SAS IN AFGHANISTAN

I do not support sending New Zealand troops to Afghanistan. I believe it is vital for New Zealand to reconsider its military commitment. With the change in US policy toward increasing engagement in Afghanistan the unjustifiable devastation the US has brought to Iraq will now be intensified in Afghanistan. Only this time New Zealand will be involved.

Can I assume that we are in agreement that Iraq is an illegal war? This is why New Zealand is not involved. Unfortunately, when we put aside righteous 9/11 anger, the war in Afghanistan is equally an illegal war. As with Iraq, the US insisted upon doing its own thing.

Afghanistan did not go to war against the United States. A small group of Saudis and Egyptians carried out a criminal attack. They did not live in Afghanistan but in Hamburg. They did not go to flight school in Afghanistan but in Florida. They may have been inspired by someone living in Afghanistan, but that did not give the US the right to invade Afghanistan weeks after the attack. That is not self-defence.

By mid-December 2001 U.S. bombs had killed 3500 Afghan civilians. The Guardian newspaper printed an article titled “The innocent dead in a coward’s war”. By 2003 10,000 had been killed. It has continued counter-productively and will now get even worse.

Now the new American president has “officially” extended the shameless murder to Pakistan and surely the use of drones to kill civilians has to be the ultimate in a coward’s war.

New Zealand must continue to present itself to the world as a multi-ethnic nation with a sense of balance and justice. It is not balanced nor just to be aiding the US ‘right or wrong’ at this moment in history.