Friday 5 December 2014

What's In A Name? Let The Anzacs Rest In Peace, Mr Key.

Imperial Folly: If the Anzac legend is about anything at all, it is about young Australian and New Zealand men transcending the idiocy and mendacity of their leaders and the hopelessness of their situation to assert a set of values and qualities unique to the places they called home.
 
IF ANYTHING can still be considered “sacred” in New Zealand it’s Anzac Day. For Pakeha New Zealanders, in particular, the commemoration of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 holds a visceral significance which Waitangi Day has never achieved. That the day has survived the passing of all those who were actually there bears testimony to its status as one of the most potent symbols of our national identity.
 
In her nine years as Prime Minister, Helen Clark devoted considerable energy (and a not insignificant amount of taxpayer cash) to enhancing the power and reach of Anzac Day. Ms Clark’s purpose was to underscore the military tragedy’s role in nudging New Zealanders forward from their reflexive identification with the British Empire towards the first, tentative, notion that they might, one day, become something more than mere “loyal subjects” of the King-Emperor.
 
You might, therefore, think that Ms Clark’s successor, contemplating the hundredth  anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, would be anxious to ensure that nothing happened to besmirch or cheapen the solemn character of this major historical commemoration. But, in this matter, as in so many other matters of late, our current prime minister, John Key, is full of surprises.
 
At his post-Cabinet media conference on Monday, Mr Key announced that: “it’s not impossible that they [the training components of Australian and New Zealand military contingents poised to join the international effort against Islamic State] could be badged as an Anzac unit.”
 
Mr Key and his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott, have clearly been mulling over the possibility of resurrecting the Anzac “badge” ever since the two politicians teamed-up in the West Australian port of Albany to jointly preside over commemorations of the original Anzacs’ embarkation for Egypt on 1 November 1914.
 
It is difficult to know where to begin the list of reasons why the Prime Ministers’ suggestion should be dismissed out of hand.
 
Perhaps we should start by reviewing why the original Gallipoli Campaign proved to be such a disaster.
 
In April 1915 New Zealand was ordered into a hastily improvised invasion of the Ottoman Empire with no clear understanding of what we were being asked to do – or even if we could do it. If the Anzac legend is about anything at all, it is about young Australian and New Zealand men transcending the idiocy and mendacity of their leaders and the hopelessness of their situation to assert a set of values and qualities unique to the places they called home.
 
We honour the 2,779 young Kiwis who fell in that fight not simply for their tremendous courage, but also for the terrible lesson which their utterly needless deaths have, hopefully, inscribed upon our national memory. That it is terribly wrong for our leaders to send young New Zealand men and women to right wrongs that we, as New Zealanders, did not commit and which we cannot hope to end.
 
Mr Key has stated that he has no intention of “doing something that’s disrespectful”. But allowing us to be drawn into a joint role with the Australians under some sort of sentimental throwback to the Anzacs is, as Labour’s Andrew Little noted: “pretty cynical”.
 
Especially since it would be a joint mission without clear objectives; lacking any reliable metric for success; and which will likely end with New Zealand’s soldiers being hastily withdrawn amidst recrimination and disgust.
 
Dry Run? US Marines and New Zealand soldiers conduct joint military exercises, "Dawn Blitz", at Camp Pendleton, California, in 2013.
 
Iraq is a failed state riven with corruption and religious enmity. Its standing army is a standing joke. Nine tenths of the men we’d be “training” have no wish to either kill or die for a regime they neither respect nor trust. The remaining tenth will gladly put themselves and their weapons at the disposal of Islamic State. Nowhere in Iraq is “behind the wire”. The whole country is a combat zone.
 
If the “strategic studies” departments of our universities were worthy of the name they would be condemning the madness of sending foreign troops to Iraq in order to crush a movement brought into being by the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. With Australian planes strafing IS positions and its special forces readying themselves for combat, nothing could endanger New Zealand’s “home front” more than publicly joining our name with that of the United States’ gung-ho “Deputy Sheriff”.
 
