Peace and Democracy were Brought to Europe with the Sword

Just about two weeks ago, Claus Christian Malzahn published an excellent piece on SPIEGEL ONLINE that unfortunately falls into the category of rare token article. Those familiar with the occasional Henryk Broder article are already familiar with the phenomena. For those who aren't, the game goes a little something like this: Once every fortnight or so, SPIEGEL ONLINE features an editorial that completely goes against the grain of its predominantly left-wing, anti-American worldview. This is done more out of vanity than any real sense of journalistic integrity. The purpose of the exercise is to apply a thin veneer of spray-on pseudo-objectivity to mask the overwhelming stench of the publication's rank, overt bias.   

Despite that fact, Mr. Malzahn's work, entitled "Terminator? Demokrator!" is absolutely worth reading. Additionally, one can always hope against hope that such articles become more frequent in the German media. We have therefore decided to offer our readers a full English translation exclusively on Davids Medienkritik:

Terminator? Demokrator!

By Claus Christian Malzahn

Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon: The virus of democracy is running rampant in the Middle East. German foreign policy must finally react to this joyous turnaround and look the fact in the eye that, in fact, freedom and democracy sometimes are brought with fire and sword.

Berlin – George W. Bush – the man knows what he is talking about – once compared Germany’s abstinence from the Iraq war with the behavior of a dry alcoholic: For them a glass of beer is already one glass too many. War as a political means became taboo for the German Federal Republic after the Wehrmacht and SS left Europe in rubble and ash, murdered nearly all European Jews and struck a swath of death through the Soviet Union. At the moment, Germany is virtually sinking in a flood of memories of the Second World War; Almost every day 60 years ago is relived once again through the media. No other nation in Europe is so obsessed with history as the Germans. The fascination with “downfall” is nearly boundless.

Photo caption: Aircraft carrier “USS Abraham Lincoln” on September 11, 2002, the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center: The Nazi rule was also not ended by sit-ins in front of the Führer headquarters.

But this flood of pictures and avalanche of history bury some important realizations that still possess validity even today. The Nazi rule was also not ended by sit-ins in front of the Führer headquarters. Hitler’s total war machine was fought to defeat at the greatest military and civilian sacrifice on the part of the Russians, Americans and British. We Germans were brought democracy carried into our land by bombs and grenades. It would not have worked otherwise, because the Germans did not want it otherwise. Many believed in their Führer to the very end, and the first steps of re-education back then were not motivated by social workers, but instead ordered by the US Army.

Peace and democracy were brought to Europe with the sword. George W. Bush began a war two years ago against Iraq out of false reasons. Good reasons existed to protest against him. Now it seems that from this wrong war, real freedom of opinion and democracy are emerging. Then there would be equally good reasons to celebrate.

Photo caption: Concentration camp Buchenwald after the liberation by the Allies: Peace and democracy were brought to Europe with the sword.

The weapons of mass destruction that allegedly threatened the world have never been found – but instead mass graves have been found. In January, the Iraqis voted against the terror. It has not yet been stopped. The followers of the top terrorist Zarqawi are following a dark, religiously-fired promise of happiness. For them, death is the climax of life. Only death will stop them. However, the Iraqi voters have achieved something else: The virus of democracy that Zarqawi and his consorts so fear is raging in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia there were local elections in February – in the eyes of the West a ridiculous event, but for the residents a meaningful exercise in relaxing things related to freedom of opinion. Until now only men were allowed to vote – but the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud promised just now in an interview with Time Magazine that this will soon change: Women are more sensible voters than men anyway. Entirely new tones from Riyadh.

Wake-Up Call for the Lebanese People

What is happening in Lebanon is just as amazing. Millions of people are gaining political self-confidence – despite occupation and fresh reminders of a bloody civil war. Whoever was behind the terror attack on the former Minister President – he barely could have had a wake-up call for the Lebanese people in mind. It is still to early to compare these developments with the “orange revolution” in the Ukraine. But a sign of hope are the young people, who with flags waving want to take possession of their land once and for all.

Photo caption: Demonstration in Beirut: Signs of hope

Where the journey in Lebanon is headed is anyone’s guess. The Syrians will have to leave the oppressed country – now or later. Perhaps then the virus of democracy and freedom of opinion will reach over from Beirut to Damascus, perhaps it will soon cover Amman and Tehran. We Europeans should have no fear of this process, but instead should support it with our given strength. For far too long the essence of German foreign policy consisted of leaving everything as it was. “Critical dialogue” with Tehran sounded great – and didn’t harm anyone. Blood for oil in the Iraq war? Granted. Let us leave the USA out of the game for a moment and take a look at the volume of exports of the Federal Republic of Germany into the land of the mullahs: 2.7 billion Euros (more than $3.5 billion) per year. What we call peace is characterized by others as the cold silence of the grave “kalte Grabesstille.” We negotiate with people who like to force their people into the corset of the Koran. And for those for whom it is too narrow, there is prison, torture, exile – or death.

