Tag Archives: ethos and values

Surf Nazis Alive And Well In NZ

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The most fitting accompanying image I could find…

Oh…my God, it’s not often anything stops me in my tracks but this did…there are real live Nazi apologists in New Zealand!! Holy Heck, Batman!!

This blot on the tapestry of reality came to light when a small (very small) smattering of socalled anti-war (like anyone is pro-war) advocates set up their soapboxes in the FB Sumner Burstyn give back your NZ passport! page….The prattle about oil in Afghanistan was amusing but this revelation just took the cake:

Her: I dont support the way Sumner expressed herself at all. I mourn a lost life regardless of who they are. I do my homework every day and I dont wave placards or go to protests, I try to address the causes and not the symptoms, thats all. The intentions of NZ soldiers are no doubt honorable, all I am saying is I dont believe the actions or intentions of those requesting your assistance are. I didnt come here to be a punching bag for those wanting to vent against anyone who disagrees. Facts speak the loudest, it is a fact that the enemy you are fighting was deliberately created to collapse the soviet union. Why are we cleaning up the mess of failed US poilcy. They mass murder people on a regular basis and we dont want to be tarred by that brush. They are hated so much and rightly so.

Another Poster: Small question. Without soldiers who would have stopped Hitler?

Her: Hitler did not start the war contrary to the propaganda we have been fed. He invaded Poland in retaliation for the murder of 58,000 innocent germans in the danzig corridor. Examine his every speech and his works and you can clearly see he did not start the war.. The germans were starving as a result of the sanctions, they did all they could to avoid the war. General patton was assassinated because he saw that a mistake had been made, that germans were lovely compared to the way russians were treating people. They killed him because he did not agree with the treatment of german POW’s. 1million germans died of starvation without shelter, food or water at the hands of the americans. A cruel way to die. They havent stopped this cruelty and we ougt not to support their immoral actions..

Another Poster: Are you actually defending Hitler? [name removed to protect the stupid] you are deluded.

Her: you need to study his speeches and look at the provocations…i alwsy thought that too. We have been lied to all our lives…

Apparently, the answers are all in Patton’s diaries…Indiana Jones, where you when we need the Patton Diaries…?

In an attempt to establish her credibility, this individual stated that she’d been an Army wife – disclaimer not to be associated with real Army wives who are indeed a force to be reckoned with, lest anyone be subjected to the Death of a 1000 Chick Flicks – but, sheesh, woman!! Do you think that’ll really help your case when you’re pleading a case of self-defence for Nazi Germany…? Of course, the bigger question might simply be, ‘do you think?’…

While the creators and members of the page have been happy for those with alternate views to contribute to the page, it is disappointing that all they can do is attempt to use it as a platform for their views on the wrongs of involvement in Afghanistan, relations with the US, etc instead of avoiding the real issue that the page was established for, i.e.. to raise and share concerns arising from the unnecessary comments made by disowned Kiwi Barbara Sumner Burstyn (the Canadians probably wouldn’t mind disowning her now too) about fallen Kiwi soldier, Lance-Corporal Jacinda Baker. Although most members of the group manage to express themselves clearly and rationally, in some cases eloquently, the anti-war fringe consistently come across as poorly-informed and quite ignorant, with quick recourse to personal attacks against those that do not agree. I note that they are all very quick to rant away online but less keen to set up their soap boxes outside the RSA or anywhere in mainstream New Zealand…

Here’s another muppet: why is it that they all assume that any and all service people are mindless brainless machines capable only of following orders…perhaps it’s a super-clear that they have not taken the time or made the effort to actually get to know their ‘enemy’ – of course, this might mean that their preconceptions might be ever so shattered when they find that service people are actually smart, articulate well-educated people and, if the truth be known, always have been…one need look no further than the vast bulk of the comments posted on the Burstyn protest page…

Have to go now…I feel so bad the we picked the wrong side in WW2 and need to atone in my own small way…maybe a dose of Inglorious Bastards…?

