State of the Union Speech: Finally, One German Who Supports the U.S. in Iraq

I don't know how many Germans attended President Bush's State of the Union speech.

But I definitely know of at least one, and he even supports the U.S. in Iraq! No wonder he got a good seat...

As to the reaction of the German media to the speech, it's so far largely matter-of-fact reporting. An exception is this comment by Washington correspondent Carsten Schmiester of Norddeutsche Rundfunk (part of the vast German public radio network): "President Bush said in all earnest that the state of the nation is good. ... The state of the nation isn't good...Bush's war against terror not won...unfulfilled american dreams in education, better schools, health policies, lesser dependence on foreign oil...Republicans involved in corruption scandal...economic growth in last quarter 2005 faltered dramatically...".

Yawn. Another negative Washington correspondent assessment of America (scroll down page).

I guess this will set the tone for the commenting in the German media. Let us know what you read, see and hear.

Note from Ray: Looks like SPIEGEL ONLINE decided to bypass its own "Amerika Korrespendenten" and translate a negative editorial from American author Tim Grieve. Not surprisingly, there is absolutely no balancing opinion in sight. So much for tokens...

German-speaking readers looking for a German translation of Bush's speech unfiltered by the media should click here.

Comments

[joe]

. . . “unfulfilled (German) dreams in education, better schools, health policies, lesser dependence on foreign oil...(red – green) involved in corruption scandal...economic growth in last quarter 2005 faltered dramatically...".

That is so funny.

Things are always better in Germany. Ask any German.

Has anyone ever met an unhappy German?

[Atreides]

I would think that Germans who loathe America would find reason to cheer about El Presidente de la Bush's SOU speech: this man essentially laid out a candid blueprint for it's destruction via immigration and free trade [there is something to Jared Diamond's assertion that societies are not overthrown, but are suicides, methinks].
At this rate, the Deutsche and Frenchies soon won't have the Amis to kick around anymore because the USA will be Balkanized and ruled by mega international corporations who are only beholden to themselves.

[Atreides]

@ Joe - "Has anyone ever met an unhappy German?" LOL

Better to ask if one has ever met a optimistic, happy-go-lucky one outside a Bierstube. Look at them when they *smile*: their lips turn up revealing teeth but their eyes reveal the opposite. What else can one expect with a culture saturated with convoluted Kantian/ Hegelian gibberish;Schopenhauerian pessimism/existentialist nihilist double-talk mixed into a batter of cultural bolshevism as main ingredient for an artery clogging chocolate torte. Yummy. And many assert that "our minds are free". I always slap my knee, bust a gut when I hear/read that one..

[niko_kr]

"Look at them when they *smile*: their lips turn up revealing teeth but their eyes reveal the opposite."
Maybe you only met germans you identify with, or you are kidding, i don't know

[Atreides]

@ niko - Nope, not kidding. I have noticed this " duty smile with lips and teeth, but not the eyes" in every German I have ever met; I have known plenty and I wasn't looking for it specifically. Maybe it's genetic and they can't help it, don't know. Russians are the same way, so don't take it so big. Guess that is why Gerhard Schroeder and Putin could find a beautiful relationship with one another..

Maybe I am prejudiced because I am mostly Irish, and Irish smile with their eyes;-)

[grlzjustwant2havefun]

FINALLY SOME SENSE!

German, French, Spanish and Italian papers printed some of those 'Mo cartoons.

Ya friggin' hooo!

[grlzjustwant2havefun]

--will be Balkanized and ruled by mega international corporations who are only beholden to themselves.--

And their stockholders.

you don't want the country to be balkanized?

Stop this multi-culti nonsense.

[FranzisM]

@steppendaft - Do you enjoy slapping your knees at the fact that the home city of the father of the ideal of Eternal Peace is under the rule of a ruthless KGB agent with his hands on our gas taps? That would surely explain how you managed to kill these smiles and made people want to keep their minds free of you. Maybe I should start slapping my knees at historical persons which are existential for you?

[FranzisM]

Nice to see that the Americans chose a representative of German ancestry who would never be invited for any Islamic event. I hope though it was not this kind of support that he provided to the liberation of Iraq.

Did anybody notice that Carsten Schmiester used an only slightly modified Martin Luther quote ("Da stand er nun und konnte auch nicht anders") to describe Bushs role? This may be a tribute to Bushs tribute to Kings wife, but it may also be a description of the European-American relationship: America the Protestant who actively preaches optimism over pessimism, in contrast to Europe the Catholic who calmly recites the Geheimnis des Glaubens as ever since.