German Incence Stick Policy “Deutsche Räucherstäbchenpolitik”

A US war against Iran would be foolish. But here no one should claim, that peace rules in Iran. The pacifist mentality of the Federal Republic of Germany has a tangible economic rationale. If it were up to the German government, we would still be sitting in Tehran in one-hundred years drinking tea. Whoever holds the democratization of the Middle East for correct can’t have anything against the Americans when they let off a little steam now and then against the German incence stick policy “Deutsche Räucherstäbchenpolitik”. The latest blockades of the mullahs of the inspection of the nuclear program document that. A little bit of sharpness in the dull European-Iranian dialogue could hardly be detrimental, after all, Foreign Minister Kinkel already ran this sort of chit-chat diplomacy and achieved nothing. In Iran, the conservative mullahs are sitting more tightly in the saddle than ever before.

Photo caption: Bush in front of a Jesus picture: Legitimate, serious objections against Bush's cannon boat democratization

There are legitimate, serious objections against Bush’s cannon boat democratization: Abu Ghraib! Guantanamo! How does a country that tolerated torture and created zones without justice stand for democracy and human rights? It is appalling that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is still in office and Secretary of State Colin Powell had to make way. But the acts of torture have not remained without atonement: At first 38 years, in the meantime 16 years was demanded by a state’s attorney for the torture bride Lynndie England. That would be a lot of time behind bars for a person who did not commit murder. The reality in the Middle East is additionally more complicated than a pair of terrible photos from the dungeons of the US Army would hope to prove.

The people in Iraq simply set their hopes against this iconography, emphasized sometimes more in the West than in the Middle East. This double-edged sword of war crimes and liberation has existed in the past. When US General George Patton landed on Sicily with the 7^th US Army in July 1943, 150 Italian and 50 German soldiers who had already surrendered were murdered: A war crime also at that time.

In April 1945, Patton’s soldiers liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp. What they saw on the Ettersberg near Weimar knocked the breath out of them: Piles of bodies, living skeletons, the dying didn’t stop for weeks after the liberation. Even the birds had fled from the crimes of the Nazis. They finally came back when the crematorium no longer pumped its sweet clouds of death into the sky.

“Shock-and-awe” Pedagogy

In the next days, George Patton obliged a thousand Weimarer to the clean-up work in the concentration camp. From every household someone had to make the hike up to the Ettersberg to bear witness to the atrocities of the Nazis. The action was called “viewing the atrocities” – necessary “shock and awe” pedagogy on a nation that to the end believed in the Führer, the wonder weapons and Santa Claus. “Viewing the atrocities” was one of the first measures of re-education of the Germans – ordered by a general who brutally violated the Geneva Conventions on Sicily.

Photo caption: Election advertising in Basra: It would be better for Iraq if the US Army stayed a bit longer

But, despite that, who would contend the fact that the man who liberated Buchenwald is a historic hero? He pushed the noses of the Weimarer, in part very cold and arrogant, absorbed with themselves and Goethe, into the crimes of the Nazis that for years took place in their backyard and didn’t bother them any further. Patton and the US Army pulled back not long thereafter. The areas conquered by the US Army were left to the Russians in return for West Berlin.

Patton’s 7^th Army later went in part into the V Corps, that unit of the US Army that two years ago carried the main weight of the attack on Baghdad. Among the 42,000 soldiers is also the 205 Brigade of the Military Secret Service, some of the men and women of this troupe carried out their service in Abu Ghraib. Other soldiers of the V Corps are currently building schools, on patrol, the 130^th Engineering Brigade built bridges or renovated streets. Without the protection of the V Corps, one could not have voted in Iraq.

It would be better for Iraq if the US Army stayed a bit longer – and would not disappear again as quickly as back then in Weimar: So that the virus of democracy can continue to spread unhindered as long as possible.

Perhaps the most incisive point made by Mr. Malzahn is that relating to German foreign policy. German pundits and critics of the Bush administration may scream and shout as they might about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo: But had the world continued on the course set out by them, Saddam Hussein's regime of mass murder would still be in power and democracy would still be but a distant dream to many in the Middle East for whom freedom is now a tangible goal.