The media look after their own

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Oh, woe is me…the combination of Kiwi, stick and snake apparently works for leftos as well

There is a story in the Herald on Sunday on the Sumner Burstyn issue. Unfortunately it’s not a very good one and really only serves as a platform for Ms Burstyn to plead ‘oh, woe is me…why are people angry with me?” We wondered last night if the media lack of response to the issues were a case of them looking after their own and based on THIS article that would seem to be the case…

The author, Joanne Carroll, does not appear to have made any attempt to interview or seek comment from the creators of the page and seems happy enough to simply regurgitate what she has been told by Summy Bear, coupled with some lightweight comment from the defence Force which does not seem to have any opinion on whether it is OK or not for people to slag off fallen soldiers before their final journey is complete. And that is the real issue here, folks, NOT the hows or whyfores of New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan…

There is an email link at the end of the article and I would suggest that anyone with concerns about the standard of NZ media reporting on this and other issues, use it. Pick your 1200 characters carefully and, as always, keep it seemly and remember that soldiers are discplined but mobs and rabbles are not…

Dear Joanne

Thank you for making the effort to cover the erupting Summer Burstyn issue however I don’t believe that you have provided a balanced perspective at all and have simply latched onto the issue for some cheap ratings. You have made no effort to portray fairly the feelings of those who have expressed their outrage at her comments on Facebook and elsewhere online but have just focussed on the minority whose comments are aggressive. Is not the fact (if the Herald still deals in such?) that over 20,000 people have joined the FB page in less than two days an indicator of where public feeling lies on this issue? The NZ media was very quick to climb aboard when similar outrage was expressed occurred over the Kahui twins.

There was a belief expressed yesterday that the NZ media’s lack of response to this issue was a case of the media covering up for its own. Your article has done nothing the assuage that belief and merely provides a forum for more of Burstyn’s self-righteous self-pity.

I hope that the Herald and the rest of the NZ media community will get it together and offer a balanced view of what the issues are.

Here’s a view from the FB page that I think presents the balance absent from the article:

Sumner Burstyn: post an antiwar comment and get 120 death threats – funny how that works.

Barbara, the thing is, your comments were not antiwar comments (I greatly respect anyone’s right to make those). Instead they were a personal attack on a young dead female soldier just after her body was returned to New Zealand for burial.
While I am sorry that the responses from 20,000 of her closest friends and collegues became personal and in some instances threatening, surely you can see that they mirrored the language and feeling of YOUR original post.

While I respect your opinion, your target, tone and timing were highly inappropriate in any civilised society. Despite your apology we continue to see similar messages from you, including personal attacks on dead service personnel in your earlier posts. As a NZ Herald columnist I would have expected a more considered approach to posting such views. I guess that’s now a matter for your employer and tomorrow’s talk back radio callers to consider.

More words from activist filmaker Sumner Burstyn

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More words from activist filmaker Sumner Burstyn.

This makes great reading. It derives from a comment made about  Lance-Corporal Jacinda Baker, one of the three Kiwi soldiers killed by an IED in Afghanistan last weekend:

After the first pushback from the community the comment was removed however as the exchange with a soldier on the link above shows, that wasn’t through any sense of remorse. It is really interesting to note, when reading this transcript that the socalled journalist very quickly descends into abuse while the infantry soldier continues to put his case in clear and articulate terms…

The issue is not whether or not we should or should not be in Afghanistan, or the whys or why nots of having a defence force; the issue is simply that someone has stooped to a vicious personal attack on a young woman who is no longer able to speak for herself – but there are, at the time of typing this, 13752 people prepared to speak on Jacinda Baker’s behalf.