[Atreides]

@ Sally P - I would halt any talk about "mult-cult nonsense" if this edifice wasn't the rule/virus of current culture & economic trade. But it is 'nonsense' because our fearless leaders endorse it and are letting it take my Republic down the crapper. Corporations are beholden to their stockholders, you say?? Ever hear about Enron?

@ FranzisM - you can slap your knees and jig to a polka mach schau! at any historical figures you think that I am partial to and it shan't offend me in the least. Fairly much to be expected anyway.
No I don't specifically think it is halarious that Comrades Gerhard and Vladimir have this economic power over you or anyone else. My mirth, or 'shadenfreude', as you well say, has its origins in that a great deal of Europeans have this general Besserwisser attitude to Americans; think that just because they have knowledge of all of these BS continental philosophers who spewed nonsensical muck to begin with that even they couldn't understand; have less religious fundamentalists( Christian ones;the Mohammeds make up the difference)than the Bible Beatin' Yanks and have looser attitudes to nudity, sexual perversion and neuron-scrambling drugs - they are more in the 'know' and have fertile free minds..
Well...
..if they are so cerebral and all of that - why are the uncouth prudish simpleton Amis over there in the first place?? If you recall, we were once minding our own business just fine in our sphere for most of our Republic's existence.

What would Georg Hegel and Oswald Spengler say about that? I'm sure you'll tell me all about it;-)

[Atreides]

post scriptum - Oh, I forgot to mention *Cultural Bolshevism*(can't let that happen); we got all of this from your side. Thanks for the gift(sarcasm).

[FranzisM]

@steppendaft - You don't seem to understand more about distant mainlands than these you oppose. Europeans trying to be more American than the Americans and Americans trying to be more European than the Europeans might have some perverted neuron-scrambling fascination for each other, but no thanks I prefer my sex, drugs and Beethoven without political scapegoating. Your opinion of Georg Hegel and Oswald Spengler does not matter any more to me than mine of George Washington and Lee Harvey Oswald does to you.

America is there in the first place because there was the opportunity to found a new culture. The drain of the risk-ready cost Europe nearly its life, militarily and spiritually, but it also contributed to the transformation in which it could strip off the aristocratic legacy from the pre-Christian era. Well, nearly strip it off since existential disdain against absconding serfs is the last remnant of it, even though the hatesick would never admit that their rebellious attitude is in fact aristocratic conceit. How long did it take America to put down the last remnants of its racism, and would it have been any help if Europe had tried to simulate a Martin Luther King for you?

And what is "cultural bolshevism"? I don't think you are using the term in its Nazi sense, so what does it mean from an American? Is it like Barbie, Disney and Hollywood, only the other way round? What could Europeans do to limit the collateral damage?

[Gabi]

"Bölling: ... Man muss den Entführern also entgegenkommen, diskret mit einem ihrer Anführer reden. Dass uns das in Amerika keine guten Zensuren einbringt, sollte die Bundesregierung nicht daran hindern."
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,398681,00.html

Völlig unnötiger Schlenker gegen die USA. Wen genau meint er denn, der das kritisieren würde? Bush, sein Pressesprecher, die Medien, die Bush stützen oder die Anti-Bush-Medien? Welches Amerika also kritisiert Bölling?

[Atreides]

@FranzisM - Always learn something new here from you. For instance, Lee Harvey Oswald is somehow "exitential" to me and on par with lofty seating next to the Father of my Republic. I'm curious and please enlighten me farther..

Cultural Bolshevism, to enlighten you, is the proper term for Cultural Marxism and all of it's tentacles such as political correctness, multi culturalism/diversity, etc. It's origins are largely via a school of thought in Frankfurt Germany made up of revisionist Marxist intellectuals - many like Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm slithered over to our shore. They did a good job of marching through the insitutions and have by all appearances won.

[Atreides]

Also, the USA wouldn't had cared if a Hohenzollern returned to the throne, or would had dealt with a kinder and gentler Prussian Officer Corps running the show if a Konrad Adenauer couldn't had been found. What was essential was stability and keeping the Soviets out which would had forced the USA to be an isolated fortress if it wasn't for the creation of NATO. The truth is the USA could had cared less about "oppurtunity for a new culture" despite naive Wilsonian idealists claim to the contrary. Remember, Americans dealed with right-wing dictators like Franco, Salazaar and Greek juntas just as well and with better results than with such democracies like France ran by that bombastic double-dealing jerk, Chuck DeGaulle( too bad that OAS missed its target in '62).

