A Bridge to “Blue America”

The February edition of Cicero has a number of excellent essays concerning US – German relations, and what chances there might be for improvement in a Second Bush administration.  One of the best pieces is by the Berlin writer Peter Schneider, who has been spending the year as "writer-in-residence" at Georgetown University in Washington DC.  So he has had a close-up view of the political divide in America – a divide that has grown even deeper since the election of November 2.  I find the observations and analysis in his essay Verdammt zur Partnerschaft  (literally: "Damned to parthership")  accurate and balanced.  I have translated the concluding passages:

From a moral standpoint, Bush’s America has can no longer
lay claim for the leadership of the democratic west. The preemptive war in Iraq, the system of abuse and
disenfranchisement of prisoners in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the
masterminding of the voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 elections which
disadvantaged the African-American voters, the blurring of the boundaries between church and state – none
of this can be reconciled to the self-image and mission of the US as the beacon
of liberty and human rights everywhere in the world.

Europeans now have to adjust to a partner on the other side
of the Atlantic that has been transformed; they must react to the glaring
contradictions between America’s self-image and its politics and at the same
time find their own solutions. It would be dangerous for Europe, in pursuing
its own path, to minimize the threat of Islamic totalitarianism, or, like
Michael Moore and his legion of fans in Europe, to declare it a figment of the
imagination. Many critics of the war in
Iraq act as if everything would be fine in Iraq and the Middle East if only
Saddam Hussein were still in power. The fact that one out every seven Germans
believe that US agents were somehow behind or involved in the attacks on 9/11 –
a similar number of French and Italians believe in such a conspiracy – shows
how much Europe has become stuck in a stupid, even infantile, anti-Americanism.
But the other danger is that European political leaders – in an effort to
distance themselves from ant-Americanism and “feel-good” pacifism – will ignore
America’s reckless use of military power and pledge blind loyalty to the
alliance. An example of this kind of
behavior was displayed by Angela Merkel during her visit to Washington DC in
spring of 2003 when she called for closing ranks with the US – without uttering
one critical word about the invasion of Iraq – as if it were the duty of
Germany to follow America into any war, even into a war that was rejected by
the majority of Americans themselves. A
similar logic was displayed by the Atlantik-Bruecke e.V when it took out a full-page ad in the New
York Times shortly for the launch of the Iraq invasion and listed everything
the Germans were grateful to the US for: liberation from fascism, security
shield during the Cold War, for the reunification of Germany. Many American readers were touched by this
tribute, but were equally confused when they observed that 80 to 90% of all
Germans were passionately opposed to the war in Iraq.

The US-German alliance cannot be stitched back together
through displays of obedience. It is about time for German political leaders to
think beyond a partnership with those who currently hold power in the White
House, and build a bridge to the cosmopolitan and liberal America which may be
out of power for some time to come. For
“blue America” demands that Europe defend the ‘moral values’ of democratic
civilization with confidence and resoluteness – values that George W. Bush and
his people have abandoned in the name of “War on Terror”.

I like the idea of political leaders  reaching out to democrats in the US.  We know that a sizable percentage of Americans share the same values of mainstream Europeans.  By working together now, "blue" Americans and Europeans can work towards an alliance of equals, rather than one dominated by US interests.