While the freedom of the internet allows someone like Sumner Burstyn to publish her slander, it also allows for that slander to be challenged and not be allowed to become the new ‘truth’ and here a community has come together again to see that wrong righted.    I say ‘again’ because this is a very special community, one that spans across the world and across decades – there are names appearing here that I have not seen for years and years and that bring back such memories. We might not meet regularly or even often but we can carry on a conversation that started in a hole full of mud and bugs in South East Asia, or while shivering in the tussock of Waiouru as if that were only yesterday. And certainly we can come together again to speak on behalf of those who can no longer…

There is a lot of anger on the community page and there probably would be at any time but in this month, where we have lost five of our own, a lot of folks are venting. It isn’t an unreasonable expectation that the mollycoddled left leaning loony community couldn’t give it a rest at least til the funerals and grieving are done…

A sad day for New Zealand as Corporal Luke Tamatea, Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker and Private Richard Harris arrive back home. (c) NZDF 2012

Jim Hopkins of the NZ Herald ends an article yesterday:

Yet, somehow, we still get soldiers. Who don’t hide in other people’s houses or make self-serving speeches or expect everyone else to “do the right thing”. They do it themselves, whatever the cost. On the Stuff website, beneath its report on the death of SAS Corporal Doug Grant last year, readers have posted their comments. One says this: – “Rest in Peace – We shall remember them. If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read it in English, thank a soldier.”

That’s the essence of the debt every generation owes its troops – a debt unpaid by those who hide in embassies.

Home are the hunters…

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Home to rest, forever in hearts of those who served with them, and those who loved them.

Lance Corporals Paralli Durrer and Rory Malone who were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday have arrived home to New Zealand.

They were met by members of their families, senior military officials, and personnel from 2/1 RNZIR and QAMR during a ramp ceremony in Christchurch.

Weekly Writing Challenge: From Mundane to Meaningful

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WordPress has kicked off a new challenge to encourage more regular writing…the first challenge is themed From Mundane to Meaningful…the general idea is to take some mundane action from your day or week and lead it to a train of more meaningful thought…

Because we both often away from home, we have to always have a plan for looking after our dogs…there are big enough that we can leave them on their own for about a day and a half but anything over that, we have to make other plans…Our kennel of choice is Creature Comforts, just north of Sanson, under the approach to RNZAF Ohakea. We’ve been using it for many years and know that our ‘kids’ are well looked after there: we use them often enough that the drop-off is pretty routine for all of us.

Driving past the main gate of the air base, I glanced in just in time to see the Avenger out of its hangar – the first time I have seen it since it arrived. It’s great to see this aircraft fully restored and flyable: I sat and waited to see if they were going to fire it up but no joy this particular morning.

For me, this and the other flying warbirds are a link to a past that we don’t appreciate and are all to quick to dismiss and forget amidst the tempo of our modern world. The Avenger is particularly evocative of the massive naval air battles of the Pacific War that turned back the Japanese tide at odd-sounding and other insignificant places like Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte Gulf and the Marianas.

And the thousands of young men, all of whom had other aspirations, careers, plans, lives…who downed tools, quite school and signed up to fight for some basic values…The young, now old men, who flew for Bomber Command, Britain’s only means of striking back during those dark years from 1940 to 1942, who only now have been recognised for their sacrifice seven decades ago, recognition denied them for reasons of political tidiness.

And we shouldn’t forget that every day, other young men and women launch themselves into the skies from Ohakea and Whenuapai, into harm’s way because flying will remain an inherently dangerous act until such time as we can do it unaided…I understand the physics of what they do but remain in total awe of the way that they have mastered this unnatural act…slipping those surly bonds in such a way that it seems so natural and effortless…

An act as mundane as dropping our dogs at the kennel led to a sad nostalgic train of thought…

 

Skin in the Game

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There’s been more dross in the popular media this week about ‘killer robot drones’ and this article from the Atlantic Journal got me thinking. Those thoughts didn’t really gel til tonight. After work – I almost always forget to turn on some ambient noise while I’m working – I put on a movie while doing some work around the house; you know, the cool stuff like laundry, dishes, bringing in wood, vacuuming, etc, etc…My selection was Stealth, a good bit of pounding hitech fun. I just happened to walk past the TV as the key players were discussing the implications of ‘robot’ war…the line went something like “…war is horrible, we know that and it’s the main reason that war is a last resort; but if we don’t have skin in the game any more, if it’s all machines – then we’ll have war all the time…”

So very true, and something that we seem to have forgotten – it’s not about cost-effectiveness, or superior precision, or any other military advantage that unmanned systems might bring to the party: it’s the cold but simple fact that unmanned systems relieve those that do not serve from the burden of, not guilt, but plain old inconvenient embarrassment in case some damn fool pilot decides to imitate Francis Gary Powers or get dragged through the streets of some dusty third world capital.

