IS IT TIME TO INVADE ... GERMANY?
Op/Ed
By Richard Reeves
Syndicated Columnist
Wed Sep 25,10:02 PM ET
story.news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON -- The United States, as you may have noticed, is in the business of "regime change," a kind of sacred duty to eliminate leaders of other countries who are not with us -- which means, according to President Bush ( news - web sites), they are against us.
That decided, the question becomes, Do we take the time and inconvenience of doing things such as going to the United Nations ( news - web sites) and organizing multinational coalitions? Or should we just move unilaterally and get rid of people who we don't like or who just won't do what they're told?
I am speaking of Germany, of course, which is a more complicated problem than, say, Iraq. Regime change in Iraq is just getting rid of Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) and finding the Thomas Jefferson of Baghdad. In Germany, we may have to get rid of tens of millions of voters who defied our warnings and re-elected Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats.
Schroeder and his ilk were returned to power in Berlin after (perhaps because) he said the United States must be nuts to want to invade Iraq -- and good Germans should have nothing to with that. The Bush administration responded with its usual superpower humility and grace by having Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refuse to meet with German officials. In fact, Rumsfeld, meeting with other North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Warsaw, proclaimed that if the alliance did not support American demands for a rapid deployment force based in Europe, then NATO ( news - web sites) would become "irrelevant."
Who would that force be used against rapidly? Maybe Germany, huh? National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ( news - web sites) has declared that Schroeder's campaign (and his voters) "poisoned" American-German relations. If that leads to cruise missiles over Berlin, we would be careful, I'm sure, to try to avoid collateral damage to the property and persons of Germans who had the sense to vote Christian Democrat last week.
"Irrelevant" is a big word these days in Washington. The United Nations is irrelevant if it does not do things our way. Al Gore ( news - web sites), the fellow who got more votes than Bush in the last American election, was officially declared irrelevant by presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer ( news - web sites) because the former vice president said the war drums along the Potomac were too loud. Also irrelevant, I have been told, are suggestions that Saddam Hussein may not have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Truth be told, Schroeder is a pretty slippery guy who stayed in office, barely, with some clever American-bashing. But politics is politics. And democracy is democracy, even if one does not always like what voters do.
The irony here is that the Social Democrats' campaign is the model of the campaign being run now by President Bush's Republicans. With German unemployment of roughly 10 percent and economic growth near zero, it seemed that the country's voters were on the verge of changing their own regime, throwing out Schroeder in favor of Christian Democrat Edmund Stoiber. But Schroeder, rather cynically, cranked up the anti-Americanism usually under the European surface to divert attention from the country's growing economic problems during his stewardship.
Republicans are running the same campaign in the midterm congressional elections, with the only difference being that they are pushing for war in Iraq to divert attention from lesser economic problems and greater corporate corruption problems in the United States. Front-page headlines in last Wednesday's Washington Post included these:
"Poverty Rises, Income Falls," on top of a paragraph directing readers inside the paper.
"In President's Speeches, Iraq Dominates, Economy Fades," that one running across four columns under a large photograph of Britain's Tony Blair ( news - web sites), governor of the 51st state, saying Bush is right about everything.
Meanwhile, mention of America's new robber barons doesn't even make front pages anymore. The Post, however, did find room to note that Bush's deputy interior secretary, J. Steven Griles, formerly a lobbyist for energy and mining companies, has been holding regular meetings with his old clients. "Just social," said Griles. Irrelevant.
President Bush, meet Chancellor Schroeder. It takes one to know one.
______________________________________________________
RICHARD REEVES, author of President Nixon: Alone in the White House (October 2001), is a writer and syndicated columnist who has made a number of award-winning documentary films. His ninth book, President Kennedy: Profile of Power — now considered the authoritative work on the 35th president — won several national awards and was named the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993 by Time. His other best selling books include Convention and American Journey: Travelling with Tocqueville in Search of American Democracy.
Recipient of the 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Reeves writes a twice-weekly column that appears in more than 100 newspapers. He is a former chief political correspondent for The New York Times and has written extensively for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire and New York. |
