KEY POINTS:
There will be much cheering from New Zealand equivalents of UK Guardian readers over the results of the US mid-term elections, whose simple-minded analysis of American foreign politics goes something like "George Bush equals bad; Iraq/Afghanistan/Lebanon equals good". Already there are calls on our public radio for the US to get out of Iraq and leave its people to get on with running their own lives.
If only it were that simple. Yes, it's terribly wrong that some 2800 American soldiers have died in Iraq when, as President of the US, Bush is required to protect his people from attack. Clearly, we now know there were no weapons of mass destruction being stockpiled by Saddam Hussein.
And our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was correct to keep our troops away (even if we had to endure endless preaching from the distraught, but beautiful, Anita McNaught who still seems to think New Zealanders know nothing about the world). But that doesn't - or shouldn't - obscure the indisputable fact that Saddam was a monstrous dictator who visited unspeakable horrors on other human beings and needed to be taken out. Calling him the Butcher of Baghdad is an understatement and it is ironic that he received much fairer treatment than any of his victims did. The world knew what was going on - we all saw the haunting photos of gassed Kurds - so what were we supposed to do? Sit by, watch and do nothing? React with the same nonchalance which we afford Mugabe's trashing of Zimbabwe and his appalling treatment of, first, whites, and now blacks?
After the world discovered what Hitler and his Nazis had done to the Jews, the Communists, the homosexuals and anyone else that vegetarian, Saddam-like fascist disliked, I thought we agreed never again. So while I have disquiet about Iraq, I still believe it would have been immoral to turn away and let good people be massacred.
For that sentiment I will be labelled a right-wing Republican fan but again, that's simplistic. Writing in this week's Spectator (before the US election results), William Shawcross, arguably one of the world's most acute journalists, whose book Sideshow should be required reading for all secondary-school students, says to pull out of Iraq now would mean unleashing unspeakable violence and horrors, especially on the Sunnis.
Shawcross is neither left nor right politically. He was anti-Vietnam War, ie anti-American involvement. He just loathes dictatorships and supports freedom.
His boldness extends to a somewhat lone stand against his own colleagues who are anxious to beat up the negatives in Iraq and ignore the positives, not that Shawcross (British) is a spin machine for the Bush/Blair techniques. But he correctly points out that "the bias in much of the coverage of Iraq, both here and in the United States, helps only those violent extremists who are trying to destroy the country. It dreadfully discourages all the millions of Iraqis who still need our support to build a decent society." To pull out now, as Shawcross says, would deliver victory to the vicious and fanatical Islamists.
And we shouldn't just worry about al Qaeda and Shia terrorists in Iraq. As I write, their mad followers plot further cowardly acts of mass destruction in their country-of-birth, Britain, which accepted their parents as immigrants. Their planned explosions in the Underground threaten the lives of New Zealand's sons and daughters who work and live in the UK. Prime Minister Clark's policies do not save our kids from being blown to bits, and Islamist terrorists have shown they don't spare other countries who've refused to send troops to Afghanistan or the Middle East.
Meanwhile back home, sanity prevailed in the New Zealand Parliament this week when the bill to raise the drinking age was defeated. Which is not to say this country doesn't have an alcohol-abuse problem, but that's not restricted to the under-20s. However, Labour's promised review of liquor supply to under-18s will do nothing. The time for being nice is passed.
I've just come back from the Melbourne Cup - 110,000 people at Flemington, many of them pissed as newts, but only one person spoken to by police for bad behaviour (it wasn't me, either).
Why such a fun day? It could have something to do with instant fines for those caught serving alcohol to minors. And to eliminate any excuses about youngsters looking older than they are, ID tents issued hospital-bracelets as proof of age.
We could better that - Wellington's Courtenay Place on Thursday and Friday nights would be a good start. But don't just punish the bars; instantly fine the drunks - of whatever age - staggering around, spoiling for a fight, ruining everyone's fun and having politicians reach for the ban buttons.
Then again, a fine wouldn't have been enough punishment for the loud, obnoxious drunk on the midnight plane back to Wellington on Wednesday night. This hideous, bearded bastard, who, after too many Lindauers, thought he was irresistible to any women within reach, should have received the Saddam Hussein sentence.