These distancing also takes the pilot out of the loop as well when it comes to pushing the button; contrary to what anyone might say, sitting in a room half a world away is not the same as being in the same missionspace as those he’s having a crack at…no skin in the game and we start to forget what it is that we are going, forget that there are actually people down there on the ground who may take some exception to being rudely bundled into some distant collateral damage calculation. It is one thing to strike a target in the heat of wartime and accidentally killing some bystanders or of striking the wrong building by accident while evading SAMs and AAA; and entirely another to grant yourself a license to strike where you want and when you want.

There are claims, well substantiated legally0-supported claims that the so-called drone strikes are conducted by legal right under international law, an inherent right to self-defence, and that your nation is at war. The trouble with that argument is that when you are the biggest by far kid on the block an argument of self-defence is difficult if not impossible to justify, even less so when you are not prepared to consider your end of the Drone Wars (and it does read like a bad Muppet-ridden George Lucas movie) as belligerents and subject to the same risks as your quarry. “Excuse us, Mr President, would it be OK if we lobbed a Hellfire missile at that Reaper pilot when he stops at the 711 for some milk on his way home from the war?” Skin in the game might take on a whole new meaning if someone decides to turn your rules against you – where do you want to draw the line? We won’t bomb your wedding parties if you don’t bomb ours?

Without skin in the game, we forget what war is really all about…that sort of complacency leads to weakness and weakness draws competition and predators (lower case predators, that is)…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Sunset

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I guess the trick in this week’s challenge is to know whether a pic is really sunset or someone slipping in a dodgy sunrise…

But Sunset has another significance for soldiers, more than simply the going down of the sun and the closing of the day but a time to remember those who have gone before and sometimes to also mark the end of an era…here Sunset is a sad but beautiful tune played during Beating the Retreat as the flag is lowered…

This photo was taken on July 20, 1989 at the closing ceremony for the home of the First Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, at Dieppe Barracks in Sembawang, Singapore. The following month, in our own version of East of Suez, the battalion and its supporting force, began its relocation back to New Zealand, ending 32 years of continuous service in South East Asia.

As the battalion marched off that parade ground, a place of so many memories, for the last time, the roll of honour of those who had not gone home was read – a particularly sad moment for many of us as we had lost a number of friends through accidents in that last tour…remembering is particularly poignant here at the moment with the news on Wednesday of the death in combat of a second NZSAS soldier near Kabul…

Michael Yon wrote this on 24 September after a young soldier from his tent in 4-4 Cav was killed…

This whole tent is empty now. Chazray is gone and his buddies must be checking their emails in another tent. There were two more KIAs who were shot and so the internet was blacked out. One was shot in the chest and the other in the stomach. Very saddening. Families have been notified and so the internet is back on. It’s strange to see Chazray on the news and then look over at his empty cot and see his picture taped to the door. The video says he ran over the IED but he actually stepped on it but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he is missed by so many people.

