Hollow men, hollow words
Same old cliché³ trotted out in the German parliament this morning: "failure of diplomacy", "war no solution", "only the UN?". How could anyone be expected to take seriously a debate about the shape of a liberated Iraq while listening to such banalities being uttered by a bunch of insufferable hypocrites.
Chancellor Schr? and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, cynically and calculatedly chose anti-Americanism as their trump card last year and benefited handsomely from the move — they are still in power. Recently, the German president, Johannes Rau, added his voice to the cacophony. Having now placed resentment and rancour at the core of Germany's relationship with Washington, these three, their followers and a fawning media, frightening in its Soviet-style toeing of the party line, believe that they represent some kind of moral force. They're deluded. They've gambled and lost.
Buying off tyrants with cosy deals and soothing them with weasel words is yesterday's strategy. Appeasement does not work and those who endorse it are doing an enormous disservice to their people.
Liberating the oppressed and deposing tyrants are moral choices; appeasing dictators and fomenting hatred of those who would overcome them are immoral choices
Comments
Schroeder is a slimy opportunist anti-American, but I kind of like Fischer, he's been saying some good things about the US lately, and I think his opposition to the war was sincere.
Posted by: Pikachu | April 3, 2003 8:43 PM