Posted on 02/23/2005 1:11:03 PM PST by longjack
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BUSH IN GERMANY Déjà-vu in Mainz By Claus Christian Malzahn Once before, a generally unpopular U.S. president visited the Federal Republic under heretofore unseen security measures. His name was Ronald Reagan and when he demanded the tearing down of the wall in the summer of 1987, Germany experts declared him insane. Could it be that history repeats itself? Berlin - The American president was rather unpopular in Europe , he was regarded as a war-monger and one liked to insinuate that his aggressive foreign policy was driven by a defuse illusion of religious revelation. We're not talking about George W. Bush, but Ronald Reagan. When the Californian visited the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987, he was packed into an unprecedented safety cordon, he spoke in front of hand-picked cheering Berliners at the Brandenburg Gate while the West Berlin Senate sealed off the U-Bahn line into unpredictable Kreuzberg. Reagan's 1987 visit in Berlin reminds one in many ways of the visit by George W. Bush. Both U.S. presidents travelled or travel to a Federal Republic which viewed them sceptically. And when Reagan planted himself in front of the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Gorbachev to tear down the wall, they tore the U.S. president to pieces the day after in the many of the comment columns. The man is a dreamer, they said, Realpolitik looks quite different than that. History has shown that it wasn't Reagan who was the dreamer when he expressed his demands, rather it was German Politics, which in 1987 could hardly imagine that there could be an alternative to the two German states. Whoever spoke about reunification was castigated as a nationalist, the Zeitgeist blew from the west, despite the Kohl government, swirling from the left out of the Saarland and through the BRD. Oskar Lafontaine, who was interested neither in Ronald Reagan nor in German Unification, called the shots in the SPD. If George W. Bush asks the German Chancellor today, who, by the way, was also not quite accurate with his stance on German Unification and on Reagan's demands in 1987, politely, through the flowers, for greater engagement in the Mid-East, there will be amicable nods from the German side. However, in the meantime, German foreign policy, in spite of all the candy coating which has been poured over the Atlantic bridge within the last few days, has defined itself primarily by a policy of demarcation as opposed to Washington . When Bush leaves, the differences will still remain. Bush's idea of a democratically constituted Middle East, even if brought about by military means, are considered an hysterical, intellectual spawn of the so-called Neo-Cons, and not just by the Social Democrats and Greens. Even German conservatives find the idea that an Arab can change into an enlightened democrat rather adventurous. This is probably the biggest disagreement between Europe and the USA, which even a president John Kerry wouldn't have made less, by the way: In Europe, even the Europe of 1987, one can hardly imagine that the world changes. Perhaps one doesn't really want it to change at all, because change can mean danger. In the land of immigrants, the USA , one urges that exactly that will happen. The principle of the static and the principle of the dynamic have met in Mainz today, too. We Europeans would rather have the world the way it was yesterday, the Americans long for how it could be tomorrow. This difference was concealed by the concrete interests and the even greater oaths of the cold war; the tears are visible now. The continental plates are drifting further apart despite all kindness that one may be exchanging in Mainz . Reagan's appearance in front of the Brandenburg Gate could scarcely be outdone in terms of embarrassment. He didn't leave any Berlin clichés out of his speech; there was the suitcase, as was there the talking from the heart, the Berliner snide and the Berliner humor. Many "experts" agreed that the demand for the tearing down of the wall was old-fashioned, utopic, crazy. Three years later The DDR disappeared from the map. Gorbachev made a considerable contribution, but primarily it was the people in East Germany . When the common people get in the experts' way, sometimes astonishing things happen. Assume this once that history just doesn't recur only as a farce or tragedy as Karl Marx has postulated: Perhaps the people in Syria , Iran or Jordan will come upon the idea of tearing down the walls and shaking up the regimes which manage and rule them, too. When in Iraq a short while ago, despite acute danger of terror, an election turnout occurred which was hardly any lower than in many German states, the Siren choir of the Iraq-Alarmists was very quiet for a few days - as quiet as the choir of Germany experts on the night of 9 November, 1989. Just an idea to throw to old Europe: Bush could be proven right, just like Reagan. See you soon, Mr. President.
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Translated by longjack
When in Iraq a short while ago, despite acute danger of terror, an election turnout occurred which was hardly any lower than in many German states, the Siren choir of the Iraq-Alarmists was very quiet for a few days - as quiet as the choir of Germany experts on the night of 9 November, 1989.
Gotta love it.
longjack
longjack
Thanks for the ping.
It is possible that history will repeat itself in this case,at least one can hope it will,IMO.
I thought you might have known kids at Wiesbaden.
longjack
Thanks, jack.....very interesting.
Damn right,Click the link.
Check out the sentiment against Reagan in 1986
Copyright 1986 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 31, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition
HEADLINE: Reagan's Ferocious Fantasies
BYLINE: By Philip Geyelin
BODY:
The penalty you pay for the enrichment of foreign travel in this business is the avalanche of old newspapers and other chronicles that awaits your return. But the heavy sifting has occasional rewards: my late entry for August's mindless quote-of-the-month is Ronald Reagan's anniversary reflection on the Berlin Wall.
If we'd gone in there and knocked down the barbed wire that was first erected, the president boldly said 25 years after the fact, ''I don't think there'd be a wall today, because I don't think they wanted to start a war over that.''
Good grief: we are talking about recent history. The wall was the consequence rather than the cause of the Berlin Crisis of 1961. The serious threat to peace was Nikita Khrushchev's stated intent to break the four-power occupation agreement by signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany and turning over responsibility for East Berlin to the communist East German government. President Kennedy's quick response was a call-up of reserves and the reinforcement of American troops in Central Europe.