While a soldier can always be replaced – no one is ever indispensable – the gap they leave is a different story altogether…the empty bed space, the position in the Prezzies rugby team, that spot in the bar where they always sat, the spot in family photos where Dad should be…

I didn’t know LCpl Leon Smith who was killed during a pre-emptive operation against insurgents near Kabul last week. I did know Cpl Doug Grant who was killed a few weeks earlier while doing the business against insurgents in Kabul. I remember him as a young soldier, third from the right in the back from of this photo, quiet and professional with the burning desire to learn demonstrated by many young soldiers of that period – when the camp library was shifted to a new building around that time, someone did some analysis of library loan patterns and found that the large proportion of professional military book loaning was done by JNCOs and soldiers, creating more than few ripples in the pond – the sort that so often answer a higher calling and earn the sand beret and winged dagger…in Dougie’s case, going back for a second time…

We are the Pilgrims, Master…We shall go always a little further…It may be beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow…Across that angry or glimmering sea…

Sunset can mean so much more than the simple disappearance of a ball of burning hydrogen and helium…

Stupid is…

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Forrest Gump had it so right…some classic examples of practical application of the Gump Doctrine in the last couple of weeks…

First prize must go to the Taliban which persists in stirring up trouble in Kabul. How hard is it to sit on your hands for a couple of years, tour the world, read a book and THEN take over the country once NATO and the US have packed up and gone home, secure in the knowledge that Afghanistan has worked…?

The Tea Party are always Top Ten ‘Gump-ers’ and this example, albeit from Mother Jones, is a classic…let’s not build any more infrastructure because Al-Qaeda will just blow it up – this would be the same AQ that got lucky ONCE in the US, once in Madrid and struck out badly in the UK with attacks on physical infrastructure?

If anyone doesn’t believe me—England and Spain. Now, if we have a more decentralized mass-transit system using buses, if the terrorists blow up a single bus, we can work around that. When they blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt. So how much security are we going to have on this rail system, and how much will it cost?

Yeah, dude, let’s just take the horse instead…more telling is this rebuttal from The Onion:

Here’s what Al Qaeda’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said in a video released in July: 

The al-Qaeda network is fully prepared to continue the jihad against the American infidels by launching deadly attacks, but your outdated and rusting transportation infrastructure needs to be completely overhauled for those strikes even to be noticed. We want to turn your bridges into rubble, but if we claimed credit for making them collapse, nobody would ever believe us.

And in this week’s third place, just when you thought he might be ‘getting it’ here’s Mike Yawn lipping off again…if anyone ever doubts whether there really are some dumb-as (second ‘s’ optional) people (the much-vaunted ‘the people’?) around, just check out his fan base like some of the clowns posting on this Yawn FB post:

One Day this American Soldier May Try to Kill Me

He’s stationed now at Kandahar Air Field. I’ve warned the Army about him numerous times. I have little doubt that he will attempt to kill me if he gets the chance. He’s a US Soldier named CJ Grisham. He published this on Facebook this week in regard to me: “I want to rip his head off and piss down his windpipe!”

I cannot warn the US Army loud enough that this Soldier is unstable. They ignore my back channel warnings.

And again today…

Criminal American Soldiers

Only a small percentage of US troops become murderers, but it happened here and it happened in Iraq.

The warning signs were there. I have cautioned only twice about dangerous American soldiers. The first one committed suicide last year after my repeated warnings that he was dangerous. I told numerous key people that this soldier might want to kill me. He’s dead now. The second one is Master Sergeant CJ Grisham, now stationed and armed at Kandahar Airfield. Our military is playing with fire by keeping this man armed and in uniform.

Let’s not forget that Mikey is currently embedded with a US unit in Afghanistan – and has been doing some good work – and so, you might think, would be less likely to snap at the hand currently (literally) feeding him…What’s CJ Grisham’s real sin? He dares criticise Saint Mikey…that’s it.

Mikey, there is a big difference between someone fantasing about what they would like to do to you “I want to rip his head off and piss down his windpipe!”,  threatening to do so…”I ‘m going to rip his head off and piss down his windpipe!”, and then actually  acting on those words. One of these days, you’ll be a big kid and understand…in the meantime, try not to cry too much if you get disembedded again…or maybe even slapped with a libel suit yourself…I mean, you are after all abusing your position to make unsubstantiated allegations about a serving member of the force that is currently supporting you – how big do you think its sense of funny really is?

