
is, it is the politician who signs away the orders to send soldiers
to war. Yet it is the soldier who continues to pay the price.
Not so long ago, the Indonesian Air Force, and at
least one Indonesian submarine shadowed our deployments to East
Timor. Yet today, with crippled Anti-submarine Warfare capabilities
and no longer any strike capacity for the RNZAF, it is quite clear
where the priorities of the current administration lie. Maintaining
the present philosophy, it is only a matter of time until New Zealanders
will once more suffer unnecessarily due to being ill-equipped, ill-prepared
and being left in the dark while doing their bit on foreign soil.
The results are disturbing to say the least; a once
proud nation, which, by inaction and frivolous spending has demonstrated
wanton disregard for its own affairs such as a dependable capacity
for disaster relief, to provide adequate maritime security or full
spectrum force protection for those it chooses to put in harm’s
way. This is a lesson of history taught numerous times over, yet
we do not learn. And so, we have even less a capacity to help others
in their time of need.
The principles of peace and freedom we claim to
stand for, as a supposedly upstanding global citizen, are so easily
challenged when we can ill afford to continue our course as morally
bankrupt hypocrite when the chips are down and it really matters.
[ Printed in September 2008 issue of Investigate
Magazine ]
http://www.investigatemagazine.com
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