A War of Diplomats (Germans learn the meaning of the phrase "Payback is a…")

The German foreign minister was the first to bear the brunt of rejection for his country. Just over a week ago, with Joschka Fischer standing at her side at the US State Department building in Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that the Americans had discussed "at length" Germany's wish for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. However, she added, "the only country that we clearly support is Japan."

A week later it was German Chancellor Schroeder's security and foreign affairs adviser Bernd Muetzelburg's turn. While touring the United States to promote Germany's cause at the UN, he opened up the paper in New York last Thursday morning to read that next to Japan the best the US government could do would be to support "a developing nation's" bid for a permanent seat. It was, as the New York Times wrote, "a harsh setback for Germany."

When German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder sits down with US President George W. Bush for lunch at the White House on Monday, he'll experience first-hand just how little support Germany can expect from its major ally in its efforts to land a permanent seat. US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has already clarified the Bush administration's position on the matter, noting that more than two new permanent members "could be damaging."

The Americans' clear signaling of their plans to block Germany's nomination is the most serious consequence to date in a typically behind-the-scenes diplomatic battle. The group of G4 nations — a newly formed alliance between India, Germany, Japan and Brazil for the purpose of supporting each other's bids for permanent seats in the UN — intends to force an expansion of the UN Security Council, which currently numbers 15 members, to include 6 new permanent and four non-permanent members. The so-called "Coffee Club," which includes countries like Italy, Pakistan, Argentina and South Korea, is clearly opposed to the G4 move.

The two camps have been forging new, discrete alliances, recruiting partners and threatening opponents for months. The G4 nations need a two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly, or at least 128 of the 191 member states, to amend the United Nations Charter to allow for the expansion.

"Well, French person, if it will be so bad if the terrorists win -- let it be known: it will also be very bad for France if the terrorists win. It is not America's problem, in case you haven't looked around YOUR country. And you cannot not now join in because, what? You have to 'save face?' Save face but lose your country!! What is it that the Frenchies do not understand????"

Of course it will be bad if the terrorists win.
Of course it will be bad for France if the terrorists win.
But it is certainly America's problem as well.
France cannot join in the war in Iraq now because the Americans are not fighting the war intelligently and show no sense that they are going to start. The US strategy is flawed, and the Americans won't listen to anybody. France is not going to send in forces to get them shot up following a bad strategy that cannot win. The French people will not support it.
France will support training forces and training intelligence services. And were France to be invited by the Iraqi government that declared a martial law strategy to deploy forces under French command, the government might very well agree to send special forces and do so.
But that is not how the war is being fought, and the French are not going to sign on to the current strategy, because they don't think it can win.

"I just think, personally, that if the US had acted on this way of thinking, let's say, in Normandie ...."

No.
The US DID act on my way of thinking in Normandy.
They used extreme force against the enemy.
Where there was resistance, they bombed whole cities flat.
They did not timidly penetrate hostile Germany and try to bring democracy with Nazis still in the field.
No.
They quelled all resistance, declared martial law and killed anybody who defied them.
Moreover, they speedily put the leaders of the Third Reich on trial and executed them, including military officers.
They did not play around with their enemies.
They killed 100,000 civilians with the conventional firebombing of Japan, and another 150,000 with the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Americans understood, then, that to kill a fanatical enemy you had to attack their people, to kill people until the enemy was terrorized into ceasing fighting.

Nor did the Americans play around with captured enemies.
When Americans collaborated with Nazis, they shot them for treason. When they captured enemies, there was never any question of letting them go. Nor was there any question of allowing the news media print what it wanted. In World War II, you printed pro-American material to keep the morale up, or your paper was shut down and you were arrested and tried for sedition.

That was the America that came to Normandie, and those Americans could be counted on to fight to win.

Today, you had from the start an unwillingness to use adequate force. You say Monday morning quarterbacking.
No again.
There were military leaders in America and abroad who looked for much larger forces for the initial assault, to kill anybody and anything that fought. The American leadership overruled them and went in with smaller forces.

Fallujah.
The Americans of Normandie beachhead would have surrounded the town, even if it was in France, not allowed anyone out, and carpet bombed it flat. They would not have cared about civilian casualties, because their OBJECTIVE was to crush out all resistance, by killing the enemy. Afterwards, the dead could be buried.
At Fallujah, the Americans surrounded the town, but then shrank from attacking it and retreated. The Americans are unwilling to kill a lot of civilians in the process of defeating their enemy.
And they refuse to acknowledge that the Sunni civilians ARE their enemy, just like Japanese and German civilians were after the war.