And finally, Australia which, having been thumped at the Global Oval Ball Competition (speaking of stupid…Rugby World Cup has been so heavily copyrighted that we can’t use the three words in close proximity to each other!) by Ireland, promptly resorted to accusing everyone of being mean to it…not like when the boot might be on the other foot, eh, Diggers? Even more embarrassing when, just like the much-reported misbehaving Government Ministers on opening night, not a single shred of evidence could be found to back up the bleating….so just for you guys, Seven Tips For Fans Going To Matches in New Zealand

So get over it!!

Ethics and Legal Implications of Military Unmanned Vehicles

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Someone sent me a copy of this document for review…it’s a bit dated but got me thinking on some issues…

The Ethics and Legal Implications of Military Unmanned Vehicles by Elizabeth Quintana, Head of Military Technology & Information Studies,  Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2008?

I’ve had to question mark the date as there is no actual date in the document except for a couple of references to the RUSI Ethics and Legal Implications of Military Unmanned Vehicles Conference in February 2008. The RUSI website lists it as 27 January 2008 even though the conference did not occur until February. It’s unsure whether this is just untidy publication or indicative of an aspiration that the document has a more enduring status.

While released under the RUSI umbrella, the document is actually produced by the British Computer Society (BCS) which not recognised as a major influence or actor in either the unmanned vehicle nor the ethics or legal communities.

Although presented as an ‘Occasional Paper’, there are numerous gaps in descriptions of unmanned vehicle development and this  is more a compilation of material presented at the conference and not a consideration of relevant issues across the spectrum of unmanned vehicle development, capability and operation, or encapsulating potential ethics and legal issues other than those presented.  I think that this is slightly dishonest and indicative of the ‘publish or perish’ and ‘quantity over quality’ philosophies that dominate in some of these NGO centres, agencies and institutes.

There is some discussion of unmanned ground and maritime systems in what is probably a timely reminder that there is more to unmanned capabilities than just the high profile aerial system that get 90% of the coverage. This is pertinent as forces consider their approach to unmanned capabilities. Much of the information on unmanned systems is out of date which is probably more indicative of the rate of change and development in unmanned systems than any fault of the document’s authors.

The ethics section is rather generic and speculative and I do doubt just how much engagement those responsible have had with the actual various unmanned vehicle communities especially on the operating front. It’s been my experience that there is considerable and very robust discussion within such communities on these issues. Again, much water has gone under the bridge between Feb 08 and the present day in this area as well and so much of the content is dated.

Some contemporary unmanned vehicle ethics and legal issues worthy of discussion might be…

…at what point do civil airspace rules become overruled in favour of a greater good, especially for HADR operations?

As general rule, civil airspace rules in the western world are risk-adverse and preclude operations of UAS outside of tightly controlled areas of restricted airspace. The track record of UAS involvement in mid-air incidents is very good and even with the higher attrition rate of unmanned versus manned aircraft, UAS still have to even come close to the death and damage rates arising from manned platform incidents.

…the belief that UAV strikes, especially across national borders, are somehow different from the same strikes conducted by manned aircraft.

There appears to be a strong element of Pollyanna-ism, aka ‘she’ll be right –ism’ down-under, that so long as a strike is delivered by a UAV, the accepted rules of international conduct i.e. respecting inconvenient things like national boundaries, international and domestic law, etc, do not apply. How might this apply in the backyard of the South/South West Pacific?

…defining the lines for combatants when key actors are based half a world away outside the mission theatre.

In his January 2000 novel, The Lion’s Game, Nelson De Mille describes an Libyan operation that targets the surviving crews of the F-111s employed in Op ELDORADO CANYON, the 1986 strikes against Libya. A recent C4ISR Journal article raises the issue of whether  US UAS operators conducting ‘remote split operations’ (RSO) from the continental US are subject to the same targeting protocols as pilots (or other military personnel) actually in-theatre. Clearly military personnel in an airbase environment like Kandahar or Bagram are as targetable as personnel conducting operations from Sigonella in Italy against Libya; but what of the US-based MQ-9 pilot driving home to suburbia after a shift conducting strike/CA operations over Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Pakistan…? Do such personnel cease to be targetable when they drive off-base…? Would it be unethical or morally wrong for these personnel to be targeted – the West seems pretty comfortable taking the war to where its enemies live…?

