Rummy!
After a three-year campaign of orchestrated demonization by the media, most Germans regard President George W. Bush as the contemporary incarnation of Lucifer. If the weather is too warm, it's the fault of Bush for not signing onto the Kyoto treaty. If the North Korean tyrant says he's got the bomb, the madman's lack of oil will be trotted in some bizarre article in the toady press as the real reason he's allowed to terrify his neighbours. From Bremen in the north, to Bavaria in the south, the cult of the "American devil", to recycle some of that old Maoist terminology, is ubiquitous.
After the President, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, is the "running dog" who sends the Little Red Book crowd into contortions of rage. To their horror, he's in Munich today. And he's just finished speaking at the city's annual Conference on Security Policy. What did he have to say? Well, Rummy wouldn't be Rummy if he didn't have a few barbs in his PowerPoint. To put his remarks in context, the German Minister for Defence, Peter Struck, preceded him on the podium reading a speech that was supposed to have been given by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He's ill in bed, although quite a few mischievous minds at the conference say that it's a Rummy antipathy and not a tummy bug that has him lying low. The Schröder/Struck speech was filled with the usual obscurities about "Europe" and "the EU", aspirational stuff about conflict resolution, calls for talks about talks and and lots of the ankle-biting that has come to hallmark the recent German approach to NATO. Yes, "multilateral" was there, too. In short, Germany wants to get the EU into NATO, turn it into a talking shop and immobilize it completely. It was left to Rummy to give this kind of mushiness a good knock on the head and remind those present of what's involved here. An excerpt from his speech:
Sixty years ago, World War II came to an end. Since that time, we have counted on each other in times of peril and challenge. I am old enough to remember both the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and the ascension and collapse of Nazism, of Fascism, and of Soviet Communism as well. Together we have helped to protect Kosovo. And recently brought aid to the victims of a devastating Tsunami. Great achievements are possible when the Atlantic Community is united.Our unity need not be a uniformity of tactics or views, but rather a union of purpose. Those who cherish free political systems and free economic systems share similar hopes. And working together, those hopes can be realities for the many more who yearn to be free.
As Winston Churchill once said of our Atlantic Alliance: "If we are together, nothing is impossible."
Yesterday Mosul; today Munich. "Old Rumsfeld", as he mockingly called himself this morning, is not slowing down or softening up. Next up on the Atlantic Alliance? Expect a run on crucifixes in Germany because He is coming.
