John Rosenthal: Cowboys in Deutschland

Things have changed...somewhat.

As John Rosenthal in his TCS article "Cowboys in Deutschland" observes, when George Bush visited Germany in May 2002 death wishes of the German left (published in the weekly ZEIT) were in plentiful supply:

... in a letter addressed to "Dear George," Christoph Schlingensief, the darling of German "alternative" theatre and creator of artistic "happenings," admitted to having "played with the idea of quite simply blowing you up at our next meeting." 

A hundred thousand demonstrators showed up to stamp Bush as "Terrorist #1". (BTW, John reminds us that at the time of this display of German Bush bashing the Iraq invasion was still 10 months away.)

Now, at Bush's mid July 2006 visit to Germany, things were much more amicable. Angela Merkel, rather than Gazprom employee Gerhard Schroeder greeted the American president, and far fewer demonstrators - a few hundred at best - were at hand. And, as John reports, even ZEIT adopted conciliatory, albeit arrogant, tones:

... long-time Zeit co-editor Josef Joffe wrote that Angela Merkel was "meeting a President who had lost his illusions and learned that democratic ideals and strategic interests are two different things.... The muscular unilateralism is now a thing of the past -- and no wonder. There is no weighty interest that does not require friends or at least partners."

Merkel clearly supported Bush's position on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, even though the New York Times (surprise!) interpreted her stance somewhat differently. In any case, Schroeder's confidant, Foreign Minister Steinmeier, made sure that the ambiguity of German politics is still alive and well.

Read John's article in full.