Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Germania est inferior
Ah how I love bad geography, bad Latin, and worse politics.
August Hanning, the head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, held a press conference the other day and he ladled out familiar European mush over what's happening in Iraq, noting that the path to security and democracy is "still very rocky." But he conceded that rocky or not, Germany shares with America a mutual stake in the outcome. "All of us have a common interest, whether we take part in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq" or not, he said. "This country must be stabilized."
Even John Kerry, who says lots of foreign leaders (all unnamed) want Americans to elect him and that he's the man who can build a winning coalition of these reluctant allies, now concedes that whoever these mystery nations are they don't include France and Germany. In something less than felicitous language, he specifically singled out France and Germany as allies who "aren't going to trade their young for our young in body bags."
So we're back to the drawing board. Somebody's got to do the heavy lifting and thank heaven for the United States. Once more with feeling, Europeans are asking themselves what kind of world they would be living in if the Americans, boorish and vulgar as they may be, were not in it. This becomes not an issue of nationalism or chauvinism but about "all of us," and about who wants to destroy "all of us."
August Hanning, the head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, held a press conference the other day and he ladled out familiar European mush over what's happening in Iraq, noting that the path to security and democracy is "still very rocky." But he conceded that rocky or not, Germany shares with America a mutual stake in the outcome. "All of us have a common interest, whether we take part in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq" or not, he said. "This country must be stabilized."
Even John Kerry, who says lots of foreign leaders (all unnamed) want Americans to elect him and that he's the man who can build a winning coalition of these reluctant allies, now concedes that whoever these mystery nations are they don't include France and Germany. In something less than felicitous language, he specifically singled out France and Germany as allies who "aren't going to trade their young for our young in body bags."
So we're back to the drawing board. Somebody's got to do the heavy lifting and thank heaven for the United States. Once more with feeling, Europeans are asking themselves what kind of world they would be living in if the Americans, boorish and vulgar as they may be, were not in it. This becomes not an issue of nationalism or chauvinism but about "all of us," and about who wants to destroy "all of us."