Even though this document has a number of flaws and is somewhat out of date, being over three years old, it serves a useful purpose as a ‘firestarter’ for professional discussion on the ethics and rules of not just unmanned vehicle operation but also for the broader complex contemporary operating environment.

The magnificent seven ride again…

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…through the streets of Wellington…

…but we looked a lot better than these guys…yes, really…

A group of us who had all been young (and in some cases, not so young) officers together, concentrated in Wellington last night for a bit of a get-together, in some cases we had not seen each other for a good seven or more years…apart from a grey hair or two, we were all as slim and sharp as we’d been back then…

Josh from CDSS and I drove down together yesterday afternoon and the drive both ways gave us a good opportunity to discuss a bunch of current affairs topics – we stayed at the Halswell Lodge in Kent Terrace: as Josh said, we really want to be focussing about where we want to end up and less about where we’re starting from. A very good point as my thought had been to stay at someplace like the James Cook but the natural progression of a staff ride through night-time Wellington is invariably towards the bottom end of Courtney Place i.e. just round the corner from the Halswell Lodge…

It’s a good lesson and one that obviously links directly into the Princess Leia Doctrine  – before you come in, have a plan for getting out!! Somewhat topical in a week where the US recognises the rebel “government” in Libya, just as France states that it can see a path where Ghaddafi stay in power…as some have said, a clear application of two of the three stages of the France Doctrine:

– Start war.

– Surrender.

– Claim all glory.

It’s not actually clear who or what the US has actually recognised or what the mid- to long-term results will be when that “government” comes to power – almost assurably there will be a number of score-settling activities to ensure that any and all Ghaddafists are dealt to as well as anyone else that the new “government” feels they need to square away as part of their consolidation of power…It is pretty certain that one of the big lessons of Iraq, that existing governance and other structures should be kept in place as much as possible during transitional phases, will be learned again should this “government” come to power…

It’s interesting to note as well that NATO’s appetite for social and moral justice has yet to extend to Syria where protest and suppression continue unchecked; and that hardline Islamic elements may be gaining the whip hand in Egypt…will the call be made “Hey, Hosni! Holiday’s over, dude! Get back in there and sort your country out again!” ?

Anyway, back to the Seven…we’d hoped a few more might come out of the woodwork but it was a crappy Wellington winter night and there’s a rematch tonight but we could only do the one night…so very good to catch up again with some of those who helped make me who I am now (Yes, guys, it’s all your fault!!) and to have a night out in NZ – normally any big nights I have out are ‘post-dinner networking’ activities while I am working overseas. Very impressed to see that there are still pubs in NZ that not only serve beer in jugs but big glass jugs as well – good effort, the Green Man Pub – great pizzas and fries too!! Of course, we almost didn’t get to the Green Man after leaving St Johns in Cable Street as our SOF rep ‘led’ us in the opposite direction!! “Yeah, I know where I’m going…trust me…” Never a Tui billboard around when you need one…

I think we finished up around 2-30ish after a fun few hours in Boogie Wonderland, a retro disco-era bar (“Don’t touch the glitter balls – puhleeeease!!” Well, don’t put them in arm’s reach then!). Post-pizza I’d had a top-up pie along the way but Josh hadn’t and we grabbed some horrible Chinese food from someplace at the bottom end of Courtney Place – the sole redeeming thing about that was that I bought a bottle of Coke that was well sited for post-crash out dries this morning…

So bit jaded this evening with an early start to get back to the Lodge before it gets snowed in – probably our first snow there this year…watching the reports coming out of Norway…just one nutjob…as one tweet stated ‘Oklahoma City, not 911’…a brutal reminder than in this environment of complexity, you can’t predict and interdict all ‘the people’…sometimes the measure of success is how well you respond…