Imperial folly has claimed enough New Zealand lives. No more.
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 December 2014.

10 comments:

Guerilla Surgeon said...

As a species, we don't seem to ever learn anything much. At least not from history. Does noone remember Vietnam? Another failed, corrupt state propped up by the West – this time in an attempt to stop communism. The French couldn't do it, so the Americans stepped in. It began with 'advisers'. They naturally went out in the field with the troops they were training, and found themselves fighting or commanding those troops in some cases. Not to mention that some South Vietnamese refused to go out without Americans. And I can't see it being much different here, unless strict controls are imposed on what our troops can and cannot do. Mind you, the Americans have spent literally billions on training the Iraqi army, and it still can't face a raggedy - arsed group of fanatics, who have managed to take much of their weaponry from them in the first place. Say what you like about Keith Holyoake, he managed to resist American pressure to the extent that our engagement in Vietnam was minimal.

Jamie said...

Trotter Getting Sum!!!

You and me may disagree on some issues, but on this I'm with you 100%!!!

Keep up the good work Brotha!!!
That's an order!!!

Fern said...

One of your best-ever columns, Chris. John Key is getting more and more out of touch with public opinion.

Jamie said...

I believe Drunk On Power is the phrase you were looking for Fern...

Somebody use that for a blog post please...

Jamie said...

If we were to train the Iraqi army I always thought it would be better to have them fly a contingent to NZ and train them here to a high standard for 6 months, fly them back, rinse and repeat and keep rotating them through...

Couple that with my roading policy...

http://pc.blogspot.co.nz/2014/09/so-what-about-roads.html#comment-form

We could have other Countries lining up to build our roads

:)

Too bad we got a bunch of talentless chicken-hawk tin generals who wouldn't know how to win a war if their lives depended on it...

:(

David said...

I wonder how any New Zealand soldiers likely to go to Iraq feel about the prospect. Anyone with half a brain would be pretty nervous. Basically there's now frontline to retreat from. They will be dropped into the middle of hell. I don't know if John Key actually comprehends this.

Jamie said...

"I wonder how any New Zealand soldiers likely to go to Iraq feel about the prospect" David

As Trotter has said previously...

http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/a-professional-engagement.html

Them lads are like the All Blacks....They're the crew who wanna play.

It's on all of us to protect themselves from themselves!!!

And when they are sent in to harms way then it's on us to ensure that the mission is right, their tactics and strategy to succeed, and they have the leadership and equipment to achieve victory!!!

"I don't know if John Key actually comprehends this" David

John Key does not comprehend this!!!

http://r1016132.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/chicken-hawk/

Neither does the Minister of Defence or the top brass...

http://r1016132.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/rogue-senior-defence-officer-deploys-company-size-2nd1st-to-waiouru-pdt-iraq/

Here is my pick for Minister of Defence...

http://r1016132.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/ngati-tumatauenga-needs-you/

Best of the Best!!!

Robert M said...

Clearly current US and UK approach to the problems in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are not the answer. However can we afford to do nothing. Can we fail to contribute our opposition,unarmed and armed to ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is likely that Aus, UK and USA will eventually evolve a more coherent and possibly even more ruthless policy. We were born with them and should remain with them. Failing to contribute and remaining an isolated collection of Islands will be the most disastrous policy in the medium and long term. The Hager argument that NZ is a non violent country and the best way of avoiding trouble is to stay out is the cowards way.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I can't see how failing to contribute to the war against Isis would be disastrous. It's an American problem, and solely an American problem. They caused the organisation to come into existence, and it's their policies in the Middle East that keep it in existence in the form that it is anyway. I suggest that being associated with these policies would be disastrous in the short medium and long-term. For obvious reasons. New Zealand has tried, and so far as the right-wing mind is capable, to have an evenhanded policy in the Middle East. I think that is appreciated – except perhaps by Israel. Personally, I'd like to see a more pro-Palestinian stance, but that ain't going to happen – so evenhandedness is going to have to be good enough.

Jamie said...

http://r1016132.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/chiraq-operation-oliver-pt-1-gsmeacs/