The Serious People are extremely mad at Germany for not plunging precipitously into war in Libya for the second time in 70 years.
Daniel Larison rounds up some representative comments. For instance, Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times:
Daniel Larison rounds up some representative comments. For instance, Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times:
We stand at a high point in French postwar diplomacy and a nadir in German. ... Germany often conveys the sense that it now resents the agents of its postwar rehabilitation — the European Union and NATO.
Timothy Garton Ash, a columnist for the lefty Guardian, is hopping mad:
But how could Germany not support a UN resolution backed by its principal European partners, the United States and the Arab League? ... A word that springs unbidden to my mind is Dolchstoss (stab in the back).
How could Germany not go along with starting an unprovoked war alongside France, Britain, the U.S. and a few small Arab countries? I dunno ... Because Germany is a sovereign nation and doesn't have to start a war if it doesn't want to? Because Germany is a republic, and its voters would have punished any Chancellor who did that? Because the Germans thought it sounded like a bad idea? Because the guys starting the wars didn't have a plausible plan for how they would win? Because Germany manufactures BMWs, not Renaults, Jaguars, Chryslers, or camels? Because Germany's attitude toward War in the Desert is Been There, Done That? Because Germans don't take Bernard-Henri Levi seriously enough?
Keep in mind that my title, a play on Thilo Sarrazin's book Germany Abolishes Itself, is a joke. The Serious People are mad at Germany not for asserting itself, but for refusing to be involved in starting a war. When Obama and Co. decided to attack, the Germans were preoccupied with what the Japanese nuclear meltdown meant for Germany's many nuclear power plants. Should they scrap all their nuke plants and replace them with renewable energy? The Germans felt more like spending money on windmills than on bombs. Bad, bad Germans ...
The joke is that even Germany at its Greeniest Weeniest enrages the Serious People, which would be pretty funny if it weren't also kind of serious.
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43 comments:
I thought the world wanted them pacifistic for the rest of time. I remember Christopher Hitchens telling the neocons in '02-'03 to cut Germany some slack (as opposed to France et al, who were appeasing Islamofascism and were rightly assailed for it), because they were *supposed* to be toothless from now on.
"The Serious People are mad at Germany not for asserting itself, but for refusing to be involved in starting a war."
They are mad at Germany for refusing to be controlled by the Neocons, and the last time that happened, well, lets just say it got ugly in the end.
Germans can only stage an invasion of a fabulous gay disco, and the EU complains? Of course it is all moot, the whole point of the EU is that sovereignty is erased, in favor of the EU. If the EU demands it, Germany MUST comply.
German voters and elected officials don't have a say, any more than the Finns do about bailing out the PIIGS.
[The Green fantasy of windpower replacing either coal or nukes, Germany's only sources of keeping their modern economy going, is just that a fantasy. You can't run BMW factories or homes off intermittent wind power.]
Steve, you are one hell of a funny guy. Thanks for the great article and the many laughs.
Although being conservative, I am not a fan of Angie Merkel. However I get a sense that they are at least trying to emulate Bismarck's rule to stay out of wars wherever possible, and fight those you cannot avoid so as to win. I'm not sure the current leadership has the balls for the second part of Bismarck's theory, but I think it would be fairly easy to ramp the current army up to its pre-WWI glory. All that would be missing then is some leadership with balls (sorry about the pun) to take Germany out of the EU and NATO and build a strategic relationship with Russia and China.
The irony of it all. Hitler wanted Poland to 'ally' with--or submit to--Germany against the Soviet Union, but Poland said NO, WE'RE GONNA REMAIN NEUTRAL. Hitler got all spitting mad that Poland didn't go along.
Now, it seems Germany is the Poland in the equation.
And if Gaddafi is so evil and the new Hitler of North Africa, why did so many Western leaders 'appease' him a few yrs back?
And speaking of how Israelis treat Palestinians....
Where is the West on that?
'If you're not with us, you're against us.' Who said that?
