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Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Germany's Mr. Tough Guy vs America's Mr. Not So Tough Guy
Michael Kelly can't find fault with Germany's Joschka Fischer when it comes to Fischer's reluctance to be a good soldier and just do what President Ich bin Ein Dumbass wants him to do. Kelly has probably forgotten what Germany remembers all too well about being the soldier who just follows orders. Either way, Kelly goes to great pains to remind us of what a bad bad man Fischer was as he was growing up.
But for the formative years of your political life, you were no man in a blue government suit. You were a man in a black motorcycle helmet. That is what you were wearing on that day in April 1973 when you were photographed, to quote the New Left historian Paul Berman, "as a young bully in a street battle in Frankfurt."
In 2001, Stern magazine published five photographs of you in action that day. What these pictures depicted was described by Berman in a deeply informed 25,000-word article, "The Passion of Joschka Fischer" (The New Republic, Sept. 3, 2001). The photos showed you, Mr. Fischer, inflicting a "gruesome beating" on a young policeman named Rainer Marx: "Fischer and other people on the attack, the white-helmeted cop going into a crouch; Fischer's black-gloved fist raised as if to punch the crouching cop on the back; Fischer's comrades crowding around; the cop huddled on the ground, Fischer and his comrades appearing to kick him . . ."
Then there is this:
As Berman reported, Mr. Fischer, you rose in public life as an important figure in the anti-American, anti-liberal, neo-Marxist, revolution-minded German radical left of the generation of 1968. This was the left that produced and supported the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Red Army Faction), which, as Berman wrote, "refrained from nothing," including "kidnappings, bank holdups, murders." You were not a terrorist yourself, but you were a good and active friend to terrorists, weren't you, Mr. Fischer?
And, of course, Fischer didn't belong to the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but that doesn't stop Kelly from doing a little smear by association that he is so good at (see his whining about ANSWER). Kelly indulges in this a bit more with references to Fischer's "old friend", "housemate", and "Frankfurt colleague" along with gratuitous references to the "Revolutionary Cells", "Red Army Faction ", "Carlos the Jackal ", and the "PLO", because we know that if any of these people or groups did anything bad...it was all Fischer's fault.
In a turbulent time, Fischer was involved in revolutionary activities in Germany. Rightly or wrongly, he was a particpant in the political movements of his time. Yet the good people of Germany seem to have no problem with him speaking as their foreign minister. He is the product of his times who tried on ideologies to see what fit his world view. If he were a Republican we would call these "youthful indiscretions".
But what about our own "leader"? What was he doing at the same time that Fischer was searching for his place in the world?
Mainly snorting coke, staying drunk, screwing underaged Mexican hookers, blowing his Dad's friend's money on failed businesses, ducking out on his military commitments, and waking up in a pool of his own vomit secure in the knowledge that his politician dad would buy him out of any jam.
See? You do get the government that you deserve...
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