Certainly, the abuses at Abu Ghraib represent a moral setback for the United States. Some critics of the Iraq war have even called Abu Ghraib a moral "catastrophe." What these very critics fail to see is that their own decades-long indifference to the plight of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East, borne of a convenient mix of knee-jerk pacifism and deep-seated economic interests, represents a true moral catastrophe. European foreign ministers and leaders comfortably sipping tea and brokering multi-billion dollar business deals with dictators in expensive palaces and then criticizing the US for its dealings in the Middle East is hypocrisy of the highest degree.

Saddam's victims: Hundreds of thousands shared their fate while the European media looked the other way...

Above all, European indifference and inaction in the face of mass murder and genocide represent the greatest "moral catastrophe" of recent times in the democratic West. Nothing, not historic pacifism nor economic interests can justify the collective inaction on the part of Europe's elites when confronted with mass graves and genocide in Iraq, Rwanda, the Balkans or Sudan. Until Europeans come to terms with the very real consequences of their own stifling indifference and inaction, it will be difficult for Americans to take seriously the endless litany of protest, derision and criticism echoing from across the Atlantic.

(Translation and commentary by Ray D.)

Comments

[Pamela]

>> There are legitimate, serious objections against Bush’s cannon boat democratization: Abu Ghraib! Guantanamo!

Abu Ghraib and Gitmo as objections are neither legitimate nor serious. Both, having come into being AFTER the initiation of hostilities, played no role in the rationale for the wars. I don't recall any legitimate or serious objections to the U.S. role in WWII based on the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.

>> How does a country that tolerated torture and created zones without justice stand for democracy and human rights?

If torture is tolerated why are people being held accountable and sent to prison? Gitmo is a zone without justice? No one held there is covered under the Geneva Convention guidelines. What codification of justice is he referring to?

>> It is appalling that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is still in office and Secretary of State Colin Powell had to make way

This may come as a surprise to the writer, but the role of the cabinet is to implement the POTUS policy. Rumsfeld did and does do that. Powell tried to implement the State Department's policy. He's gone. If you have a problem with Rumsfeld, you have a problem with Bush. Wait till Condi and Bolton get done with you.

>> George Patton obliged a thousand Weimarer to the clean-up work in the concentration camp

Actually, I believe it was Eisenhower (could be mistaken).and the camp was a Buchenwald satellite (Ordung?) One interesting thing Patton did do, though: Some of the Americans who liberated Dachau were so outraged they put the SS up against a wall and machine-gunned every one of them until their commanding officer could stop them. He dutifully filed a report with Patton in the event that Patton wanted them brought up on charges. Patton threw the report in the trash.

I'm short on time - back later

[Pogue]

Of course in a perfect world democracy and the end of thugs like Saddam, Assad, Arafat, Mubarek, the Mullahs of Iran, all of these would fade from the scene without a shot being fired and not a single innocent injured

Sadly, we don't live in this utopia

So the choice is still there - support the effort to take care of these tyrants - or support the effort of these tyrants to stay in power

[Huan]

funny that while on the one hand he accept that freedom and democracy can sometime only be delivered by force, he still cling to the MSM perpetuated wmd as raison d'etre for the war in iraq. while this was the topic of debate at the UN, all speeches by the bush administration pertaining to the war also mentioned the humanitarian reasons, even colin powell's speech to the UN in the fall of 2002.
Thus the author has only peered out of the cave but not yet stepped out of the cave of german lemming unified perspective.

[Pogue]

Perhaps all Germans should modify the sentence "the reason given for going after Saddam was WMD" to "the only reason ever covered in the German media for going after Saddam was WMD and the inference we were all in imminent danger from them"

[lemmy]

Also conveniently not mentioned by the main stream media (MSM) were the 16 or so UN resolutions (not one, not two, not three, but 16!) totally disregarded by Saddam and his thugs.

Saddam, an admirer of Stalin, knew the UN was weak, and now, as we have learned, on the take and susceptible to corruption and pay-offs.

Chirac's 30-year relationship with Saddam is rarely ever mentioned by the MSM, either. Rumsfeld meets Saddam one time as a private business man in the 1980's, and that is played up by the left regularly.

[Joe]

When you live in Wonderland, you get to make up things as you go along.

Of course, it gets more diffuclt with time but I have great faith in france and Germany to spin this.

[jane m]

Even though Malzhan spends some words on Abu Grahib and Guatanamo, the overwhelming thrust of his comments are pro-American and a GWB apologetic to the German reader. Let's not spend too much time lamenting his criticism of two of the more notorious episodes of the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

He balances them with reminders of the brutality of the victor Patton and other US generals in the conduct of WWII and plays them off as small flaws compared to the German death camps of the day. His comparison is obvious. The hizzy fits the Euros have been throwing over the two prisons is out of proportion to the good that bringing the sword of democracy to the ME is. He is balancing the evils of war with the good of the resulting freedom from tyranny. I see much to admire in Malzahn's thoughts.

