Over at the Atlantic Review blog Joerg has started an interesting debate about Germany’s – and NATO’s – mission in Afghanistan. There is a growing sentiment among the NATO participants that the peace-keeping and nation-building task is now undermined by the heavy-handed tactics of the US military, which have caused scores of civilian deaths in the country. Things in Germany came to a head over the weekend when a suicide bomber killed three German soldiers. Now the Afghanistan mission is exposing a rift in the governing CDU/SPD coalition in Berlin:
"The German soldiers are being identified with the way the US led the war," Annen said in an interview. "In my opinion, the mandate for Operation Enduring Freedom should not be extended."Trittin, whose Greens were in office with the Social Democrats when they made the decision in 2001 to send German troops to the American mission, said that the actions of US special forces were leading to the deaths of civilians and that German participation should be ended.Germany has the third-largest force serving in Afghanistan, after the United States and Britain
The opposition Left Party has gone even further, calling for the immediate withdrawal of all German troops from Afghanistan. The Left Party has been derided as reckless and extremist, but it is simply giving voice to what the overwhelming majority of Germans think:
BERLIN, May 23 (Reuters) – Nearly two thirds of Germans want their troops to withdraw from Afghanistan after three German peacekeeping soldiers were killed over the weekend, a poll published on Wednesday showed. Carried out on Monday by the Forsa polling agency for weekly Stern magazine, the poll showed 63 percent of respondents believe Germany’s Bundeswehr armed forces should withdraw from Afghanistan compared to 35 percent in favour of remaining.
The situation in Germany is similar in some respects to the rejection of the Iraq War in the United States. Every poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans want US troops to be withdrawn sooner rather than later, even as the Bush adminisitration with the backing of the Republican Party escalates the war with a surge of additional tens of thousands of troops. The difference is, Germans have come to the desire to withdraw from Afghanistan after losing only 21 troops, while it took the deaths of nearly 3,500 troops for Americans to wake to the folly of the Iraq misadventure.
