Religion of Peace strikes again
This is the price we pay for the Clinton/Carter style of appeasing wretched dictators. Let this be a lesson to those who want to be nice to Iraq.
Victor Davis Hanson writes about Germany in his current column at the National Review Online. I respect Hanson a great deal. He makes a number of good points in this piece, but I also think he misses some of the big picture. As evidence of resurgent German nationalism, he points to anti-American statements during the campaign by the Justice Minister and a parliamentary leader (getting a few minor facts wrong), and Juergen Moellemann's anti-Semitic rantings. He also speculates that these various offensive statements might have won Schroeder the election. My response to Hanson is similar to the one I gave a few weeks ago to Marc Fisher writing for Slate: the election was close, but it was a regional victory. Schroeder won in the former Communist East. The more pro-American Stoiber won among America's allies of more than 5 decades in the West. Schroeder fired his party members who made anti-American statements. If any of Hanson's examples helped elect Schroeder, it was Moellemann, who was running against Schroeder, and whose anti-Semitism apparently caused his party to lose votes to Schroeder's allies in the Greens. Moellemann is now being driven out by his own party.
Schroeder's ambivalence about Iraq is unhealthy as is his attitude toward the Bush Administration. But my take on the German-American relationship is that it is more about a personality clash between two leaders who both happened to get lucky and squeak out on top of very close elections. And is up to both leaders (and I put most of the blame for the rift on Schroeder) to see that it doesn't turn into anything more than that.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 17, 2002 07:53 AMAs a German i say a little bit more: The election wasn't about anti-americanism than more of german economy, different views of lifestyle (compare the liberal attitude of the Greens with that archaic view of women presented by the union) and last but not least charisma. Iraq was a minor point in the last two weeks.
Posted by: Tim on October 17, 2002 10:25 AMStefan;
I actually didn't like the article. I respect Davis Hanson but I was raelly put off by that article. It smacked of the growing jingoism that the Americans can't really rely on the European allies (or Canadians) and Britian is the only worthy ally.
Mind you, I view Schroeder's action as stupid beyond belief and both sides will have to get off their pedastals and rework the relationship.
xavier
It's always the same: whenever Germany is assertive the old images of pre-1945 are being dusted off to be shown in the broad daylight. This is the "the-Nazis-are-still-hiding-somewhere-over-there" fantasy. Last time it happened in a prominent way was in 1989-90 with Thatcher having a full fledged session with a whole armada of advisors to plan how to thwart the coming German threat that would inevitably resurrect after reunification. No threat to be seen as of this day. As a German born decades after the war, I'm still amazed that intelligent people like Thatcher and Hanson seem to put more weight to the Third Reich past than to the very consistent track record of the Federal Republic of Germany when analyzing the present. Looking at Germany this way is just a ridiculous anachronism, and those who do eventually end up looking like fools as the Iron Lady found out a decade ago.
Posted by: Chris K on October 21, 2002 06:13 AM