I was one of those losers...
Posted on 06/17/2006 7:16:00 PM PDT by RWR8189
Berlin
EARLIER THIS MONTH, several hundred people gathered in Nuremberg, the site of an Iran-Mexico soccer match, for a protest. Their concern was that Iran's president might fly to Germany to attend the World Cup match. According to a German peace activist newsletter, the crowd of protesters was most unimpressive, a bunch of losers really. Those denouncing Iran's head of state were a motley crew of "Christian Crazies," "anti-German Germans," and "cheering Persians," the last being "loyalists of the mass-murdering regime of the shah."
It's not the first time I have wondered about Germany's real peace activists. Speaking of mass murder, I walk by the North Korean embassy nearly every day in Berlin. It's a stone's throw from my apartment in Mitte near Friedrichstrasse. Although North Korea is the last Stalinist regime on earth, and is building nuclear weapons while starving its population to death, I've not seen a single concerned citizen from the peace movement with a sign or a flower before the embassy's entrance. Meanwhile, the number of protests here calling for an end to the slaughter in Sudan stands by my count at about zero. Still, Iran should be a no-brainer. Or so you would think.
The German peace movement has always been antinuclear. Iran wants the bomb. The peace movement loves the U.N. and international law. Tehran defies the International Atomic Energy Agency. The peace movement condemns the "arms race." When Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey will also want the bomb. The peace movement cherishes human rights. The mullahs stone women to death. The peace movement is modern, multicultural, and secular. President Ahmadinejad believes in the Hidden Imam and relishes a good clash of civilizations. The peace movement likes peace. The Iranian leader has called for a U.N. member state to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Okay, it is tedious to state the obvious, but the German peace movement--always the largest, most vocal, and best organized in Europe--is once again exposed as a farce and a fraud. During the Cold War it thrived on anti-Americanism and a good dose of Soviet bloc support. In the '80s, for example, East Germany's secret police helped finance the work of "Generals for Peace," a group of eight former NATO generals opposed to the stationing of NATO missiles in Western Europe. These included the lover of Petra Kelly, the desperate, strident young woman who helped start the Greens. Kelly and General Bastian killed themselves in an apparent suicide pact in Bonn in the fall of 1992.
The peace movement was back in top form recently when George W. Bush said he would compel Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. resolutions. In Berlin, half a million people took to the streets (their counterparts were out in full force across Europe and in the United States, of course, too). Teachers in Berlin let students out of school to march for peace. The churches were there. So were the trade unions. At night there were candlelight processions at the Brandenburg Gate. It is hard to remember any of these folks lifting a finger for the good people of Iraq before or since. I recall a few dozen lonely souls protesting here against Saddam Hussein.
And all those banners declaring "No Blood for Oil"? That's always been an amusing bit of shtick. Europe depends on Middle Eastern oil even more than the United States. Saudi Arabia is one of Germany's most important trading partners in the region. Iran is the other. I am waiting for someone from the peace movement to catch on. In 2004, while Gerhard Schröder was still in office, German exports to Iran rose by 33.4 percent (3.6 billion euros). Last year the figure hit 4.5 billion euros. German imports also rose by 35 percent (391 million euros) two years ago, with the first expansion of crude oil deliveries. The former chancellor, now chairman of the supervisory board of Russia's Gazprom--let's call him father of the modern German peace movement--was just named honorary chairman of the German Near and Middle East Association. This is an umbrella group for German industry. And Schröder is now speaking out against sanctions on Iran.
Angela Merkel has been great on Iran. She has not yet sat down to discuss with top industry leaders, though, the impact of possible sanctions on German companies and an ailing German economy. Volkswagen is in Iran. DaimlerChrysler is there. German companies sell the Iranians machinery, production facilities, and electrical engineering products. The German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, according to a newsletter of the Iranian German Business Forum, is one of Germany's largest in the world. It tends to the needs of some 1,400 member firms from both countries. But you would think that for the peace movement a little prudence would be in order. You would think that for progressives, human rights would trump profits.
