"There is no more steadfast friend in this coalition than Germany,
and I'm proud to have him here." These were the words with which
President Bush charmed the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder,
when he visited the White House on October 10, 2001. The Chancellor
replied: "We are very much in agreement that this fight against
terrorism, which we are all involved in by now, must be a very comprehensive
approach."
Responding to the President's request, the Schröder government
sent a contingent of about 4,000 soldiers to assist in the war against
al-Qaida and in the rebuilding of law and order in Afghanistan. The
Chancellor could not know what the Washington Post reported on January
12, 2003, that on September 17, 2001--six days after the attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--the President had signed a
"TOP SECRET" plan for a global campaign against terrorism
that already anticipated the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Only in his State of the Union address on January 28, 2002, did the
President publicly state that Iraq was an "evil" the U.S.
and her allies had to confront. In April, he told a British reporter:
"I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go."
By then, the Chancellor was in the middle of his re-election campaign.
The polls showed him trailing his challenger. Unemployment was near
10 percent of the labor force, and a large majority of the electorate
expressed opposition to German involvement in a war in the Middle East.
While denouncing Saddam's brutal regime, the anti-war spokesmen demanded
non-violent means to bring down the dictator. After all, since 1945
young Germans had been told by their parents and teachers that "war
is immoral' and "war is hell."
Rather than losing the election on the Iraq issue, Schröder incensed
the White House when he announced: "As far as military intervention
against Iraq goes, I believe we should be restrained. That means that
Germany will not participate." The administration's hawks were
furious. Both National Security adviser Condaleeza Rice and Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld called the Chancellor's statement "poisonous."
Rumsfeld spurned the German defense minister's request for a face-to
face meeting at the NATO conference in Warsaw. The President refused
to congratulate Schröder on his re-election. He has not spoken
with him since. No diplomacy here.
When French President Chirac and the Chancellor jointly cautioned against
rushing into war, Rumsfeld called them "a problem." Others
called them an "axis of disbelief, an "axis of the unwilling,"
"ungrateful allies," "ambivalent," "irrelevant,"
or even "supporters of Saddam Hussein." The German Foreign
Minister, Joschka Fischer, was quick to respond: "We should treat
each other sensibly. Our position is not a problem. It is a constructive
contribution." Indeed, Rumsfeld should have known better than to
insinuate that Germany did not aid the U.S. military efforts. The facts
tell a different story.
Germany presently hosts roughly 80,000 American soldiers on numerous
bases, including the European Command in Heidelberg, the big Rhein-Main
airport, the military air base at Ramstein (86th Airlift Wing), the
large military training area of Baumholder, several medical centers,
and large supply depots. One wonders how Mr. Rumsfeld would conduct
a war in Iraq without the extensive logistical facilities on German
soil, their security guarded by German military and police units. At
the Grafenwöhr base, senior U.S. commanders and more than 1,000
staffers are presently conducting a war game called Victory Scrimmage.
Airborne, armored, and infantry units are conducting maneuvers in preparation
for war. Two US Patriot anti-missile batteries are presently being shipped
from Germany to Israel while Germany is lending Israel 128 missiles
and auxiliary equipment.
The "problem" with Schröder's government is obviously
not that it fails to support America's military ambitions. The "problem"
is its audacity to respond to domestic demands, rather than to an unpopular
demand by the Bush administration. Germany, Fischer explained, is an
ally, not a satellite.