That’s it. ‘Old Europe’ is up to no good.
Colin Powel thinks that France and Germany want to let Saddam Hussein live to shoot his rifle in the air another day.
According to Bush and Co., German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has ulterior motives in mind when he and the Euro-wimps stump against a war on Iraq.
Well, that’s partially true. All countries have national interests that their leaders must realize, and Germany is no exception.
A new oil crisis would be a massive blow to Europe’s economy, which is quite unstable, characterized by high unemployment and large budget deficits.
War could destabilize the entire Middle East region, creating new waves of refugees and other social crises that Germany could ill afford.
Given Germany’s sizeable Islamic population, the increased risk of civil unrest and terrorist attacks on is own cities must also be taken into consideration.
Schröder’s opposition to war has nothing to do with some twisted theory of propping up Saddam’s regime. And it’s not without conviction, either.
Schröder feels strongly that war on Iraq can only be justified if it helped in the fight against terrorism.
Even then, he maintains that a full-scale war threatens an already tense region with catastrophe.
Schröder’s position is not only politically sustainable, but widely popular as well.
It’s a position clearly backed by the German Government. It’s also a position that largely reflects the popular sentiment of the German people, something that Bush and Co.’s war plans, despite over-hyped polling results, fail to do.
All of this highly principled opposition on the other side of the Atlantic infuriates the U.S. foreign policy-making elite.
They’re convinced that terrorism won’t end until the first Starbuck’s opens in downtown Baghdad, but dare not admit it to the American public.
Europe is forcing them to reveal their true intentions, which will make it harder to keep scaring the hell out of the American public with Code Orange, their 2003 remake of The Red Scare.
Germans are more scared of the U.S. starting WWIII than they are of Saddam giving CBN weapons to the same fundamentalists that he regularly uses for target practice. They’ve already figured out that this whole thing has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or Osama bin Laden, and they’ll have no part of it.
When Mr. Schröder speaks before Parliament, he speaks on behalf of the German people.
Too bad the same can’t be said for President Bush.