Funny.. when Germany abstained from joining with US to take out Hussein--the other Hitler--, it was roundly applauded by the Left.
"Germans can only stage an invasion of a fabulous gay disco, and the EU complains?"
Would that be 'Germany ASSerts itself'?
Whiskey got 2 things wrong:
1.Germany in its current subordinated state to the EU is exactly where the Anglo-Saxons/Zionists always wanted it to be: as a supplier of money and technology for their world empire. That's why its so hilarious watching the hypocrite Neocons rant about Germany not wanting to fight THEIR wars. It was never about a pacifying Germany, it was about making it do what the Anglo-Saxons/Zionists, nowadays known as Neocons, wanted/want it to do. Whether its going to stay that way is unclear.
2. Wind power is basically the only form of green energy, apart from hydro, which makes economic sense. Intermittent power is not a problem if you have a constant base supply and an intelligent distribution network. So the demand for a safe constant base supply is what the new technology to supplant nuclear is going to have to meet. Germany is well positioned to develop this technology, whatever it may be, even if it turns out to be a much safer nuclear design.
The Serious People - A Serious Man - The Jews?
Roger Cohen -- writing from Berlin, no less -- seems to have been obtuse to the irony of someone of his surname lamenting Germany's lack of military adventurism.
The dog that hasn't barked here, at least in the U.S., is how much better Germany has handled its economy on the other side of the '08 crash. German manufacturing is firing on all cylinders, its unemployment is lower than ours or France's, Chinese are clamoring to buy its exports...
Still enmeshed in NATO's endless war in Afghanistan, Germany would have been unlikely to jump into Libya in any case, but given how weak our economic recovery has been compared to theirs, the Germans probably have even less confidence in our judgment than they would have otherwise.
the germans are actually gonna replace their reactors with a lot of coal power plants. though they don't advertise that much and not many people in the renewable energy world want to talk about that. they have the most sophisticated coal extraction industry, with those huge bucket tooth extractors, and they are just gonna build about 10 coal power plants to cheaply replace their reactors.
germans were the guys who came up the with fischer-tropsch process, where you convert coal into oil. in 1920 germany had tons of coal but little oil. FT enabled germany to fuel their military in world war 2. today there are several large FT factories around the world, probably the biggest in south africa, which they built in response to being oil embargoed in 1987. the US air force is checking out modern FT methods to see if they can power themselves with coal, since the US has enough coal for 200 years of consumption, but not enough oil output to meet demand since 1975 or so.
in my opinion, this is one of the failings of modern germany. their rejection of continued improvement of fission reactors. by 1983 they were already on the path to having all the most advanced reactor designs and avoiding most of the problems with previous generations of reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
then after 1986 they decided to just plain throw that all away and stick with coal.
Steve, there are signs that the war of 1939-45 is far enough away now for Germany to start to reassert itself in its own national interest.
Sarazin's outspokeness and a certain skepticism regarding the EU and Euro currency are symptoms.
Obama's decision makers tried a different tack than Bush's handlers.
Bush spent a lot of time building up the Coalition of the Willing and a soothing a hostile MSM complete with fake proof of immenent threats like WMDs, repeated imputed connections with 9/11 and dramatics like Powell shaking vials of talc at the UN calling it Niger Yellow Cake.
Obama handlers are exploiting the captive MSM inability to criticize Obama. They've done away with any public discourse or debate and just stumbled and bumbled into Libya.
The MSM would never let Bush get away with the fairy tales Obama's handlers spin that can never be measured or (dis)proved. Like all the jobs Obama claims he created (because jobs didn't disappear at an even faster rate), Libya is justified by the 100,000 of dead civilians that didn't in fact die. Despite the fact that "major clashes" usually only result in 6-12 deaths of combatants which exposes this fraud, the MSM is largely uncritical.
Germany's clear-eyed understanding of these Bush/Obama policies and subsequent decisions not to endorse them provide an independent confirmation that they are full of BS. Can't have that.
