http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/News&Views.htm September 24, 2002 BUSH SAVES SCHROEDER by Srdja Trifkovic CHANCELLOR GERHARD SCHROEDER has won another four-year term after his Red-Green coalition scored the narrowest victory ever seen in a German election. Until only a few weeks ago he was expected to lose, and on his record he certainly deserved to lose: double-digit unemployment rate (ove= r four million Germans are currently our of work) is coupled with a continuing deluge of Third World immigrants; in addition his government w= as plagued by scandals, which forced the resignation of Defense Minister Scharping last July. = What saved him was his strong, determined opposition to Germany's participation in the U.S.-led war against Iraq. In a campaign almost devo= id of issues that the Social Democrats could gainfully exploit, Schroeder discovered that standing up to Bush was paying rich political dividends. When he declared that he "will not click his heels" and say yes to whatev= er Bush decides, the Germans just loved it. Being German, they could not hel= p going over the top. The rhetoric soon escalated from attacks on Washington's Iraq policy -- which were both legitimate and justified -- t= o the crude anti-Americanism with unpleasant overtones that could only politely be described as "populist." A leading member of Schroeder's part= y, former Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping, was quoted in the New York Time= s as saying that Bush wanted to overthrow Saddam to please "a powerful -- perhaps overly powerful -- Jewish lobby" -- which is what most European politicians think, but don't like a German saying so. And finally, Schroeder's Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin famously compared Mr. Bush's approach to the problem of Iraq with Adolf Hitler's bullying tactics. Now, reductio ad Hitlerum is a sure mark of moral degeneracy and intellectual bankruptcy -- it is used by American neocons and leftists alike, all the time -- but it has worked for Herr Schroeder's camp. In th= e closing weeks of the campaign his party moved from five points behind Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber's conservative CDU/CSU coalition to a dea= d heat. Stoiber could not devise a viable counter-strategy: he disagrees wi= th the gung-ho style of Bush's team, but he is also steeped in the Atlantici= st tradition of Germany's Christian Democrats, tradition that harks back to Konrad Adenauer. In the end he could not and would not exploit anti-Americanism endemic on the European Left and now rising even on the traditionalist Right. The problems facing Germany's society and economy will not be fixed by th= e second Schroeder administration. The nation that has given us the word "Angst" will remain gripped by one until it settles into being a "normal"= European nation. This it has tried to do, unsuccessfully, for the past 13= 0 years since Bismarck's unification. Even before reunification of 1989 Germany was the most powerful nation in Europe, its economy exceeds those= of France and Russia combined -- and yet it remains unsure of itself. Ten= months after giving up its coveted Detschmark in favor of the Euro its identity is again an issue. During the campaign Herr Stoiber added a controversial twist to the emerging new mood of the nation when he declared that the Czech Republic should not be admitted into the European Union unless it rescinds the "Benes Decrees" which were enacted as a quasi-legal cover for the expulsi= on of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland after World War II. He is also an advocate of stiffer immigration control, a touchy subject in a country th= at has been deluged by phony asylum-seekers, and yet depends on immigrant labor because it has lost the will to reproduce itself. There is no Haider, or Le Pen in Germany -- for now, anyway. Even if ther= e was, the two leading parties would soon gang up against him: the centrist= duopoly of German politics remains unchanged. Nevertheless, with Schroede= r we may witness a more self-assertive German tone in Brussels and in international fora. While the Bush administration persists in its insistence on an unnecessary and risky war with Iraq, Germany may now pro= d Europe away from its current path of Blairite submissiveness to Washington's neoimperial dictates. That would be good news, for Germany, for Europe, and for America. Srpska Informativna Mreza [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