There was a moment of illusion, when it was believed the Iraqis would see themselves as captured slaves which the Americans were setting free. And this was to be a great liberation celebration.
But the Americans persist in this, and it is now a DELUSION.
There is no change in strategy.
The Sunni areas are in constant rebellion. The Americans are unwilling to bomb cities, and they are unwilling to let the Iraqi government declare martial law and shoot on sight any man who is out at night.
The Americans are unwilling to kill anything that moves across the Syrian border.
They are unwilling to do anything other than grimly guard fixed points and take bomb after bomb after bomb.

If the Americans fought like this was Normandie, they would have won already. But they refuse to, because they apparently think that the tactics they used to demolish Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, with 4 million civilian dead, were too brutal.

They won't do what they need to do to win among Arabs, which is to intimidate them into submission by killing some and making it clear that they are perfectly willing to kill the rest. That cowed Germans and it cowed Japanese.
Americans won't fight that way anymore.
And so now, Americans lose wars and campaigns...Korea was a draw, Vietnam a loss, Somalia a loss, Gulf War I a draw, and now?

America has to win this war.
But Americans won't fight.
Why won't they fight?
Why won't they fight?

If the Americans had acted at Normandie the way they fight now, the Germans would have wiped them from the face of the Earth.

It is not the American soldiers. The American forces are incredibly strong and well armed and disciplined and brave.
It is the strategy, the way that the commanders are choosing to fight this. They are arrogant, and they seem to learn nothing. They just keep doing the same thing over and over and over, and it keeps not working. It is like the generals and leaders of World War I.

Use Normandie as a template. France was a friendly country. The Americans LEVELLED Cherbourg and Caen, even though they were full of French people, because the Americans knew that is what they had to do to kill the Nazi troops in them. And the Americans were RIGHT.
Sunni Iraq is like Germany itself. The Americans pretend, and it is madness and delusion, that they can win the hearts and minds of Arab fanatics. It is like handing out candy to Germans before subduing them.

And I have been saying precisely the same thing since long before any shooting started too.

When will the Americans fight like this is Normandie?
When?

I don't agree with everything you say, but you are absolutely correct in your analysis of what it takes to win a war, and the Iraq war in particular. I too, believe that we have become too soft in our prosecution of the war. Even many conservatives have lost the will to do what it takes to win. Our own humanity makes us easy pickings for an enemy that is willing to commit any atrocity against us - but hyperventilates about underwear on a prisoner's head. We WILL lose with that kind of thinking.

The main source of our unmitigated stupidity in this regard, is the American Left. A more scurrilous, corrupt, hypocritical and self-serving bunch of American-hating scumbags cannot be found in our history, and can barely be found in other countries that ostensibly hate us, but whose people clandestinely love us.

Just last night, after finishing up our gig in a Shanghai nightclub, I had an argument with my liberal Detroit gig partner about this very subject, but I was aided by an Australian couple who "gets" it, even though they vote Labor in Australia.

I used the trump card on this issue, which was "Awright, there is no question that the flattening of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed primarily civilians, ended the war in the pacific, and saved millions of lives, allied and Japanese. Do you disagree with that decision?"

He then gave the usual response, which was to pause and say "Interesting question", and failed to answer it, leaving him free to slink off to go apesh@t about another trivial Gitmo "atrocity", without acknowledging the principle aptly demonstrated at Hiroshima, one he knew he understood and silently agrees with. Liberals are intellectually dishonest - even with themselves.

"Were we to do as you say, and as we should do, the media around the world, including in France, and our Democrats here at home would be out in full force condemning us. The streets woiuld be filled with protestors and the impeachment of Bush would be in full cry."

Probably.
But American Democrats are the minority. They can protest, but they have no power to actually DO anything unless the majority, of its own volition, chooses to listen to them and alter its actions.

Street protests come and they go in America. Americans do not undertake general strikes to shut down the economy when they are angry, so an American street protest is like those terrible thunderstorms of summer afternoons, that rise up and make much noise for a little while, but then dissipate.
There is nothing that a street protest can do in America to change anything unless, once again, the majority in power chooses of its own volition to change its policies.

America is not France, and street protests simply will not generalize into collective action.