The powers that be are getting incredible milage from putting Obama in office. The numinious one has continued Bush's policies (more neocon foreign adventures, Guantamano and secret wars, Wall Street handouts, reckless and unsustainable financial credit and monetary shell games, expansion of gov't bureaucracy, welfare and debt etc) without missing a beat. Despite nearly the same main policies, Obama is almost completely free of the constant withering MSM criticism Bush faced for taking the same actions.
Shorter Sailer: Germany is damned if it does invade countries without provocation and damned if it does not invade other countries without provocation.
Either way, Germany is damned.
This whole situation would be as funny as Steve S.'s take on it if the reputation of the Great Powers was not at stake. The leadership of the CCO must be splitting their sides laughing at the paper tigerishness of it all.
Oh where are Nixon-Kissinger when you need them?
"Because Germany is a sovereign nation and doesn't have to start a war if it doesn't want to?"
Although this is absolutely true today, am I the only one who marvels at that sentence?
Perhaps the Germans figure that they won't be able to afford bombing Libya, since they also apparently will be paying to bail out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland.
But wait. Weren't we supposed to despise the French for being cowardly pacifists who refused to help us invade Iraq? Now it's the Germans we must hate for their pacifistic tendencies?
"headache said...
Germany is well positioned to develop this technology, whatever it may be, even if it turns out to be a much safer nuclear design."
Which it inevitably will be. There is NO substitute for nuclear power.
Spare me the paleo fantasies of the non-interventionist Germany. The Germans were pushing for intervening in the Balkans back when US, UK, and France were skeptical. And let's not forget that German intelligence was the most aggressive in estimating Iraqi WMD. If you believe all that were deliberate lies then the Germans lied the most.
If you can't stencil an Afrika Korps logo on all your vehicles, there's no sense going to the party.
"Obama handlers are exploiting the captive MSM inability to criticize Obama."
Is it really 'captive inability' or 'strategic refusal'? Among on-the-ground run-of-the-mill journalists, maybe they really do feel captivated by Obama.
But the big guys in the media--the Jewish moguls--are among the people who MADE Obama. He doesn't own them. They--along with their brethren in finance and big government--own him.
So, while little journalists look up at Obama as 'the messiah' or 'historic figure', the big jounalists see him as 'our boy'.
I think the Germans are acting the most civilized and rational among the large Western nations. They don't seem as eager as other Western nations to support policies that ruin everything that made them great in the first place.
Why does anybody care what the likes of Timothy Garton Ash or Roger Cohen say? They're people who want to invade Lybia for humanitarian reasons while their countries are in the midst of large and difficult economic problems.
The renewed and wild militarism of the millennial West to save the world from evil is not something I would have expected 10-15 years ago. A dangerous interventionist mindset is developing among those in power and it's winning souls among the intelligentsia in alarming pace. Under the banner of humanitarianism and democracy war seems to lose the bad smell caused by its historical precedents. Dying for nationalism: down; dying for democracy: up.
The "high point in French postwar diplomacy" is bombing Libya and shooting up the natives in the Ivory Coast? Whew, I wonder what the low points would be. These war-mongers in print seem to be pretty callous about other peoples lives. I wonder how daring they are in their own personal lives.
Whiskey wrote: Germans can only stage an invasion of a fabulous gay disco, and the EU complains?
actually the Bundeswehr is a very capable organisation with 144,000 active duty members, 380,000 reservists and 408 Leopard II MBTs.
They could do more than invade a "gay disco".
Of course the "serious people" have no intention of going to war THEMSELVES PERSONALLY. The ACTUAL fighting, maiming and dying is to be done by some other chumps.
¡En Fuego!
But wait. Weren't we supposed to despise the French for being cowardly pacifists who refused to help us invade Iraq? Now it's the Germans we must hate for their pacifistic tendencies?
What next? Will Congress rename their cafeteria "sourkraut" and "frankfurters" as "sourfreedom" and "Liberty Dogs"?
Has to be said...
