Victoria Cross holder Willie Apiata today confirmed he would take a break from the SAS in order to focus on not killing people.
Apiata will work with the youth charity High Wire, an Auckland outdoor pursuits organisation that helps at-risk children and does not kill people.
His role will involve mentoring children, teaching them life skills, and not killing anyone.
Apiata's military career spanned 23 years, and although he was trained to kill people from very early in his career, it was only during his SAS career that he became an expert in the killing of other people.
It is believed that Apiata has a partner and young child. While Apiata could have pursued a high paying role in hotspots like Iraq, it is understood that he wants to spend more time with his family and less time killing people.
A source on the celebrity speaking circuit said that Apiata's reputation for killing people meant he could command lucrative appearance fees at corporate functions.
However, such a career seems unlikely for a man who prefers to let his bullets do the talking.
Apiata will remain a reserve member of the SAS, but will be available for active service in the event more people need to be killed.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
29 comments:
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"His role will involve mentoring children, teaching them life skills, and not killing anyone."
ReplyDeleteDo you have a source for the very last part of this claim? Perhaps High Wire are seeking to add a new element of challenge to their programme?
Alternatively, it could be a part of the Government's new policy to address the problem of at-risk youth ... send them out into the bush and have ex-SAS members hunt them down. And maybe South Pacific Pictures are planning to make it into a reality TV series?
Frankly, Scott, there are a number of places you could have taken this. I'm disappointed in your lack of ambition. Very, very disappointed.
Unwarranted
ReplyDeleteOh no you DI'N'T! Any more sacred cows for the abattoir? Sir Edmund Hillary? Sir Peter Jackson? (Oh, wait ...)
ReplyDeleteJustin
"Satirist blogger criticised for not enough bad taste"
ReplyDeleteNot a headline I expected to see...
Just stating the obvious. I'm sure some of them were really bad people.
ReplyDeleteSpot on. Let's stop glamourising what the SAS does - they kill people we (or the people we've lent them out to in order to try and get a free trade agreement) don't like, end of story.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gonzo - truly living up to your name.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for satire, but you're off on this one. Even as a Libertarian who believes only in retaliatory force, I know that one of the legitimate functions of state is to protect me from outside, or inside aggressors, and if the chips are down, you need to defend yourself, then your army better be a good one, such as exemplified by men like Apiata. He's a hero alright. If you don't like the cause he might have been risking his life for in Afghanistan, then blame (your) Labour politicians who initially sent him there, don't ever blame the soldier for doing his job, and doing his job well.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you completely missed the point of my post.
DeleteWell you can't have written it well enough then. Explain the point to me? Assume I'm stupid.
DeleteSatire doesn't work when it has to be explained, but WillB probably comes closest in his comment below.
DeleteSo you're making the point that soldiers kill people? Okay. That war is violent? Okay. I'm making the point that misses the point that soldiers are protecting us, and as in the case of this man, are incredibly brave. And given satire is written to uncover and discredit vice or folly, neither of which Apiata is guilty off, then yes, I don't get your satire, in the particular instance of this post. If you were aiming for the folly of war, fine, but you've needlessly kneecapped a hero. And sometimes, to protect your freedoms, men have to go to war.
DeleteBut as you say, I've obviously just missed the point altogether.
Oh well Mark, you're not guilt free are you? Remember when you fingered the environmental movement for murdering the Pike River miners? Now that was tasteless satire. Or just you being a wanker, one of the two.
DeleteGo read that post again, it wasn't satire, just a factual blog that has proven to be 100% correct.
DeleteIn fact here you go: original post here; and in particular the final post on the thread created, here. It's a pity someone in authority didn't take that post further, because between Gerry Brownlie and Deputy General of Conservation, Al Morrison, one of them was telling porkies.
DeleteI won't hold my breath for an apology, even though that would be the manly thing to do, Guy.
Dude, no normal person goes to solo passion - I mean, honestly... Solo passion? What is that all about? Masturbatory self-congratulation? WTF? What is wrong with you people? Why would you wish to direct anyone to site whose very name advertises it wants to be a circle jerk of wankers?
DeleteAt least you were trying to sound intelligent in that other thread, Sanctuary, now you sink down to narrow minded ad hominem. Pity.
DeleteDo you realise you've starred in my own blog? I'm not all that happy with the last paragraph, because it was an after-the-even add on, but that's blogging for you. Got one of your own have you?
There's no way I would apologise to you Mark, because you don't deserve an apology. Your piece remains illogical, fact free crap, as demonstrated during the Royal Commission. You tried to use the deaths of 29 people to score cheap political points. Hard to think of anything more vile.
DeleteBut my central point was right.
DeleteAnd why aren't you applying the same logic to slam Scott for kneecapping a hero to make a point about something else?
Mark, the target of my post wasn't really Apiata, but more the slightly odd notion that someone who is a trained killer (and, let's face it, that's what those SAS guys are, amongst other things) should be a role model for our youth. I respect Apiata for his soldiering, but let's at least have some honesty about what soldiers do.
