No doubt Mr Key doesn't want to risk upsetting its superpower "ally," but what's the worst they could do, ban our sailors from their Pearl Harbour naval base? Oh yes, I forgot, they did that last month.
The American treatment of the New Zealand navy ships Te Kaha and Endeavour during the Rimpac international defence exercises off Hawaii was so humiliating, even the US Defence Force newspaper, Stars and Stripes, headlined its surprise at the insult.
Continuing to bear a grudge for the 1985 legislation banning nuclear- powered or armed ships from our ports, the US refused to permit New Zealand ships to berth with the ships from 21 other nations taking part in the exercise. Even Japan, whose bin Laden-like sneak attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 finally brought an infuriated US into World War II, was allowed to tie up in the naval base they'd once destroyed.
But not the Kiwi kid brothers. They could cool their heels and reflect on their 1985 act of treachery down among the container ships in Honolulu's commercial port.
Mr Key tried to play down this insult, even though in 2010, when he signed the Wellington Declaration with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he claimed the declaration ended the row over nuclear weapons and showed "that the last vestiges of any concern about the anti-nuclear legislation have gone". The Rimpac snub demonstrates how untrue that is.
But most New Zealanders support the independent stance successive governments have taken in defence of the nuclear-free policy, even at the risk of upsetting the Americans. Exiting the Afghanistan battlefield should be a much simpler exercise. The only issue between the various invading armies is the timing of their departure.
Those arguing for the NZ troops to stay another year point to the good works they've done building schools and health clinics and the like.
However true this might be, this "reconstruction" work is not worth the lives of any more Kiwi soldiers. If the NZ Army wants to build new infrastructure for Third World villagers - and I'm all in favour of such ways of winning hearts and minds - then let's do it in places where all the hard work is not going to obliterated in a month or a year by another round of civil war.
Ten years of American-led occupation have only added to the misery and mayhem that has cursed this country for decades. Mr Key acknowledges the growing security problems in Bamiyan province where the NZ troops are based.
In a recent Guardian article, the paper's Kabul correspondent notes how Bamiyan is no longer immune from the "rising tide" of insurgency. Early last month nine police officers were killed by two buried roadside bombs.
As for the mission to deliver democracy to the country, that's become a joke, the Karzai regime being riddled with corruption and division. Just last weekend, parliamentarians voted to sack both the ministers of Defence and Interior.
And while the occupying forces have been scouring Afghanistan for a decade seeking international terrorists, a greater threat to the Western world has flourished under their noses - the trade in opium. Since the Taleban government was defeated by the Western forces, the poppy crop has flourished, a United Nations' drugs and crimes agency estimating that by 2005, Afghanistan produced 87 per cent of the world's opium.
Four years ago, departing British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said a military victory over the Taleban was "neither feasible nor supportable" and that where the Government had no control, the people were "vulnerable to a shifting coalition of Taleban, mad mullahs and marauding militias". Endangering the lives of New Zealand soldiers for another year is not going to change that. We've held the Americans' hand in this folly long enough.