Spare me the paleo fantasies of the non-interventionist Germany. The Germans were pushing for intervening in the Balkans back when US, UK, and France were skeptical.
And let's not forget that German intelligence was the most aggressive in estimating Iraqi WMD. If you believe all that were deliberate lies then the Germans lied the most.
Unlike Libya, the Balkans did experience destablizing genocide within Europe. The Germans had good reason to act then unlike today.
Are you ignorant or just deceitful. Read up on Curveball you chickenhawk neocon shill:
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (Arabic: رافد أحمد علوان, Rāfid Aḥmad Alwān; born 1968), known by the Central Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is an Iraqi citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.[1] Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.[2][3] Despite warnings from the German Federal Intelligence Service questioning the authenticity of the claims, the US Government utilized them to build a rationale for military action in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including in the 2003 State of the Union address, where President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs", and Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, which contained a computer generated image of a mobile biological weapons laboratory.[1][4] On November 4, 2007, 60 Minutes revealed Curveball's real identity.[5] Former CIA official Tyler Drumheller summed up Curveball as "a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth."[1]
jody sez:in my opinion, this is one of the failings of modern germany. their rejection of continued improvement of fission reactors.
I cannot agree with you more. Unfortunately this is a direct result of Green politics, and the MSM who are generally sympathetic to Greens and basically too stupid to understand the technical and economic issues. I think Germany is going to pay a high price for its flirtations with the Greens, but eventually this ideology will wear itself out.
Has to be said...
Spare me the paleo fantasies of the non-interventionist Germany. The Germans were pushing for intervening in the Balkans back when US, UK, and France were skeptical.
Actually this is a good example of Ron Paul's foreign policy concept at work. Regional powers have regional interests, and so long as they are willing to pay for their interests, and mind a minimum of human decency, it's better for them to deal with their own backyards instead of getting Uncle Sucker involved in everything.
Just as the Balkans is in Germany's backyard, and the other powers were luke warm, so is Libya France's war (Italy is too weak) and Germany is not interested.
Maybe Germany should buld their nuclear plants in Japan.
Just as the Balkans is in Germany's backyard, and the other powers were luke warm
I thought that Balkans were in Russia's finely manicured front yard. Or am I thinking of the Baltic states?
"Spare me the paleo fantasies of the non-interventionist Germany. The Germans were pushing for intervening in the Balkans back when US, UK, and France were skeptical. And let's not forget that German intelligence was the most aggressive in estimating Iraqi WMD. If you believe all that were deliberate lies then the Germans lied the most."
I get that. But doesn't it just beg the question of whether Germany has had a subtle change in the last decade?
Gilbert Pinfold.
...All that would be missing then is some leadership with balls (sorry about the pun) to take Germany out of the EU and NATO and build a strategic relationship with Russia and China.
A strategic axis -- er, relationship -- with Russia and China against whom, Herr Headache?
the US air force is checking out modern FT methods to see if they can power themselves with coal ...
The Fischer-Tropsch process to convert coal into gasoline or kerosene is not the future of aviation synfuel. ( Today's jet fuel is kerosene with some additives. )
Why not? The FT process requires more energy input than it yields in useable output. The Germans used FT back then because it was the only method available to make ersatz fuel.
However, the Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects agency are working hard and spending money on other, better means of making synthetic fuel.
DARPA says ahead of schedule to produce jet fuel from biomass at less than $3 per gallon
Jim Lane | March 6, 2008 | 0 Comments
In Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said that the BioFuels project has successfully passed through the first stage of laboratory testing. Project managers say that they expect to produce JP-8 jet fuel with a production cost of less than $3 per gallon, primarily from soy and camelina. The project will ultimately use a multi-feedstock approach with a non-food focus. Project management said that cellulosic feedstocks such as algae and waste biomass were two to three years away, and that the primary challenge to using algae was the feedstock cost. The United States Air Force has set a goal of producing 50 percent of its fuels by alternative means by 2016.