[lucklucky]

For Dachau

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/SoldiersKilled.html

Now imagine that images in the media...Roosevelt = Hitler ?

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In any human enterprise with 150000 men and women will ever be some bad apples, statistically there is a probablity that there are there murders , rapists, etc. In a 150000 city we would have muder, even organised crime probably etc. I think this was the case of Abu Ghraib.
Then there is good people affected by war that commit murder.

What matters, is how the authorities handle the situation, the behaviour of Commanders and the whole response of the army and if there is a systemic nature of that kind of problems.

That is completely diferent to Saddam asking to crush a village of a rebellious Iraqui tribe were even the children were incinerated.

Sadly, the language only can show mildly the true diference between them.

[Ray D.]

I must say I agree with Jane M: We should not dwell excessively on the few questionable presumptions that have crept into Malzahn's thought-process as a result of living in Germany.

All in all I believe that this article must be viewed as an overwhelmingly positive piece that makes a number of excellent points sorely missing from the public debate in Germany.

---Ray D.

[Saudichen Goatse]

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/debatte/0,1518,grossbild-328691-344346,00.html

The color photo of KZ Buchenwald in the article.

Does anyone know the source of this photo? It looks too "clean" to be historical?

[James]

So, in other words, Germany will once again be on the wrong side of history...

[fmj]

Unfortunately the end of war did not at the same time mean the end of killing.

(Not even for the jews)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

[Huan]

Jane & Ray

I understand the sentiment you both express regarding Malzhan. However, he is perpetuating some falsehood even now. Do not not care more for truth than whether he agrees with the US or not?

[Kosmopolit]

Spiegel already had an English translation up.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,344679,00.html

[Ray D.]

@ Huan,

Of course I do. I agree that he makes a few questionable presumptions. If you want to question and debate those presumptions that is fine and absolutely legitimate.

But again, I don't think we should nitpick individual points to the extent that readers' appreciation of the overall postitive message is lost.

---Ray D.

[Joe]

"Patton’s 7th Army later went in part into the V Corps"

Patton wasn't the commander of the 7th Army. Patton commanded the 3rd Army. General Patch commanded the 7th Army. The 7th Army wasn't even in the same Army Group as Patton's Army. The 7th was in Dever's 6th AG, Patton's Third was in Bradley's 12th. Patton did command the 7th during the invasion of Sicily but was relieved after slapping a soldier.

"One interesting thing Patton did do, though: Some of the Americans who liberated Dachau were so outraged they put the SS up against a wall and machine-gunned every one of them until their commanding officer could stop them. He dutifully filed a report with Patton in the event that Patton wanted them brought up on charges. Patton threw the report in the trash."

Rubbish. The troops in question were with the 45th Infantry Division which was a 7th Army unit. This wasn't Patton's army. The "Commanding Officer" you are slandering was Felix Sparks. Felix later sat on the Supreme Court for Colorado. Felix commented on this himself:

"As I watched about fifty German troops were brought in from various directions. A machine gun squad from company I was guarding the prisoners. After watching for a few minutes, I started for the confinement area. After I had walked away for a short distance, I hear the machine gun guarding the prisoners open fire. I immediately ran back to the gun and kicked the gunner off the gun with my boot. I then grabbed him by the collar and said: "what the hell are you doing?" He was a young private about 19 years old and was crying hysterically. His reply to me was: "Colonel, they were trying to get away." I doubt that they were, but in any event he killed about twelve of the prisoners and wounded several more. I placed a non-com on the gun, and headed toward the confinement area.

It was the forgoing incident which has given rise to wild claims in various publications that most or all of the German prisoners captured at Dachau were executed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The total number of German guards killed at Dachau during that day most certainly not exceed fifty, with thirty probably being a more accurate figure. The regimental records for that date indicate that over a thousand German prisoners were brought to the regimental collecting point. Since my task force was leading the regimental attack, almost all the prisoners were taken by the task force, including several hundred from Dachau."
http://www.remember.org/witness/sparks2.html
http://www.state.co.us/courts/sctlib/87.htm

With the 45th that day was my Uncle. I was told at a very early age what the character of "German Culture" was made of. I've seen the pictures his unit took that day.

[beimami]

@Anonymous

And America thanks Bulgaria and Italy for their assistance, and a job well done. Iraq is on its way to democracy, and Saddam Hussein and his vassals Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac have lost.