The resulting war scare had turned a steady westward flow of some 3.5 million East Germans since the end of the war into a torrent, up from the hundreds to the thousands every day of the youngest and brightest. Reagan had it half right; the Soviets didn't want to start a war; they wanted to stop a hemorrhage.
The Allies would have had to start the war to prevent the Soviets from rebuilding barricades deeper into East Germany as fast as they were ''knocked down.'' To have judged otherwise, Kennedy would have had to go against the counsel of his principal advisers, his French and British partners in the occupation and the West Germans who had the most to lose.
Does Reagan not know all this -- or not care? No matter; that's not the interesting part. We should be grateful that the president's most ferocious fantasies are retrospective. In the 1980 campaign, he talked of how he would have blockaded Cuba and then told the Soviets: ''Now, buster, we'll lift it when you take your forces out of Afghanistan.'' In 1975, he blasted President Ford for not using B-52s to crush the final North Vietnamese assault on South Vietnam and said that, if South Korea was ever similarly threatened, ''B-52s should make a moonscape out of North Korea.'' In 1965, he would have declared war on North Vietnam: ''We could pave the whole country and put parkin stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.''
We should be all the more grateful that in real life the Rambo in Reagan is really Walter Mitty: he dreams big and carries a small stick. He does, to be sure, beat up 7,000 or so Cuban combat engineers in Grenada. He sends military aid to ''freedom fighters'' from Afghanistan to Angola to Nicaragua. Ineffectually he mines Nicaraguan ports -- but he does not blockade Nicaragua, and he has not (so far) dispatched U.S. combat troops there.
He is quick on the draw with F-111s to scare the wits out of Moammar Gadhafi -- but he has not yet reached for B-52s. He sends Marines to Lebanon. But when the shells of the battleship New Jersey cannot bring the warring Lebanese factions to their senses, he cuts his considerable losses. He withdraws the American military presence only weeks after proclaiming that it was vital not only to peace in the Middle East and access to Persian Gulf oil, but to the whole world power-balance.
And yet -- here we get to the interesting part -- the popular perception of Reagan at home and abroad is that of a very tough customer. His appeal runs through hard-nosed conservatives who want nothing more than to reassert American power against the encroachment of international communism and the scourge of international terrorism. And this appeal is broad; his handling of foreign affairs has the approval of two-thirds of the American people.
Surely there is the suggestion here of a shaky foundation for sound policy, of a certain public confusion over what's wanted and what standards should be applied to the people in charge. Toughness cannot be the test; only a third of the public approves the president's efforts to dislodge Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Consistency obviously does not count for much, and still less does a command of the subject or a concern for reality.
So what does the public want? Given Ronald Reagan's rare, mesmerizing, magic touch, we may have to wait until 1988, and the choice of a successor, to find out.
History just may be in the process of repeating itself
I've never seen the differences in us and the Germans described more succinctly.
Great article, longjack. As usual you do us FReepers proud by keeping us updated with the German view on things.
This is exactly what I thought when we had our "rift" with Europe over Iraq. I'm surprised they have picked up on it.
But why do I get the feeling that when reading this, I am really watching a Steve Martin "Theodoric of York; Medieval Diplomat" sketch on Saturday Night Live. It might go like this:
"Maybe our appeasement of totalitarianism was wrong. Maybe we could stand up to dictators and show some spine for a change. Maybe we could make a difference in the world and promote real democracy, real human rights......
NAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"
Donald Regan, the president's former chief of staff, said Reagan scored a brilliant public relations coup against the Soviet Union.
"The Europeans feel Gorbachev is much more of a man of peace than Ronald Reagan, which surprises the heck out of us because none of us feel that Ronald Reagan wants to go to war with anybody over anything," Regan said before 750 people."
Nice.
My vote for the best line out of this piece:
"When the common people get in the experts' way, sometimes astonishing things happen"
This is Der Spiegel?
Whats going on?
This writer was completely out of touch. I wonder what he says now?
nick
my thoughts exactly.
Also begs the question what the loony left will be saying in 20 years when democracy is thriving in the Middle East.
God, wouldn't that be the greatest for all of us?
nick
"Even German conservatives find the idea that an Arab can change into an enlightened democrat rather adventurous"
How soon these people forget that many of the opponents of German reconstruction thought the same thing about Germans. "Sure they dabbled in democracy before the war, but clearly would never change into enlightened democrats. The war proved this!"
This notion that Arabs or anyone else, for that matter, are somehow unworthy of freedom and democracy is a vaguely racist and clearly colonial mindset. It is a large part of the reason that Africa and the Middle East are in such bad shape today - not that Germans are responsible, mind you - France, the UK and Belgium deserve a degree of credit for the state of their former colonies, but it is an example of an all to prevalant way of thinking in parts of the Old World.
Remember, a lot of these same people think the we in the US are a bunch of knuckle-dragging, salivating morons who are unworthy of democracy. And they see the election of Bush as proof of this paternal, almost fuedal notion that they are superior to everyone who doesn't think like them.
Either we hold these truths to be self-evident or we do not. How can you strike a middle ground on this? I, for one, side with Jefferson!!!
They'll never admit it, nor mention it. I've come to the conclusion (as a former, somewhat leftist) that part of the definition of being a leftist is denial of reality. If you admit reality, and thus your mistakes, you automatically become more rightwing.
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