The moral decline of a superpower (Kraut Groucho Complains!)

International Herald Tribune ^ | 04/10/03 | Guenter Grass

[TigerLikesRooster]

The moral decline of a superpower

Gunter Grass TMSI

Thursday, April 10, 2003

Preemptive war

BEHLENDORF, Germany A war long sought and planned is now under way. All deliberations and warnings of the United Nations notwithstanding, an overpowering military apparatus has attacked preemptively in violation of international law. No objections were heeded. The Security Council was disdained and scorned as irrelevant. As the bombs fall and the battle for Baghdad continues, the law of might prevails.

Based on this injustice, the mighty have the power to buy and reward those who might be willing and to disdain and even punish the unwilling. The words of the current American president - "Those who are not with us are against us" - weigh on current events with the resonance of barbaric times.

It is hardly surprising that the rhetoric of the aggressor increasingly resembles that of his enemy. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions, taking the notion of God hostage in accordance with their own fanatical understanding. Even the passionate warnings of the Pope, who knows how lasting and devastating the disasters wrought by the mentality and actions of Christian crusaders have been, were unsuccessful.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Another Nobel Prizer opens his mouth. He also came out big on appeasement of N. Korea, when he visited S. Korea. I am sure that he would be happy to see Iraqis suffer for another generation if it helps to undermine U.S., while Saddam begins to field large WMD arsenal.

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[goldstategop]

The picture from Firdos Square is a living refutation of the complaints of Gunther Grass and company. I am proud to be an American living in the greatest country known to history.

[Mr. Mojo]

I always get a kick out of German National Socialists talking about "moral decline."

[JoJo Gunn]

It is absolutely mind boggling to see how the Left reacts to the rescue of an oppressed people.

I'm telling you, boys and girls, we'd better go after the Left unless it's too late already. We've given them too much freedom beyond the asylum walls. Time to round 'em back up.

[Billthedrill]

Gunter Grass hasn't had an original political thought since The Tin Drum. The reason such claims as he makes proliferate among the unthinking left is that they are never reality-checked afterward. Here, the claim that we are going to expropriate the oil will seem silly some months hence when Iraq is selling it to Germany, but it will by then have been tactfully forgotten or simply repeated until no one thinks to match it against the evidence. This is the level to which political discourse has fallen: an endless, passionate series of accusations and misrepresentations with no rigorous comparison to any real facts at hand. It isn't even really discourse; the left isn't listening to a reply.

As far as moral decline, what are we to say about a nation that loudly proclaims that it prefers peace and tacitly trades with and supports an outrageous, murderous tyrant? That is, ironically, a complaint made against the United States's own behavior in regard to "tyrants" of considerably lesser stature than Saddam's. It is here the lack of honest discourse enables the left to claim moral equivalency between a Bush and a Saddam and to simply disregard clear evidence to the contrary. And it is here that Germany's refusal to examine her own behavior provides a position of unassailable moral rectitude...as long as they can keep the lie alive. Grass is a blind man complaining about others' fuzzy vision.

[spectre]

This hypocrate should know better. He came of age under Hitler. Grass supported the action in Kosovo because he stated that even though he wa a "pacifist" he was "against genocide". He got the Nobel prize for peace anyway.

Now he excuses genocide in Iraq and does not want to see Hitler's modern day counterpart removed.

laf

[rimmont]

Moral decline? Many Europeans, including Gunter Grass, have long been without a coherent concept of morality. He and many other amoral, irreligious, socialist, Europeans possess absolutely no moral credibility. Europe's moral decline happened long ago and is now so complete they don't know what morality is.

[remitrom]

Gunther Grass has always been known as a red radical. His moral inversion has always been apparent in the sick junk literature he bothers to write. The Tin Drum was crap, and so is Grass's reasoning and his moral credibility. Just fade away in silence and irrelevance, Gunther...