What's really amusing (or creepy) is not the glaring hypocrisy of the peace movement's inaction over Iran (or Sudan, North Korea, and Syria for that matter), but rather what some of these oily groups are serving up at smaller meetings and online publications these days. The Network of the German Peace Movement is worried that a "pro-Western government" could come to power in Iran. The German Peace Society says Iran needs the bomb to defend itself against America and Israel. Professor Georg Meggle of the University of Leipzig agrees. In a policy paper written for the Peace Research Group at the University of Kassel, Meggle says, "Iran would be stupid" not to pursue its current course.
The Nobel-winning novelist Günter Grass told the international PEN writers congress in Berlin last month, "Nothing could be more stupid or dangerous than to call Iran, North Korea, or Syria evil powers." The Berlin office of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has released a paper describing what will happen if the United States launches a nuclear attack against Iran. More than 2 million people will die in the first 48 hours apparently; another million will be seriously injured. More than 10 million in the region will suffer the effects of radiation. And I thought we were just talking about a land invasion and occupation.
What about the damage expected from an Iranian nuclear strike? When America went into Afghanistan after 9/11, the cover of Stern magazine, the popular German weekly, blared "Stop this War." Inside the magazine were statements by 44 prominent intellectual, political, and cultural figures demanding an end to American aggression. According to my colleague Alexander Arndt, no more than two of these great humanitarians have taken time publicly to raise concern about Iran's human rights record or the prospect of the mullahs getting nuclear weapons. To be fair, some of our peace friends may be more reasonable than I have suggested. One peace-movement blogger says that while Iran is indeed "a friend of ours," maybe the Iranian leadership "is getting a bit carried away of late." He does not elaborate, but I wonder if he is referring to that small matter of President Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust. I guess we all have our limits.
Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.
They're not anti-war, just pro the other side.
Just as with the DUmmies, it depends on who's saying.
Not on what's being said, but who's saying it.
If someone they like says something, it's fine, no matter what it is being said.
If someone they dislike says something, it's bad, no matter what it is being said.
Bah, humbug.
Hypocrites all. They know that a weakened US will accelarate their twisted idiological nihilism: the end of western civilization as we know it.
I'll take them all with me before I give an inch to this crap.
I think you forgot about Belarus with Lukoshenko. Although, granted, they do pretend to have elections. Doesn't Castro as well?
Ha! That's part of the reason why the Soviet system collapsed. They spent so much money to pay everyone off with bribes and influence!
And if you believe that, I've got some prime real estate in the Florida Everglades you will definitely be interested in! LOL!
You got that right...the saying should be "If there's no oil, there will be blood in the streets".!
Anyone have any air freshener?? I just had a Peace Movement...in my drawers...
The Germans ought to love us--if it weren't for our GIs, who would marry their ugly girls?
Since primitive and ugly loosers like you usually do not find girls or wifes they tend to fall into "strong" and "masculine" verbalism. I am deeply impressed and I understand that it is hard for you that you are obviously restricted to excessive auto-erotic for the rest of your life, but it would be nice to leave us with your problems alone.
Usually I do not tell such people like you not the truth, but some "contributions" in the internet are that tasteless that they have to be answered.
I was one of those losers...
-- Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Not me, but "loosers" like me, huh?
You can tell a male like me that I am ugly -okay-. If you tell it to me straight into my face I probably will laugh about you - or if it is really meant serious I am going to kick your a**. Saying such about girls -even if they come from North Korea and even if they really look horrible- is that unpolite that it can not be tolerated.
Do me a favor and act like a gentleman.
So far you've...
Called me a "looser";
Called my masculinity into question;
Psychoanalyzed me with a creepy fixation on my sex life (hey, whatever turns you on. Hands above the keyboard, please);
Threatened to kick my ass.
But the Internet is supposed to accomodate your tender sensitivities...?
I am only sensitive as long as the honor of females is concerned. Nevertheless I usually try to act reserved, polite and decent. Anyway this is not possible if I am confronted with such BS.
Again - try to act like a gentleman.
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.
Karl Marx
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