Friday, November 12, 2010
As Benjamin Weinthal says in this Weekly Standard piece, Gerhard Schröder's perfidy, both while German Chancellor and after, come as no surprise to anyone who was paying attention at the time and not completely blinded by Bush hatred. What burns me, however, is the extent to which the American press itself was a willing and active accomplice to the crime. We heard over and over that George Bush wasn't popular with certain European leaders, as though this had everything to do with Bush, and nothing at all to do with any agency on the part of certain demagogic and corrupt European leaders like Schroder: Bush vs. Schröder
Observers of U.S.-German relations were probably not startled by former President Bush's disclosure in his memoir, Decision Points, that former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder deceived the U.S. government about his pledge to support America's toppling of Saddam's regime in Iraq.
According to Bush, Schröder told him in January 2001 [sic: 2002] that "What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you."
Bush added, "Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again" with Schröder. Schröder violated that trust by ultimately reneging on his support for the war in Iraq.
The German chancellor responded by saying that President Bush is "not telling the truth" in his memoirs. "As we know today, the Bush administration's reasons for the Iraq war were based on lies," added the current Gazprom oil executive Schröder, who maintains that Russia under Putin's tenure is a "flawless democracy." He has also gone to great lengths to make Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad politically and socially respectable, visiting him in 2009 to expand business ties between Iran and Germany and Russia and Iran.
That explains why the late Democratic congressman Tom Lantos called Schröder a "political prostitute."
The anti-Americanism of Schröder's Social Democrats was captured by his former spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye, who commented on Bush's memoir: "We noticed that the intellectual reach of the president of the most important nation at the time was exceptionally low. For this reason it was difficult to communicate with him. He had no idea what was happening in the world. He was so fixated on being a Texan." Heye was the editor in chief of the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts between 2006-2010.
Schröder was arguably the most anti-American post-World War II German chancellor. His Social Democratic election campaign in the summer of 2002 revolved around a wave of mass anti-U.S. hysteria in the former East German Stalinist states. He crudely exploited the widespread radical pacifism of the population in the now defunct German Democratic Republic (and in West Germany) to garner votes for election victory.
As Malte Lehming, the opinion page editor of the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel, wrote about Schröder's red alliance with the Green party in the Wall Street Journal: "But then they saved themselves with thunderous anti-Iraq war propaganda, playing upon strong anti-American resentments."
I don't question for a moment that Schroder is a perfidious bastard, but I am confused about the "timeline." Bush was elected in November 2000, but did not take office until January 20, 2001, and it was not until almost 8 months later that 9/11 occurred and Afghanistan, which had only been worrisome before, became like Japan on 12/8/41. So it seems a tad strange that the about-to-become or just inaugurated POTUS had a conversation with Schroder in January 2001 in which they spoke of Afghanistan and Iraq as nations that sponsored terror (which acts thereof before then were clearly linked to either?) and discussed military intervention in both. Bush came into office contemplating toppling Saddam and taking military action against Afghanistan? Nothing strange in this chronology?
That's a mistake. It's 2002 per the linked Spiegel article. Typo by Weinthal. Will correct above.
I wonder what average Germans think about this former PM that is now a Gazprom exec with his nose up Russia's bunghole.