American Democrats can try to impeach President Bush all they like. American Republicans tried to do the same thing. No American President can be impeached, no matter how angry people are or how hard the minority tries, if 67 votes cannot be found in the US Senate. There are 55 Republicans in the US Senate, and that means that the American President can conduct the war anyway he thinks he needs to, the minority can get as angry as they care to, and there is no power in America that can countermand the President's order. The votes do not exist to impeach him in the Senate. Therefore, if the American President chooses a strategy that will lose America a war, or which will increase American casualties by fighting the war ineffectively, all because he wants to avoid a powerless and completely impotent minority in America that cannot remove him from office or countermand him in any case, he chooses a foolish course.

American Democrats cannot remove the President even if he orders harsh tactics in Iraq. The only way they could would be by finding 22 Republican Senators willing to go along with every Democratic Senator to do so, and that is assuming that they could get a large number of Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote to impeach in the first place.

When one looks at power objectively, there is no excuse for the Republican government of the United States from properly pursuing the war. The Democrats are a minority. They can block nothing. They can countermand nothing. They can be disregarded with impunity, and reduced to yelling in the streets for a few days.

Instead, the American President chooses to fight a war in a way that cannot win, in order to appease an American minority that cannot do anything to him at all if he maintains discipline within his own party and systematically uses his majority to completely disregard everything the Democrats say.

In short, pointing at American Democrats does not work.
The only power they have is the power American Republicans choose to give them. The American Republicans are choosing tactics and even a strategy in a war that is exposing many American soldiers to death and disfigurement, and they are doing so in order to appease an American Democratic party that, objectively, has only the influence Republicans chooes to grant to them.

I lay the blame for the weakness squarely at the feet of the American leadership. They can ignore their Democrats. They choose to respond to them obsequiously in America, and thereby expose American soldiers to death and disfigurement abroad, and the whole world to a protracted war that cannot be won fighting it this way.

The French concern was that America would enter a war but, because of these political factors, not WIN it, and that would make things worse. There is nothing that has happened that leads me to believe that this concern was anything but objectively correct.

Even you, who seem to understand the effects of all of this well, want to shift the blame to the American Democrats. But American Democrats, and the American media, have no power to do anything. That is vested in the American President and the majority party. They have the power to override the Democrats and ignore the media and do what needs to be done to win the war.

Starting a war and "hoping for the best" means losing the war. America has fought all of its wars since 1945 using this strategy, and America has not won any of the wars it has fought for the past 60 years. That ought to teach the lesson, but it doesn't.

And this track record of military adventure by American leaders coupled with absolutely predictable political cowardice in the face of the fact that war, to be decisively won, means killing vast numbers of civilians, always, causes many, many people to conclude that it is unwise to join America on its military adventures.

France was last burnt in 1983. President Ronald Reagan and President Francois Mitterand agreed to deploy troops in Lebanon. Both did. The Americans and French planned extensive joint airstrikes around Beirut. On the very day of the attack, with French planes in the air, the Americans suddenly pulled out of the attack plan. The French struck, and then for the next month, it was the French positions that took the brunt of fire - as one would expect. Then the US Marines were blown up by terrorists, and instead of issuing an ultimatum to the groups in Beirut and levelling the city, the Americans retreated, leaving the French exposed and forcing a French retreat as well.
You cannot win wars that way, and there is no indication whatever that the Americans have learnt a damned thing since they failed in Korea. They repeat the same errors over and over and over again. And are doing it again in Iraq.
Of course Americans get angry and lash out at the French for not joining them.
And get angry and lash out at the Democrats for resisting them. But they will not override even their own Democrats, so how can anyone have confidence in signing up to go to war with them, when it is a certitude that the Americans will vacillate and lose heart and their will to fight will fall apart because they will not override sedition in their home country?

"The main source of our unmitigated stupidity in this regard, is the American Left. A more scurrilous, corrupt, hypocritical and self-serving bunch of American-hating scumbags cannot be found in our history, and can barely be found in other countries that ostensibly hate us, but whose people clandestinely love us."

I disagree with the conclusion.

I agree that the American Left are hypocritical and weak. They will never fight. President Clinton's abject performance in Rwanda is an example. France deployed forces, mighty America did not. Perhaps the American President was distracted by something else.

Let us look objectively at power.
The American Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives. Nothing, therefore, can stop the American Right from passing its laws there.

American Republicans hold a majority in the US Senate. As we have seen with the recent arguments about debates in the American Senate, if the Republican majority chooses to assert its power, it can shut off debate and force votes on any issue, which it will invariably win.

The American judiciary is shockingly political. It is also 60% Republican. 7 of the 9 US Supreme Court justices are Republicans.

The American President is of the Right, and President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated that, in time of war, an American President can override Supreme Court rulings which will harm the prosecution of the war.

