Posted 3:46 PM by Creditwrench

We are all aware of public perception and it's effects on both people and nations. This is the fruit of our efforts in Iraq and other parts of the world. It is high time that we who are the citizens of this United States of America start to actively impress upon our leaders that this nation cannot long survive when our neighbor nations have these kinds of opinions of us. While many today advocate getting out the shotgun and the rifle as the only remaining solution to the problems we face today, this author believes that we can show them our displeasure in more acceptable ways than that and with a whole lot less blood being shed in the process. Maybe it is time to forget about traditional politics and see what we can do to vote in a Libertarian or other type candidates. If enough people were to do that to even scare the current crop of politicians we might be able to convince them to take other courses of action than going around trying to conquer the world which is most likely an impossible task anyway. Whatever we do we need to tell them we are not happy with the current state of affairs no matter how we go about doing it.

Posting to Headlines Wire of Scoop
Column: STATE OF IT by Selwyn Manning
Date: Monday, 12 January 2004
Time: 11:37 am NZT



Accepting PreEmptive Defence Cost Of U.S. FTA Deal

Embracing Pre-Emptive Defence Philosophy Likely Cost of U.S.
Free Trade

By Selwyn Manning – Scoop Co-Editor

New Zealand's nuclear free policy is the first rung on long ladder
leaning toward securing a free trade deal with the United States.
Most certainly New Zealand will also be required to embrace the
international law breaking U.S. policy of ‘Pre-emptive Defence'.

Compliance with U.S. foreign policy will be assumed.

Should New Zealand pursue this course, the only consequence possible
will be insignificance and disgrace. With international justice
ideals cast aside, abandonment of the Clark-Government's hard
earned social justice brand, New Zealand's independent voice
on international affairs would be exhausted handing the United
States a siphon to sap the country's identity of unified moral
self-respect.

The meetings of the Republican Six this weekend in Auckland's
Sheraton Hotel with New Zealand Ministry of Trade representatives
was no more than a preliminary exchange of musts and what-ifs.
Assertions by Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff that New Zealand
is playing ‘its part' in U.S. global military operations is concerning.
Certainly, the United States trade boffins will have interpreted
Goff's statement as a beginning point in NZ/U.S. trade negotiations.

It will be this assertion that the six-man Republican team will
herald once back in Washington.

Pre-emptive defence is cited within the September 2002 National
Security Strategy document, implemented by George W. Bush, as
reason to militarily strike foreign nations that are believed
by the U.S. president to pose risks to United States global dominance.

The National Security Strategy is the blueprint that gave Bush
license and sway within the United States to abandon the required
United Nations authorisation of an invasion of Iraq. International
law was consequently broken as the United States president created
rogue-state precedence, invaded Iraq on falsified claims that
the oil-rich state contained and was prepared to use weapons
of mass destruction against the USA and/or its ‘friends'.

The National Security Strategy renders the UN Charter's article
51 as meaningless, forges the U.S.'s right to wage 'preventative
war' against another nation, a concept advanced by expressing
rhetorically ‘imminent danger' fears presented to mask the USA's
true motives - as was demonstrably clear during U.S. justifications
on invading Iraq. Iraq is a precedence setting operation, not
an end.

Beyond the grand strategy lies abandonment of universally accepted
rules of justice. The denial of human rights, including the absence
of charges, and rights to possess detail of accusations justifying
one's imprisonment erodes the fundamental principles of which
the so called free world once held sacrosanct.

Those held gagged, hooded, bound, beaten in a legal no-man's-land
as ‘enemy combatants' at Guantanamo prison camp has drawn scorn
from even the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general in
a report that the Bush Administration chose to ignore.

Even without citing history, the state of the U.S. union has
abandoned the ideals laid down by its founding fathers. The currently
litany of abuse is long, continues daily inside the United States,
Iraq, Afghanistan, on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere.

For New Zealand to willingly oblige this rogue-superpower with
compliance at what must be its lowest point of moral standing
is simply shallow and unbecoming of a country such as ours, founded
in modern times on ideals of global peace, international justice,
and recourse for those who fall victims to tyranny. New Zealand's
nuclear free legislation is surely a more enduring national identity
than 15 men in black jerseys fumbling for a rugby ball. This
mantel is worth preserving.

Indeed it is time to counter U.S. demands of what New Zealand
must do to enter a free-trade-pact. New Zealand now has an opportunity
to cite what the U.S. must relinquish to become a nation worthy
of friendly-nation status.