On the eve of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the US last week, Die Welt published an editorial which still has me scratching my head. Read Alle Wege führen nach Washington. The editorial ends with this incredible statement:
Es wäre ein Fehler zu glauben, Amerikaner hätten Freude daran, ihre Kinder in Übersee fallen zu sehen. Aber man bekommt nicht den iPod ohne Stealth-Bomber. Die Unbekümmertheit des einen gehört zur Unbedingtheit des anderen. Sie sind Ergebnis einer Freiheit, die Amerikaner glauben verteidigen zu müssen. Und wenn sie das tun, haben sie einen drohend langen Atem.(It’s a mistake to believe that Americans take any pleasure in seeing their children die overseas. But you can’t get an iPod without a stealth bomber. The carefree nature of the one goes together with the necessity of the other. They are both the result of the freedom that Americans believe must be defended. And when they defend it, they have frighteningly large amounts of stamina.")
There may be some who really believe that engaging in unnecessary, pre-emptive wars is somehow connected to the development of the iPod. But innovation is happening all over the world in nations that promote peace and that spend a fraction of their GDP on their military compared to the US. How to explain the success of Nokia in Finland or Research in Motion in "socialist" peace-loving Canada? It is true that the US leads the world in the production of WMDs and innovation in instruments of death ("smart bombs"). And there may be some that actually believe that the mis-adventure in Iraq has something to do with "defending freedom". But the vast majority of Americans do not – they are out of "stamina" for misguided military adventures that are tearing apart families and ruining lives across the nation. Maybe the editors of Die Welt, safely ensconced in Hamburg, don’t have a clue concerning the pervasive anger that one can easliy perceive in nearly every community in America just now.
Is this the dumbest editorial to appear in Die Welt? No, that honor belongs to this piece by Roger Koeppel in which he makes the claim that the Weimar Republic fell because it banned the practice of torture.
