On US-German Relations

A student sent me the following earlier today. I have been thinking about it quite a bit. Our relations with Europe are probably at a low-water mark for the post-World War II era. There is plenty of blame to go around for this, and I am not much interested in pointing fingers save to say that I wish this administration understood that it can be firm without alienating everyone who disagrees with American policies and I wish that some Europeans realized that America can do things with which they disagree and it does not make us a rogue nation. In any case, here is the lengthy quotation:

Thought you might be interested in reading this. It was sent to me by my cousin [who did the German to English translation] in Germany.:

The following opinion of Manfred Rommel appeared in the October 27, 2004, edition of the"Stuttgarter Zeitung" in Stuttgart, Germany. Manfred Rommel was the mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 to 1996 and son of Erwin Rommel, the renowned World War II German field marshal.:

"My America”

“President Bush might possibly not have begun the war in Iraq and burdened himself and the USA with the difficulties brought about by it if he had known from the beginning what he later experienced. Still, the way US politics, the media and the society have dealt with the situation tend to strengthen my great confidence in the United States. Mistakes have been investigated, admitted and corrected. That impresses me. [German aphorist] Lichtenberg once wrote that we Germans learned to turn up our noses rather than to clean them. This may be exaggerated, but there is some truth to it. We are allowed to turn them up a bit. But we should remember that there hardly exists a free country that does not owe the survival or recovery of its freedom to the US in one way or the other. This is the case for Europe and in particular for reunified Germany, which not only profited from the end of the Cold War, but also to a great degree owes the return of its confidence in its own democracy to the USA. America draws from these achievements the optimism without which the future cannot be won. Such optimism is less common in Europe. It is a matter of reason, but also of gratitude. For these reasons German-American friendship must be cultivated and preserved.

Whatever I think of some of the interpretations, the ultimate point – that in the long run American and German (but you can substitute your country of choice in place of Germany’s slot) alliances matter – is one that I hope cooler heads remember in the next few years.