The Green Party’s opposition to the United States-led invasion of Iraq is being proved more correct with each passing day.
We said before the war that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and we now know that Bush, Blair, and Howard constructed the war on lies about such weapons. One can fool people some of the time but eventually one gets found out, and now the popularity of both Blair and Bush is plummeting.
National and ACT, to their shame, accepted the US and British claims at face value, and wanted us to be part of that war.
The Clark Government, to its credit, did not join the war, and it is to be congratulated on that. The occupation of Iraq is going badly.
American troops are being killed almost every day, and not just by Saddam loyalists as US spokespeople claim. It is now crystal-clear that while most Iraqis are glad that the dictator, Saddam, has gone, they do not want their country to be occupied by US and British troops. Many Iraqis are actively opposing the troops presence with massive street protests and military action.
The occupying American troops are becoming more hated by the day, because they are regularly arresting, torturing, and shooting innocent Iraqis. They are acting like the worst cops on the streets of Los Angeles.
Last week Amnesty International issued a stinging report on what it called the ‘continuing failure’ of the occupation troops to uphold human rights in Iraq. Amnesty detailed unlawful detentions, torture, and killing.
Events are demonstrating why we should have no part of the US occupation of Iraq, yet we are about to send a contingent of army engineers, who will be armed and embedded with the British occupation forces. It would clearly be much less compromising for New Zealand, and safer for the Kiwis concerned, if our help with the reconstruction of Iraq took a civilian rather than a military form. Kiwis are clearly in more danger of being targeted when they have uniforms and guns, and are operating alongside the hated occupation forces.
Then there are the military missions close to Iraq that have involved our frigates and Orions as part of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom’s Maritime Interdiction Operation. Regardless of what the United States and New Zealand Governments might say about this operation, it is not really about catching terrorists, and neither the New Zealanders, the Americans, nor anybody else seem to have discovered any actual terrorists crossing the Gulf.
It is all about projecting American power in the Gulf, particularly against Iran. Last week, President Bush attacked Iran for allegedly harbouring terrorists. That is an accusation one has to be very suspicious about, because Mr Bush told lies about the relationship between the Saddam Hussein regime and terrorists like al-Qaeda.
What did a Kiwi pilot, who has been on an Orion in the gulf, tell the New Zealand Herald last week? He said that the Orion crew did not know why the Americans were interested in some of the vessels the Kiwis were spotting for them. It does not take a genius to work out that the boats the Americans would be most interested in paying attention to – and then harassing – would be Iranian boats, as part of the Bush drive against Iran. We should not be part of that, any more than we should be sending off a hundred or so army people to Afghanistan to be part of Bush’s land war – the so-called Operation Enduring Freedom.
The fact of the matter is that American-led forces in Afghanistan and Iraq throw their weight around and act as if they have some God-given right to run the show. Sure, Kiwi troops have a reputation for acting much more correctly, but we will be part of the American show. In Afghanistan, if the New Zealand forces capture prisoners, how can we be sure that the prisoners will not be handed over to the United States forces to be mistreated, or even tortured, as prisoners have been – particularly when taken to Guantanamo Bay, and perhaps tried by military tribunals armed with the death penalty.
We should not be part of this American war, which, in practice outside Kabul, is about supporting a bunch of pro-Karzai warlords against another lot of warlords. It is not the way to empower the Afghan people to enable them to determine their own destiny. Trade Minister Jim Sutton said this week that the Afghan commitment was assisting his trade talks, but New Zealand, as a small, independent, peace-making country, should not prostitute itself in that way.
Location