By definition we being New Zealanders are dispensable, unexceptional so our government does as it is told.
New Zealand gutlessly does not have an independent foreign policy. We have witnessed a stage-managed charade of having British Foreign Secretary (servant to Washington) imploring us to "step up" and the Iraqi Foreign Minister "requesting" our help to "legalise" our war effort; our population is prepared needlessly for war once more.
Will we ever stop following the war masters? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq ... it continues.
Who are they? They are part of the 1 per cent we so recently heard about who apparently own 50 per cent of the world's wealth already. They are the neo-conservatives in Washington in alliance with Wall Street bankers and the corporate military industrialists of United States who make up the rules for themselves as and when they wish.
What facts do we have? Paul Craig Roberts, former Under Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, states, "none, of course, from Washington. Washington needs no facts. Washington is the Imperial Power. Washington's word rules, the facts be damned. The print and TV media do not dare to contradict Washington on any important point or raise any embarrassing questions."
What you hear today are lies from our confused media who simply reproduce what Washington dictates, do not understand the makings of ISIS or IS, its origins and just how it has become so powerful. How could so many people become swept up in such an ideology that demonstrates its power through mass beheadings, burnings and other grotesque forms of execution?
The "War on Terror" declared by Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld has been ongoing now for 14 years costing an estimated US$6 trillion ($7.9 trillion) -- enriching the 1 per cent beyond their wildest dreams -- but wherever this war has been fought chaos, bloodshed and destruction is the result, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan or Ukraine.
"Regime change" (the polite way for saying the overthrow of legitimate elected governments) to enforce Washington subservience has never once brought peace and harmony. If so name where? Only chaos and further destruction. So American foreign policy entraps nations into subservience, exactly where New Zealand finds itself today.
We will soon have men on the ground; meanwhile, from the safety of airfields in the MidWest of US, using remotely flown drones, the US will rain down more terror with missiles and bombs killing many thousands of innocents.
Is there any more explanation needed as to why IS exists today with so much hatred towards the West? Is there any difference between the terror of beheadings and live burnings and drone missiles appearing from nowhere blasting your family to smithereens?
That horror creates unbridled hatred towards the West. This is the war we are going to fight in obedience to "the club" captains and I put it to everyone that we should have no part of it. Yes there is much more to know than this article allows but ideologies like this cannot be defeated.
* Malcolm Eves is a retired Hawke's Bay financial adviser
* Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.
