I think... I'm kinda ashamed of my country.
Today, the UN Security Council finally passed the NFZ resolution for Libya. As predicted, Germany who's currently a temporary member, abstained. This is so very embarrassing and a fucking bad idea that I don't even know where to start. This isn't like Iraq where Bush tried to push the allies into a war based on assumptions and downright lies and where the Iraqis for some reason were less than thrilled about being occupied by a super power and her allies... this is genuinely about the future and the freedom of an entire country and they'd hoped for this resolution for at least a month and what does my country do? They abstain. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
The chancellor's statement is a fucked-up example for some really ass backswards idiocy. She said that the abstention doesn't mean neutrality. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. Am I the only one who always thought that abstaining was nothing but being neutral? Dammit, what are they trying to play at? Not wanting German troops to be involved in any military strikes in Libya because there could be civilian casualties?
I rather think it's because they're already stretched way too thin as they are and because we just can't raise any more ressources to fulfill our duties as NATO members and they're just too embarrassed to admit that. And we're back to the Bundeswehr bullshitting from When Guttenberg Was Still SecDef. Which brings me back to another pet peeve: yes, he didn't exactly write his PhD thesis himself. Yes, whoever wrote that thesis generously helped themselves to an overwhelming lot of a couple of quotations they didn't exactly mark as quotes.
But. At least he told it like it is. He was the first to call the Afghanistan deployment a war, who said that yes, German soldiers are fighting a war again and German soldiers are dying in a fucking war, not some "conflict" or "policing action". He knew how to read the ranks, was actually one of them (a non-com in the Army reserves, mountain infantery) and he was able to make quick and painful decisions, such as retiring the Gorch Fock's commandant Captain Norbert Schatz after the death of a female cadet in a Brazilian port late last year and the subsequent discovery of a couple of unsavory incidents involving hazing and sexual harassment of the cadets by the crew. There's been a report on that, claiming Schatz was not to be blamed for anything but we'll certainly see about that.
Anyway, after von zu Guttenberg's resignation, Thomas de Maiziére took up the office and... was nowhere seen henceforth. There were a couple of introductionary gigs but so far I haven't heard anything concerning Libya from the new IBuK (Inhaber der Befehls- und Kommandogewalt, CIC/SecDef in this case) and uh... whatthe hell? This is like... um... his turf, all the way? Or at least, his turf as much as that of Secretary of State Westerwelle? It doesn't make any sense and can we please stop chickening out of this?
Also, can we (as left-wingers, I mean) stop pretending the situation in Libya can be resolved by talking and... and I don't have any idea what everyone left-wing thinks how it could be resolved. I only hear "No troops to Libya! No war in Libya with foreign involvement!" but I never hear "This is how we could do it instead..." Don't they all remember Bosnia? Rwanda? Haiti? Is their memory really that short? Hasn't anyone apart from yours truly read Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures?
Seriously, that book was a fucking ephiphany to me and it confirmed my diffuse feelings regarding non-robust UN troop deployments. They suck. You can't prevent genocide by standing aside and let one party march the other to the graves they have to dig themselves. That never worked and it won't work to just let the situation in Libya run its course now either and I feel so embarrassed that my country's elected officials bullshit everyone and their mothers three ways from Sunday. If they'd just be honest (about the fact that there aren't any troops they could deploy, nor any equipment because they're all in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Lebanon and Sudan and off the Somalian coast...), I probably could live with it. But the crap they're telling us now? No, that's just painful in the sheer embarrassment.
Most of all because they suggested they might send AWACS crews to Afghanistan to relieve the US troops... exactly the thing they totally ruled out in January, with withdrawing the remaining AWACS crews out of interior reasons (there are elections in a couple of federal states this year... yes, I'm finding it unbelievable as well). This is exactly the kind of ass hattery that will make us a laughing stock in international relations again. I really wonder where this will lead... and something tells me we haven't heard the last of the whole Libya (non-)deployment thing, yet. Mark my words.
Or at least I hope we haven't :S
The chancellor's statement is a fucked-up example for some really ass backswards idiocy. She said that the abstention doesn't mean neutrality. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. Am I the only one who always thought that abstaining was nothing but being neutral? Dammit, what are they trying to play at? Not wanting German troops to be involved in any military strikes in Libya because there could be civilian casualties?
I rather think it's because they're already stretched way too thin as they are and because we just can't raise any more ressources to fulfill our duties as NATO members and they're just too embarrassed to admit that. And we're back to the Bundeswehr bullshitting from When Guttenberg Was Still SecDef. Which brings me back to another pet peeve: yes, he didn't exactly write his PhD thesis himself. Yes, whoever wrote that thesis generously helped themselves to an overwhelming lot of a couple of quotations they didn't exactly mark as quotes.
But. At least he told it like it is. He was the first to call the Afghanistan deployment a war, who said that yes, German soldiers are fighting a war again and German soldiers are dying in a fucking war, not some "conflict" or "policing action". He knew how to read the ranks, was actually one of them (a non-com in the Army reserves, mountain infantery) and he was able to make quick and painful decisions, such as retiring the Gorch Fock's commandant Captain Norbert Schatz after the death of a female cadet in a Brazilian port late last year and the subsequent discovery of a couple of unsavory incidents involving hazing and sexual harassment of the cadets by the crew. There's been a report on that, claiming Schatz was not to be blamed for anything but we'll certainly see about that.
Anyway, after von zu Guttenberg's resignation, Thomas de Maiziére took up the office and... was nowhere seen henceforth. There were a couple of introductionary gigs but so far I haven't heard anything concerning Libya from the new IBuK (Inhaber der Befehls- und Kommandogewalt, CIC/SecDef in this case) and uh... whatthe hell? This is like... um... his turf, all the way? Or at least, his turf as much as that of Secretary of State Westerwelle? It doesn't make any sense and can we please stop chickening out of this?
Also, can we (as left-wingers, I mean) stop pretending the situation in Libya can be resolved by talking and... and I don't have any idea what everyone left-wing thinks how it could be resolved. I only hear "No troops to Libya! No war in Libya with foreign involvement!" but I never hear "This is how we could do it instead..." Don't they all remember Bosnia? Rwanda? Haiti? Is their memory really that short? Hasn't anyone apart from yours truly read Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures?
Seriously, that book was a fucking ephiphany to me and it confirmed my diffuse feelings regarding non-robust UN troop deployments. They suck. You can't prevent genocide by standing aside and let one party march the other to the graves they have to dig themselves. That never worked and it won't work to just let the situation in Libya run its course now either and I feel so embarrassed that my country's elected officials bullshit everyone and their mothers three ways from Sunday. If they'd just be honest (about the fact that there aren't any troops they could deploy, nor any equipment because they're all in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Lebanon and Sudan and off the Somalian coast...), I probably could live with it. But the crap they're telling us now? No, that's just painful in the sheer embarrassment.
Most of all because they suggested they might send AWACS crews to Afghanistan to relieve the US troops... exactly the thing they totally ruled out in January, with withdrawing the remaining AWACS crews out of interior reasons (there are elections in a couple of federal states this year... yes, I'm finding it unbelievable as well). This is exactly the kind of ass hattery that will make us a laughing stock in international relations again. I really wonder where this will lead... and something tells me we haven't heard the last of the whole Libya (non-)deployment thing, yet. Mark my words.
Or at least I hope we haven't :S