Jinn of Current Events

Just as the Gulf War victory was incomplete and the job had to be finished 12 years late, the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany has not been completed. Deutsche Welle via lgf: Poland is set to lead one of the occupied sectors in Iraq. German commentators greeted the proposal that it help its neighbor patrol Iraq with jeers, speaking of a wannabe great power bankrolled by the United States. The German media has gushed with mockery, jeers and cynicism about its Polish neighbor since the beginning of the week. The occasion was last week's news that the U.S. wanted to entrust Poland with one of the three occupied zones in Iraq. German commentators observed with amusement that Poland had only sent 200 soldiers to Iraq. Sending two hundred special ops soldiers to participate in the liberation of Iraq is much better than the performance of countries that armed Saddam and sought to prevent that liberation. Considering that Poland has suffered immensely and repeatedly at the hands of Germany, one would have hoped for more thought and appropriateness on the part of the Germans. Apparently they haven't quite abandoned the notion that Poles are sub-humans, positioned below the superior German race. Further, as noted by an lgf reader, The idea of Germans mocking anyone--but especially Poland--for being insufficiently warlike is beyond belief.

The German behaviour in the last 2 years has been utterly despicable, ranging from insulting Bush and denigrating the USA to sabotaging NATO and supporting Saddam Hussein. The latest anti-Polish outbursts are merely another symptom of a dangerous mentality that has not fundamentally changed in the last 70 years.

Germany was never fully disarmed. It still has a weapons industry, continues to arm sundry dictators of the world (such as Saddam), and has kept in place the cartels and ideologies that ruled before and under Nazism. Rather than ask Germany to send soldiers to Iraq, even if it were under Polish command, we should demand that they immediately and unconditionally abolish their secret services and military forces, as well as that they abandon all weapons production. The unification of the four German occupation zones following the fall of the Berlin Wall was not a "reunification" but the destruction of the post-WW II agreements to keep Germany divided and down. Interestingly, Leo Bauer is calling for a proper implementation of the Potsdam Agreement, i.e. the complete disarmament, demilitarization, denazification, and decartelization of Germany, including the elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for military production. Allowing the unification to happen was a mistake, which it is unfortunately too late to undo — something we may come to regret dearly should Germans launch another war in Europe. Germany must be disarmed without delay and thus prevented from interfering with liberty and peace in the rest of the world.