The American media is certainly more to the left than the right. They also have no votes, no power, no ability to issue orders. The next American election is not until 2008.

Nothing prevents the American President and the American Right from conducting this war exactly as they see fit. Nothing but themselves. The Left cannot stop them in the US Congress. The Left cannot stop them in the US courts. The media has no power unless the Right chooses to grant it to them.

So, where the American Left appears to have power, it is because the American Right chooses to allow the American Left to block them. Nobody of the American Left issued any of the orders or strategic plans in Iraq. This was the American Right. The American Right is in charge of the war. The American Left has no input other than complaint, which the American Right can choose to completely disregard. If they choose not to, if they choose, instead, to allow it to paralyze the America war plans and cause American troops to be exposed to death and disfigurement longer and longer, then I accuse the American President and the American Right of weakness. The American Left is, indeed, foolish. But the American Right does not have to listen to them at all. They do. Which makes the leadership failure one of the Right, not the Left.

The American Left would not have fought the Iraq War. Not even if it needed to be fought. They are cowards. The American Right has entered the Iraq War, but are not willing to do what is required to win it. This is also cowardice, of a worse order, because it means more death and destruction.
If you are going to fight a war, then everything must be secondary to victory. Americans understood that in World War II. They understood it in their Civil War. They are unwilling to treat regions of Iraq in resistance the way they treated Germany, or Japan, or Georgia.
Americans have used this same strategy since Korea. And they have lost every war they fought since World War II because of this strategy.

The American left, in its cowardice, would have avoided another defeat.
The American right, in its belligerent cowardice, seem to be headed for another defeat.

The correct solution is for the Americans to fight a war, not a domestic political campaign.
And that will require the US President, in particular, to start aggressively overriding the political opposition in his own country, by taking acts that are unpopular and bloody in Iraq, and ignoring all criticism. He cannot be removed from office, and therefore his power is unlimited. If he chooses to limit it, whatever happens is his fault.

The german troops deployed to the ISAF in Afghanistan (more than 2.000) are the largest non-US contingent there for years now.

This is true. It is also true that Germans have been deployed in the Balkans, if memory serves.

This obviously doesn't change my point about the Security Council, which is that no country should be on the Council who isn't prepared to deploy actual blood and treasure in the face of an international crisis. Which countries those might be would make a good discussion, it wouldn't necessarily be, obviously, the ones currently on the Council. But this fact would go a long way toward explaining to what degree we do care, or ought to care, what the Security Council thinks about any particular issue.

Germany is at least beginning to think about what an active role on the international scene might mean. I'm not sure they are yet ready to fulfill any real responsibilities, but they are moving in the right direction.

Since the Second World War they have had it as a national policy that their troops would not be deployed except in direct defense of Germany, and for them to deploy even to the Balkans was a big change for them, so the 2000 troops in Kabul are more significant politically than their mere numbers might seem. I realize that, and I appreciate what it means. It is also significant that Germany has maintained that force there despite our political differences.

So I don't want to go any farther without being clear that we appreciate the help. We need all the help we can get, and we appreciate the help we get. There has also been a good deal of help given at the intel level, and again we appreciate it. I suspect there is a good deal more support given by Germany's grown-ups than the general public is given to know; why that would be is a good question for their politicians to explain.

But notice that Afghanistan is the "good" war, the war everyone supposedly believes in and supports. The whole world is supposedly behind us in this war, and the most NATO can manage is about 5000 troops, which is sufficient as you know to protect Kabul itself. The alliance that defended Europe from the Soviets is unable to do more than provide a force equivalent to one city police department.

This, to me, means that NATO as an alliance is effectively dead. It was created for a very specific reason, the defense of Europe, it held together for a very long time and it was ultimately successful, its enemy which was the mightiest force ever seen suddenly imploded and vanished from the face of the earth. This is a huge accomplishment, for which we are rightfully very proud.

But its done. NATO no longer exists, although we have yet to admit it. We are in the process of building a new alliance, and trying to take advantage of some of the logistical networks of the old alliance, but it is a new alliance. We still pretend that NATO exists, but it doesn't. The new alliance hasn't fully formed, and we don't yet have a catchy name for it. But whatever we call it, its new, and it isn't NATO.

Who exactly are the members of this new alliance are pretty easy to see; they are the countries who are facing bullets with us. They are the countries hosting our troops, and the countries providing troops. Germany needs to decide if they are in or out. At one point Schroeder threatened to deny us the use of our bases in Germany; in the end, he backed down and that threat was dropped down the memory hole.

But we haven't really forgotten.

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