[FranzisM]

@Gabi - Herr Bölling erklärt dass er sich das transatlantische Verhältnis als eine Lehrer-Schüler-Beziehung vorstellt, in der Amerika der Erwachsene wäre und Europa das Kind. Stichwort gute Zensuren. Dieser politische Infantilismus ist die beste Garantie nie eigenständiges kulturelles Selbstvertrauen zu erzielen, da er das reale Verhältnis in sein Gegenteil verkehrt. Deshalb glaubt dieser Mann, die Tatsache dass noch kein Ende des Terrors in Sicht ist wäre Grund zum Nachgeben, obwohl die Islamisten weniger Skrupel haben als Baader-Meinhof.

[FranzisM]

@steppendaft - Did you expect that the distance between two Germans you mentioned was smaller than that between the two Americans I mentioned? Like Oswald Spengler, some historical figures are existential in the negative sense of the word, while others contribute to its positive meaning. This is why I referred to George Washington as someone who took the opportunity to found a new culture.

Thank you for sheltering our emigrants from the Nazi reich, they were indispensable for the post-war rebirthing and even today Germany would be more difficult had they been killed. But being emigrants, not immigrants, they had to maintain full independence from the American kulturindustrie even when it began to treat them as a rival racket. Had they allowed any opportunity for their roots to be cut, their entire mission would have had failed. The Frankfurter Schule is just as existential for Germany as Antoine de Saint-Exupery is for France, but you chase them as if they had been farting at the Alamo or something.

As for Woodrow Wilson, if you think he was a misguided idealist look at Saudi Arabia and think again.

[Atreides]

FranzisM - First you claim that I adore Lee Harvey Oswald, now you got me being a partisan of Woodrow Wilson. Uh, if you are planning getting into the mind-reading racket, I suggest that you keep your day job. I HATE Woodrow Wilson! If I could go back into time I'd strangle the little bastard in his cradle. Largely because of him, we have all of this crap now: exporting democracy to savages,international government and unrestricted free trade.

How was Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm important to Germany's post-war recovery?? Marcuse, at least, was the patron saint and prophet of the international New Left that led spoiled middle-class kids to start riots in the 60s that nearly ruined the recovery; some of them went farther into the RAF as you know. Germany's recovery was due to Roepke- a capitalist who also hated the Nazis - not any of these New Left expat philosophers who sought to destroy it.

Won't have to fart much to find cultural bolshevism today(the result of the Frankfurt School kabal and Gramsci). Just turn on your TV, radio and read Stern. It's just as bad here, and the Alamo was sacked long ago.

[FranzisM]

@steppendaft - I have made none of these claims. From my point of view, Hegel was a founder and Spengler was a lunatic, and I would guess from yours Washington is the founder and Oswald the lunatic. And could it be that you don't hate Woodrow Wilson, but the fact that this U.S. president had to respond to the situation that the Kaiser had started a global war? Worse than that, the Kaiser had already surrendered to Islam at his 1898 pilgrimage to the Ummayad mosque of Damascus. If the Frankfurter Schule appears dark to you you have not yet seen the full darkness of the 20th century.

Important figures from the 1968er movement include Theodor W. Adorno, who built the path from ethics of conviction into ethics of responsibility, and Bernward Vesper, the riot intellectual who would rather kill himself than his father. This is where the new Germany has grown roots, while the oilboom-era professor you mentioned has remained intellectually sterile. But probably he would have agreed with me on unconditional solidarity with Israel. If your "cultural bolshevism" is the average Noam Chomsky tattle trying to be more European than the Europeans, then these pimps will have a harsh awakening when they learn that Europe is not quite the whore they imagine in their little black hearts.

[FranzisM]

@joe - "Has anyone ever met an unhappy German?"

I am not happy about the condition of Ariel Sharon.

Remember how Ariel Sharon led his country through the battle of Jenin while the geo-diplomatic powderkeg was at the brink of explosion. His stroke appeared on a bumpy day in transatlantic relations, precisely when the buggy shutdown routine of the Truman system had to be coredumped. Did Pat Robertson bark with no reason at all, or did he only bark up the wrong tree?

Some have derided Sharon as a bulldozer, but he picked up that insult and turned it into a badge of honor. Now they have inserted him a feeding tube, like in a dystopian euthanasia movie. Was the experiment worth it?