Last week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)., and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) have called on the Department of Defense to comply with section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act by discontinuing purchase of fuel made from Canadian tar sands or US coal-to-liquid technology. The two sources of fuel are prohibited under the Act because of environmental impacts.
UOP, a division of Honeywell, announced last June that it expected to develop military aviation jet fuel, using a synthetic biocrude made from algae. The UOP project is backed by $6.7 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/03/06/darpa-says-ahead-of-schedule-to-produce-jet-fuel-from-biomass-at-less-than-3-per-gallon/
Anonymous said...
Just as the Balkans is in Germany's backyard, and the other powers were luke warm
I thought that Balkans were in Russia's finely manicured front yard. Or am I thinking of the Baltic states?
Nope. Them Balkan refugees would be heading away from Russia and north towards Germany.
More from the wiki entry on Curveball and German Intelligence/Neocon justification for the Iraq War:
In response to public criticism, U.S. president Bush initiated an investigative commission who released their report on March 31, 2005. Bush's investigative commission came to many conclusions including:
Curveball's German intelligence handlers saw him as "crazy ... out of control", his friends called him a "congenital liar", and a US physician working for the Defense Department who travelled to Germany to take blood samples seeking to discover if Anthrax spores were present was stunned to find the defector had shown up for medical tests with a "blistering hangover",[19] and he "might be an alcoholic".[20]
While there were many reports that Curveball was actually a relative (younger brother) of one of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) top aides,[7][21] the investigative commission stated that it was "unable to uncover any evidence that the INC or any other organization was directing Curveball."[22]
The Bush administration ignored evidence from the UN weapons inspectors that Curveball's claims were false. Curveball had identified a particular Iraqi facility as a docking station for mobile labs. Satellite photography had showed a wall made such access impossible, but it was theorised that this wall was temporary. "When United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspectors visited the site on February 9, 2003, they found that the wall was a permanent structure and could find nothing to corroborate Curveball's statements."[23] Instead, the inspectors found the warehouse to be used for seed processing.[24]
I hate to break it to you, but you appear to be borrowing some terminology from Paul Krugman. He was the one who popularized the derision of VSPs (Very Serious People) a set of elites that significantly overlaps with your Serious People supporting the Libya attack.
The Germans were partial toward the Catholic Croats (who were also allied with the Germans in WW2) in the Balkans. As was Pat Buchanan.
"Curveball said...
Curveball's German intelligence handlers saw him as "crazy ... out of control", his friends called him a "congenital liar",..."
Perhaps the intelligence agent who designated that source as "curveball" was making a comment about his veracity and usefullness.
"Whiskey got 2 things wrong:"
What? Only two? He's slipping.
What next? Will Congress rename their cafeteria "sourkraut" and "frankfurters" as "sourfreedom" and "Liberty Dogs"?
You know this is the actual origin of 'hot dog', during WWI, right?
'Liberty Cabbage' never stuck.
SFG said...
What next? Will Congress rename their cafeteria "sourkraut" and "frankfurters" as "sourfreedom" and "Liberty Dogs"?
You know this is the actual origin of 'hot dog', during WWI, right?
'Liberty Cabbage' never stuck.
That seems to be an urban myth according to Wikipedia.
The anti-German hysteria in WWI led to the terms every shoolboy today is familiar with: "Liberty Cabbage" (sourkraut) and "Liberty Sausage" (Frankfurter/hotdog).
The term "hot dog" for "Frankfurters/Weiners" came into use in America before WWI.
Speaking of neocon shills, Sadanand Dhume of the WSJ, urges India to adopt the strategy of perpetual war for perpetual peace.
The real purpose of the article is revealed in two sentences.
"Will New Delhi back tougher sanctions, and possible military action, against Iran should the Islamic republic refuse to abandon its rogue nuclear program? Will it publicly stand by Israel, a stalwart friend and close defense partner?
It's Time to Re-Align India
The country can no longer afford to stand aloof from the world's superpower.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704658704576274542049726826.html
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