Graham Kennedy: Ministerial Statements — Iraq—Deployment of Military PersonnelText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGraham Kennedy: Ministerial Statements — Iraq—Deployment of Military Personnel[Sitting date: 24 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1830. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Today the Prime Minister has let this country down. He has prevaricated for 5 months softening up the public during which he has said various things to different people.He has cheapened New Zealand by commercialising the issue of war and peace pricing the item in terms of club membership. He has flouted our constitutional integrity advising the world of the decision before advising the people of the country he purports to represent. He has displayed contempt of Parliament by refusing to allow a debate to be held before the decision or a non-binding vote on the question of war and peace. That compares with the United Kingdom the source of our constitutional heritage which called Parliament back under urgency not long ago to debate the use of force in Syria. In that case the Government respected a parliamentary majority not to send forces even though that parliamentary view was non-binding.The military personnel will be sent to Iraq to do four things: to train the army to protect the trainers possibly act as spotters and gather intelligence. As the Prime Minister’s list of things to do in Iraq has lengthened it has become disingenuous to harp on about staying behind the wire. The wire has become a mockery—a hollow symbol of false reassurance. The wire will become something you step around as you exit the compound. It is an insult to the intelligence of the public. Nothing is more certain or at least inevitable than that Kiwi soldiers and the SAS will be moving around the Iraq countryside in due course. How could it be otherwise? How could New Zealand stay behind the wire when other nations are not? We would look craven.The Prime Minister just advised that the SAS could be deployed for force protection and high-profile visits. How will they do that from behind the wire? The wire has become a conscious deception. It implies that the critical consideration is individual safety. It deliberately misses the point. In a conflict zone there is always personal risk. Safety issues are critically important but they are an operational responsibility. The criterion for decision is not personal safety; it is the legality and the wisdom of the decision to deploy or not to deploy. It is not personal safety and the wire. It is an insult to send military people in whatever capacity in the garb of diplomats. Because the Government cannot determine the status and role of our troops in a 21st century conflict zone it will give them diplomatic passports. How stunningly irresponsible. The Prime Minister’s notion of 21st century diplomacy is to send soldiers to train to kill. For 300 years the profession of diplomacy has been exclusively civilian—to negotiate and dialogue; reach consensus for pacific settlement. It is the antithesis of violence. The job of soldiers is to fight and if necessary to kill. Military attaches in embassies have diplomatic passports because they operate as diplomats not soldiers. Australia has done the same. It has already garbed its soldiers as diplomats. So it is clearly the hallmark of the lawbreakers club. Mr Abbott and Mr Key are betraying the history of centuries of international law and politics.The reasons given for sending the troops are threefold. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has emerged as a threat to the world including New Zealand. It engages in unprecedented brutality. It proclaims a universal caliphate that threatens the national sovereignty of all countries. These reasons are valid for discussion but they are contestable. They are not a sufficient argument for New Zealand to engage in Iraq militarily. ISIL is a threat to international peace but not to our immediate national security. The situation requires New Zealand to make an input into the Security Council but not necessarily to send troops.ISIL engages in brutality of a kind not seen in Europe since the Catholic Inquisition. But Saudi Arabia does the same. The challenge of ISIL requires economic and financial sanctions including of member States supporting it. It then requires arrest and prosecution in The Hague of its leaders. It does not require aerial bombing. With the passage of time you can get to individuals without pulverising the countryside. The proclamation of a universal caliphate is as meaningful as the accreditation of the Holy See to the United Nations. ISIL is a threat to peace but its ideological excesses are the subject of dialogue not mutual killing.In Iraq today’s problem is the child of yesterday’s mistake. ISIL is the current errant sibling of al-Qaeda. Its rise is the direct result of the chaos that derived from the illegal invasion in 2003 by the lawbreakers club—the United States Britain and Australia. That disastrous decision by the club to proceed with the UN if possible but without it if necessary is the direct result of a strategic miscalculation to regard 9/11 as a matter of international security rather than international criminality. The invasion of Afghanistan to root out terrorism to drain the swamp has set the international community on a wrong course ever since. We are still paying the price today—morally politically legally.The decision to send troops is an illustration of how intelligent individuals can do collectively dumb things. I call on the Prime Minister to table a written paper by his Attorney-General laying out the legal case for sending troops to Iraq with the bilateral request. We can then debate the legality of the decision and then its political wisdom.Just a few hours ago a news item reported Professor Stephen Hawking as saying that the one human failing he would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days he said but now it threatens to destroy us all. I remind the Prime Minister that before long perhaps in 2017 aggression will be an individual leadership crime in international law. Cabinet members will be held accountable in our domestic courts and before the international criminal court. It is a salutary indication that future leaders whether National or Labour or Green will be taking these decisions with more seriousness and less impunity than they did with this one today.