"Death to the Aspen Institute"
GEDMIN, JEFFREY
"Death to the Aspen Institute" But please don't call the Germans anti-American. BY JEFFREY GEDMIN Berlin BERLIN'S archbishop, Georg Cardinal Sterzinsky, has announced his approval of a boycott...
...A high school teacher arrived at the Aspen Institute with 45 students before the war for a discussion of the issues of the day...
...Another: "I'd like to hit you in the head with these photos...
...I just heard a business-man—to the laughter of the room— say, "What can you expect from a man who begins and ends every speech with a reference to God...
...I'm a friend of America's," he insisted...
...but I do not want America rewarded for this illegal policy...
...Germany is changing...
...Let's admit it...
...We're somebody again...
...Conflicted feelings...
...And the truth is, some Germans have never forgotten being humiliated by gum-chewing black Americans who 'liberated' them from Hitler...
...I have an internal conflict...
...We help at times to fuel the resentment...
...Europe is divided...
...What is this all about...
...course, her Christian Democrats are divided...
...Lobby machine...
...Of course, I want an end to the suffering of the Iraqi people...
...Gerhard Schroder himself finally announced that he wanted the coalition to prevail—but only late in the game when U.S...
...Germans have talked frequently in recent years about their "emancipation" from the United States...
...There's the coarser stuff...
...What to do...
...arrears, rejoining UNESCO, and pledging more foreign aid...
...According to a recent poll of the Allensbach Institute, 18 percent of the Germans believe America is a "peace loving" nation...
...Despite Angela Merk-el's pro-U.S...
...Berlin has been itching to play a leadership role in the new Europe—and for the E.U...
...consulate Christmas party in Leipzig...
...Alas...
...After two world wars and the Holocaust, some Germans still have a strong pacifist streak, too—and thank God some will say...
...The Protestant Church in Germany has been busy in the name of peace, too...
...But it's not hard to think that the German-Iraq debate is ultimately not about Iraq at all...
...Another friend of the United States—a businessman who insists he's really not anti-American—sends me e-mails with photographs of Iraqis injured or killed in the war...
...But what do the Germans really want...
...It's popular to assert that this is all a reaction to George W. Bush...
...ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, to Berlin called for a concerted campaign against the "U.S...
...At least France was never divided and had nuclear weapons and its independent foreign policy...
...as cover for an intervention in Iraq...
...We Americans surely underestimated how difficult it must have been for our allies to play junior partner during the Cold War...
...You might even get the feeling some do not want us to win the war...
...Last December, the pastor of the famous Nikolaikirche, where protesters once gathered in late 1989 to oppose East German Communist rule, publicly announced his own boycott of the U.s...
...Four out of five say Americans cannot be trusted...
...A gentleman who approached me in front of the swank shops on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin echoed similar sentiments...
...Whatever you call it, these can be tricky days for an American in Berlin...
...Well, he did do all these things, with little to show...
...A February cable from Germany's U.N...
...or for that matter try to solve Iraq through the Security Council...
...fan mail (I spend a lot of time on German television defending the war against Saddam Hussein) that says I'm a "war criminal," a "coward," an "ideological pornographer," a "son of whore," a "U.S...
...The Germans have a medium-sized country, with no permanent seat on the Security Council, spend meagerly on defense, face daunting economic challenges and a serious demographic crisis...
...And those bloody, boasting Yankees keep going strong as ever...
...The signs and chants of demonstrators like: "Baghdad=Dresden," "Bush=Hitler," "USA=Mass Murder Central," "North Korea Needs Nuclear Weapons," and so forth...
...Still, such protest "has nothing to do with anti-Americanism," says Manfred Kock, chairman of the top council of Protestant churches in Germany...
...technological edge and wondered aloud whether this war was really "a fair fight...
...It would be "better . . . to force the U.S...
...It's a national sport to ridicule the president...
...Goebbels," a "mentally ill asshole," a "Jew f—er," and, incidentally, that I am "not welcome here...
...The way the administration handled Kyoto was a fiasco...
...Of course, there are differing views on Iraq, disarmament, international law, and the United Nations...
...Boenisch says Germans will no longer accept it, "when Washington says: Everyone, follow my commands...
...As Hannes Stein, an editor at Die Welt, says, "The subconscious has no concept of time...
...Bush, Remember Nurnberg 1945—Death by Hanging...
...one woman named Stephanie (yes, they often sign these) calls for "death to the Aspen Institute...
...Like Sharon with Israel, Bush surely gives people a cover for expressing something deeper...
...It's a core theme...
...Especially, perhaps, for Germany...
...But he added that he was "so disgusted" by American behavior in the world, he would never visit the States again...
...Stranger than all this, though, is the mainstreaming of, shall we say, those skeptical and ambivalent attitudes toward the United States...
...Then there's the Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin...
...BY JEFFREY GEDMIN Berlin BERLIN'S archbishop, Georg Cardinal Sterzinsky, has announced his approval of a boycott of American products...
...There have been mistakes...
...And that, per our allies request, he were to remain engaged in the Balkans, seek partnership with Russia, act in Afghanistan multilaterally (90 nations no less...
...Good idea...
...to act unilaterally" so that the Americans "would be seen as being forced to return . . . with regret to the Security Council" when it comes to the issue of reconstruction...
...Helmut Kohl's former press spokesman Peter Boenisch, who opposes the Iraq war, says preemption is a "crime," even if it's labeled "Made in the USA...
...Wir sind wieder Wer...
...The teacher himself asked whether a motive for the war was the need for the Pentagon to test its newest weapons (he was not kidding...
...For starters, "reconnect to the Germans through reconstruction in Iraq," says one administration official, "if they are ready to join us on a 'non-Gaullist' basis...
...A recent letter to the editor of Die Zeit explains the dilemma: "Josef Joffe wants a quick end to the war...
...troops stood 15 miles outside Baghdad...
...Nor has the selling of the war against Saddam been a roaring success either...
...The American president has a language and body language that are not culturally legible for some parts of the world...
...The German foreign ministry has become activist...
...Karl Lam-ers, the recently retired foreign policy spokesman, rejects Germany's role as a "passive appendage" of the United States...
...Schroder's Social Democratic party (SPD) has become the party of "isms": Gaull-ism, nationalism, pacifism, isolationism, E.U.-firstism, anti-American-ism—anything and everything but good old fashioned Atlanticism...
...A television anchor asked a military expert about the U.S...
...one comes with the inscription: "You disgust me...
...to bestride the world stage...
...A protester's sign planted in front of the American embassy reads: "Mr...
...But imagine if Bush were to pursue Euro-friendly things like the paying of our U.N...
...Public opinion is no less estranged...
...The campaign included the attempt to join other Security Council members in blocking the Americans from using the U.N...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 31