DeleteI deliberately avoided the use of inflammatory language to describe Apiata. If I really meant to "kneecap" him I might have used more emotive language, like "murderer" etc., but that would have required me to make a moral judgement about Apiata's actions, some or all of which may have been entirely justified in the heat of battle (depending on one's view of the conflict in Afghanistan).
He may be a killer, but it's entirely possible that the people he killed had it coming.
Finally, I have been very tolerant of your multiple links up to now, but please, please, no more links to that solo passion site.
Fair enough.
Delete"But my central point was right."
DeleteSee that's the thing, Mark, it most certainly was not. Evidence to the Royal Commission showed your assertions to be nonsense. You don't know the first thing about mining or the circumstances at Pike River, but you leapt in a couple of days after the tragedy to label the Greens and Doc murderers, because it was ideologically convenient for you. That's disgusting. Kind of like blaming libertarians for Timothy McVeigh, except that's actually accurate.
Right, I've taken the time to go back and look, Guy. You are right, Colin Dall told the Royal Commission that open casting wasn't an option. I could quibble he was protecting a position of his own, and that his statement seems to contradict earlier DOC statements, but I've run out of energy, here, so I won't. Long after the event of writing my initial piece, it would appear I was wrong on that. However I did start off that piece as follows:
Delete"I feel empathy for the families and friends whom the perished miners leave behind; only a monster would have no such empathy. I do not feel grief though, for the same reason I feel no personal grief for the millions of young men who died in the last two world wars: I knew none of them personally, as I knew none of these men.
There have been far too many plastic tears in the reporting of this disaster. ..."
That is, I was making a point specifically about the state of the Green movement which would stop all mining in New Zealand if it could. Many parts of what I said do bear out: DOC's statements of the time do show, and against the later words of Gerry Brownlee, that as small a footprint as was possible was indeed a priority. Though, ultimately, even that's irrelevant to our argument. We all live in time and are bound by chronology, I was writing with the facts that were to hand at the time. To that degree, I note that as late as mid-March, 2011, Rodney Hide was still talking publicly for an open cast position at Pike River; quote:
"CT leader Rodney Hide is calling for open-cast mining at Pike River and on protected conservation land.
Mr Hide denies he is exploiting last year's tragedy, in which 29 men died, for political gain and says prospecting for mineral wealth is the only way to reverse New Zealand's economic fortunes."
However, returning to this post, there are no such issues of fact involved in Scott's piece. Of course I would be sorry to anybody I caused offense to, albeit such offense could only have been taken either by mistaking me, or coming to a controversial issue of the time with the luxury of 20/20 vision way after the event.
The one accusation you could have taken me up on, and on which I would've been uncomfortable with, is that on this thread I have been umbrage taking, which I partly have, and which I despise. Sometimes I get so angry at the statist world around me, I get a bit beside myself.
Thanks for that Mark.
DeleteIs this a new law?
Delete"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a libertarian blaming everything on the statists approaches 1."
Cheers Guy.
DeleteAnd Deckard, no, that position is taken as an a-priori by a Libertarian. Keep up.
I think if more people cut through the euphemisms surrounding war and the military, we'd probably have a far more sober and mature outlook on it all. And it's not like Scott has said anything that isn't true...just cutting through the pomp and ceremony that usually accompanies a news piece about a war hero.
ReplyDeleteClive Hulme probably killed over forty German paratroopers on Crete, a fate that I feel each German richly deserved, given that most German paratroopers in 1941 were ardent Nazis and at the time they were engaged in directing all their ingenuity and effort into killing my fellow New Zealanders.
ReplyDeleteBut he killed the larger part of these Germans by sneaking about in a German camoflage smock and shooting them from close range from behind - see his VC citation http://www.army.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/op-valour/hulme.pdf.
Now, if you ask me if I had a guy in my company who was a mean bastard with big enough balls to sneak across no mans land in an enemy uniform to slaughter the enemy at close range with full knowledge that his discovery in this highly risky venture would mean his instant death then I'd stick the highest gallantry medal I could find on him as well. I would shit myself just thinking doing something like that. The guy was a hero, but not in the sanitised, "Commando comic" way our media likes to present them as. Commonly people imagine VC's to be for acts of great daring do - like that of Sgt James Ward - or for for doing something a comic book action hero might do like storming a machine nest frontally. But war is about killing people. Clive Hulme VC killed people who were engaged in furthering the interests of a monstrous regime and who wished to subjugate us to their will.
Scott simply stripped away the language and euphemisms that surround the acts of warriors like Hulme and Apiata. I respect these guys as warriors. If we ever need to fight a full scale war I hope we can find more like them. But I am suspicious of their value as role models to youth (Hulme never pretended he represented anything particularly noble, he ran a cartage company after WII), unless we plan for the values of a dystopian "starship Troopers" nation.
SAS or the NZ Armed Forces in general are not just killers but are diplomats who are skilled in negotiating, cross cultural communication, motivation, leadership skills, problem solving etc etc ... But hey kids don't need those skills anyhow the under achievers which are predominately Maori and pacific island kids dont require a strong Maori/island role model to fail in life. I'm sure with the influence of gangs, abscent fathers, American gangsters movies they will have plenty to choose from. Now I guess I'm guilty of satire?
ReplyDelete